Archive for June, 2009
Durbin cashed out during big stock collapse
Durbin cashed out during big stock collapse
As U.S. stock markets plummeted last September, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, sold more than $115,000 worth of stocks and mutual-fund shares and used much of the money to invest in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock, the disclosure shows.
Altogether, Durbin sold investments worth $116,000 in September. By Oct. 2, he had invested $98,046 in Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway, the form shows.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index plunged 4.7 percent last Sept. 15 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bank of America Corp.’s government-engineered takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. By the end of October, the index had fallen 22.6 percent.
via Durbin cashed out during big stock collapse :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: News.
Microbes found miles beneath Greenland ice given new life
Microbes found miles beneath Greenland ice given new life
Discovery raises hopes of lifeforms enduring harsh conditions on other planets
Tiny microbes that have been buried below nearly two miles of ice for at least 120,000 years have been revived in the laboratory, in a study that raises the prospect that similar life forms could have survived on other planets.
Scientists have found at least two species of miniature bacteria, many times smaller than normal microbes, in an ice core bored deep beneath the surface of a Greenland glacier where they have been trapped for tens of thousands of years.
The researchers managed to isolate and grow the bacteria in the laboratory, where they have established thriving colonies of small, purple-brown microbes that are so small that they can pass straight through conventional medical filters used for sterilisation.
The microbes’ ability to survive the harsh environment of a Greenland glacier for such a long period of time suggests that extraterrestrial life forms – if they exist – could survive in equally extreme environments on Mars or Europa, the ice-covered moon of Jupiter where extraterrestrial life is thought to be possible.
via Microbes found miles beneath Greenland ice given new life – Science, News – The Independent.
The American Empire Is Bankrupt
The American Empire Is Bankrupt
By Chris Hedges
June 15, 2009 “Truthdig” — This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.
Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.
There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”
It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.
via The American Empire Is Bankrupt : Information Clearing House – ICH.
California to miss budget deadline, meltdown nears
California to miss budget deadline, “meltdown” nears
SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – California lawmakers were poised to miss their constitutional deadline on Monday for a state budget, bringing the state’s government closer to running out of cash.
Democrats and Republicans in the legislature’s budget conference committee worked through Monday afternoon on a variety of proposals addressing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to close a $24.3 billion budget shortfall, but they failed to find common ground on its most dramatic proposal: eliminating the state’s welfare system.
“This meeting is not headed in that direction,” Republican Assemblyman Roger Niello said.
California’s revenues are plunging amid recession, rising unemployment and the prolonged housing crisis, and the state is unable to borrow its way out of its immediate financial trouble by issuing debt at low cost because of its budget gap.
It will run out of cash within weeks if it does not balance its books, leaving it little option but to postpone a variety of payments, according to State Controller John Chiang, who estimated last week that California was “less than 50 days away from a meltdown of state government.”
via California to miss budget deadline, meltdown nears | Politics | Reuters.
Durbin Must Resign
OPS does not necessarily agree with this – yet….. but goddamnit!
Durbin Must Resign
The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock, the disclosure shows.
Riiiight.
I have written before about the fact that Congressfolk can trade on pending legislation. There is no apparent violation of the law, if I read it correctly, in doing so.
But there damn well should be, and Durbin should be in prison.
He received a confidential Treasury and Fed briefing, and the next day executed trades in his accounts.
If you or I did something like that we’d have an SEC probe inserted about three feet into somewhere very unpleasant.
Shoemaker said Durbin didn’t capitalize on anything Paulson and Bernanke told congressional leaders at the Sept. 18 meeting. Whatever information Paulson gave lawmakers wasn’t secret or classified and was disclosed publicly the next day, Shoemaker said.
Nice try. The scaremongering was in fact rather explicit. Remember this video?
via Durbin Must Resign – The Market Ticker.
Hold out for single payer
Hold out for single payer – | Physicians for a National Health Program
By Nick Skala
The following remarks were presented to the Congressional Progressive Caucus on June 4.
Today the Congressional Progressive Caucus faces a choice. That choice is whether Members should maintain their unflinching support for single-payer, or to accede to intense political pressure to support the plan currently being developed in Congress under the direction of President Obama: a mandate for Americans to purchase an insurance plan from a massive new regulatory “exchange,” with one plan potentially being a “public option.”
The difference between these choices could not be more stark: single-payer has at its core the elimination of U.S.-style private insurance, using huge administrative savings and inherent cost control mechanisms to provide comprehensive, sustainable universal coverage.
The “public option” preserves all of the systemic defects inherent in reliance on a patchwork of private insurance companies to finance health care, a system which has been a miserable failure both in providing health coverage and controlling costs.
Elimination of U.S.-style private insurance has been a prerequisite to the achievement of universal health care in every other industrialized country in the world. In contrast, public program expansions coupled with mandates have failed everywhere they’ve been tried, both domestically and internationally.
via Hold out for single payer | Physicians for a National Health Program.
Fleischer Claims ‘Substantial Reform Movement In Iran’ Is ‘Because Of George W. Bush’s Tough Policies’
Fleischer Claims ‘Substantial Reform Movement In Iran’ Is ‘Because Of George W. Bush’s Tough Policies’
The Washington Post’s Al Kamen reports this morning that former Bush flack Ari Fleischer emailed fellow Post reporter Glenn Kessler before any results had been issued in Iran’s hotly-contested presidential election to give credit to his former boss for the “reformists’ surge” there. “[O]ne of the reasons there is a substantial reform movement in Iran — particularly among its young people — is because of George W. Bush’s tough policies,” Fleischer wrote. He continued:
“A big push for reform is because of the desire of Iranians to get out from sanctions, to put an end to the country’s international ostracism,” Fleischer wrote and, most interestingly, “because Shiites in particular see Shiites in Iraq having more freedoms than they do. Bush’s tough policies have helped give rise to the reformists and I think we’re witnessing that today.” [...]
So “I think it’s fair to say the George Bush’s Freedom Agenda planted seeds that have started to grow in the Middle East,” Fleischer concluded.
Dean Rejects Conrad’s Health Care Co-Op Proposal: ‘This Is Not A Real Compromise’
Dean Rejects Conrad’s Health Care Co-Op Proposal: ‘This Is Not A Real Compromise’
Last week, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) floated a health care proposal intended to mollify conservatives who are upset over the possible creation of a public health insurance plan. Instead of offering consumers a government-run option similar to Medicare, Conrad suggests giving individuals and very small businesses the option to buy into a plan that would be run by a non-profit cooperative. The idea has gained the support of Democratic senators, including Max Baucus (D-MT).
The idea would be to create multiple state or regional non-profit co-operatives, operating through members who choose a board of directors and a CEO. Unlike Medicare, this model “would lack the market leverage to bargain for lower prices.”
This morning on MSNBC, former Gov. Howard Dean rejected Conrad’s proposal, saying it is “not a real compromise.” “This is a fix for the Senate problem,” he said, “this doesn’t fix the American problem.” After heaping praise on Conrad, Dean explained:
He’s wrong about this. The co-ops are too small to compete with the big, private insurance companies. They will kill the co-ops completely by undercutting them, using their financial clout to do it. In the small states like mine and like Senator Conrad’s, you’re never gonna get to the 500,000 number signed up in the co-op that you need to in order for them to have any marketing [power].
This is a compromise designed to deal with problems in the Senate. But it doesn’t deal with problems in America. And I think it’s time for the Senate to stop playing politics, do what has to be done. … If the Republicans don’t want to get on board, then we can do this without the Republicans.
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Dean Rejects Conrad’s Health Care Co-Op Proposal: ‘This Is Not A Real Compromise’.
McCain Doesn’t Know That Other Countries’ Gov’t-Run Systems Are More Efficient Than U.S.
McCain Doesn’t Know That Other Countries’ Gov’t-Run Systems Are More Efficient Than U.S.
Today, President Obama spoke before the American Medical Association about the immediate need for far-reaching health care reform. He insisted that one of the options presented to Americans “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest.”
On CNN earlier today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) rejected the public option as “a non-starter.” He admitted that the current “competition” between “1,300 health insurance companies in America today” is not successfully driving down costs — but insisted that a government plan could never be more cost efficient:
MCCAIN: Look, if we have a government option, then sooner or later it will dramatically increase the cost, it will crowd out private health insurance. And if you’re doing it in the name of competition, we have 1,300 health insurance companies in America today. They’re competing but they’re not getting the kinds of health care costs under control that is necessary.
CNN: Yeah. Do you think that is absolutely necessarily so? That if you have a competing government system, that invariably what will happen is that you will drive some of the private health insurers out of the business?
MCCAIN: I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. Over time you’ll drive them all out, and the idea that somehow the government can administer health care in a more efficient fashion than the private sector I think flies in the face of examples of other countries that have done so.
Watch it:
Senate GOP Blocking Obama Nominees In Attempt To Delay Health Care And Climate Legislation
Senate GOP Blocking Obama Nominees In Attempt To Delay Health Care And Climate Legislation
dawn1In April, ThinkProgress noted that Republicans were blocking an increasing number of President Obama’s nominees to pursue ideological witch hunts and to facilitate self-interested horse trades. Two months later, a number of key nominees are still waiting and Senate Republicans are bottling up dozens more of Obama’s nominees in order to delay action on key Obama agenda items like health care and climate change legislation by consuming one of the most precious resources in the Senate: floor time. Roll Call explains:
Reid came to the floor three times Wednesday and several more times throughout the week to plead with his Republican colleagues to stop holding up a growing number of President Barack Obama’s appointees. The Majority Leader’s appeal was his most forceful yet, and aides say he has no plans to abandon the effort anytime soon.
“I would hope that people would search their conscience and try to get these done,” Reid said, explaining that procedural motions that he could employ to clear the nominees would eat up too much floor time. “It would take until the summer, until we finish the July recess and beyond, for us to get this done, filing cloture on every one of these. I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Moyers Interviews Robert Reich on “Who Runs Government”
Moyers Interviews Robert Reich on “Who Runs Government”
by: Bill Moyers
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal. Get out the stretchers and unroll the bandages. The fight is joined.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: In order to preserve what’s best about our health care system, we have to fix what doesn’t work. For we’ve reached the point where doing nothing about the cost of health care is no longer an option.
BILL MOYERS: Despite the speech President Obama made at a Wisconsin Town Hall meeting this week, the question now is will he push back against the profiteers of health care? A powerful coalition has emerged to keep the profit in sickness and disease – the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, the big drug companies, the insurance giants, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, all of them opposed to what my guest says is real health care reform.
Robert Reich was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor; he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act, and headed the Clinton Administration’s successful effort to raise the minimum wage. Now you can hear him on public radio’s MARKETPLACE and read his byline all over the mainstream media and across the Internet, including his blog at Robertreich.org. He is the author of eleven books, including this, the most recent, SUPERCAPITALISM: THE TRANSFORMATION OF BUSINESS, DEMOCRACY, AND EVERYDAY LIFE.
Robert Reich, welcome to the Journal.
ROBERT REICH: Hi, Bill.
BILL MOYERS: I wanted to talk to you because you do know how Washington works. TIME MAGAZINE called you one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. So take us inside for a moment or two into how you think this healthcare debate is playing out after the President’s speech yesterday.
via t r u t h o u t | Moyers Interviews Robert Reich on “Who Runs Government”.
UPDATE 2-Bank of America loan losses horrific -Bove
UPDATE 2-Bank of America loan losses “horrific” -Bove
June 15 (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) is experiencing “horrific” loan losses and may set aside $46 billion in loan loss provisions this year, analyst Richard Bove said, even as he raised his target on the stock by $5 to $19.
Shares of the largest U.S. bank slid 3 percent to $13.31 in early morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
“In the second quarter, (Bank of America’s) position as the largest lender in multiple sectors of the American financial system will haunt the company as its losses expand,” the Rochdale Securities analyst said.
However, Bove said he expects the price-earnings multiple on the stock to rise as confidence in the company and its management improved.
He continues to rate the stock “buy.”
Bove said it was becoming increasingly clear that Bank of America’s acquisition of Countrywide and Merrill Lynch has been good for the company.
via UPDATE 2-Bank of America loan losses horrific -Bove | U.S. | Reuters.
Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve?
Rep. Alan Grayson asks the Federal Reserve Inspector General about the trillions of dollars lent or spent by the Federal Reserve and where it went, and the trillions of off balance sheet obligations. Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman responds that the IG does not know and is not tracking where this money is.
YouTube – High Quality Version: Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve?.
The Cost Conundrum
The Cost Conundrum - The New Yorker
What a Texas town can teach us about health care.
by Atul Gawande
It is spring in McAllen, Texas. The morning sun is warm. The streets are lined with palm trees and pickup trucks. McAllen is in Hidalgo County, which has the lowest household income in the country, but it’s a border town, and a thriving foreign-trade zone has kept the unemployment rate below ten per cent. McAllen calls itself the Square Dance Capital of the World. “Lonesome Dove” was set around here.
McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.
The explosive trend in American medical costs seems to have occurred here in an especially intense form. Our country’s health care is by far the most expensive in the world. In Washington, the aim of health-care reform is not just to extend medical coverage to everybody but also to bring costs under control. Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and the like now consumes more than one of every six dollars we earn. The financial burden has damaged the global competitiveness of American businesses and bankrupted millions of families, even those with insurance. It’s also devouring our government. “The greatest threat to America’s fiscal health is not Social Security,” President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. “It’s not the investments that we’ve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”
via Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker.
Are Nanotech Consumer Products Safe?
Are Nanotech Consumer Products Safe? – Scientific American
Nanoparticles are already in household products, although little research has been done on their health effects
Nanotechnology makes use of minuscule objects—whose width can be 10,000 times narrower than a human hair—known as nanoparticles. Upwards of 600 products on store shelves today contain them, including transparent sunscreen, lipsticks, anti-aging creams and even food products.
Global nanotechnology sales have grown substantially in recent years, to $50 billion in 2007, according to Lux Research, author of the annual Nanotech Report. And the final tally isn’t in yet, but analysts had predicted 2008 sales to be $150 billion. The National Science Foundation says the industry could be worth $1 trillion by 2015, when it would employ two million workers directly.
What makes nanoparticles so useful is their tiny size, which allows for manipulation of color, solubility, strength, magnetic behavior and electrical conductivity. Nanoparticles do exist in nature, and they’re also created inadvertently through some industrial processes. What’s new—and potentially hazardous—is the widespread engineering of these particles for commercial purposes.
via Are Nanotech Consumer Products Safe?: Scientific American.
Fact or Fiction: Dogs Can Talk
Fact or Fiction: Dogs Can Talk : Scientific American
Are human speech-like vocalizations made by some mammals equivalent to conversation–or just a rough estimation of it?
Maya, a noisy, seven-year-old pooch, looks straight at me. And with just a little prompting from her owner says, “I love you.” Actually, she says “Ahh rooo uuu!”
Maya is working hard to produce what sounds like real speech. “She makes these sounds that really, really sound like words to everyone who hears her, but I think you have to believe,” says her owner, Judy Brookes.
Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People?
Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People? : Scientific American 
Slowing the rise in human numbers is essential for the planet–but it doesn’t require population control
In an era of changing climate and sinking economies, Malthusian limits to growth are back—and squeezing us painfully. Whereas more people once meant more ingenuity, more talent and more innovation, today it just seems to mean less for each. Less water for every cattle herder in the Horn of Africa. (The United Nations projects there will be more than four billion people living in nations defined as water-scarce or water-stressed by 2050, up from half a billion in 1995.) Less land for every farmer already tilling slopes so steep they risk killing themselves by falling off their fields. (At a bit less than six tenths of an acre, global per capita cropland today is little more than half of what it was in 1961, and more than 900 million people are hungry.) Less capacity in the atmosphere to accept the heat-trapping gases that could fry the planet for centuries to come. Scarcer and higher-priced energy and food. And if the world’s economy does not bounce back to its glory days, less credit and fewer jobs.
It’s not surprising that this kind of predicament brings back an old sore topic: human population and whether to do anything about it. Let’s concede up front that nothing short of a catastrophic population crash (think of the film Children of Men, set in a world without children) would make much difference to climate change, water scarcity or land shortages over the next decade or so. There are 6.8 billion of us today, and more are on the way. To make a dent in these problems in the short term without throwing anyone overboard, we will need to radically reduce individuals’ footprint on the environment through improvements in technology and possibly wrenching changes in lifestyle.
via Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People?: Scientific American.
How can I treat gum disease?
How can I treat gum disease? – - – Natural Health
Periodontal disease is a bacterial infection of the gums, jawbone, and connective tissue that’s caused by not taking care of your teeth properly.
TREATMENT: If patients already have gum disease, I educate them on how to remove the bacteria by giving them “irrigation” tools that deliver herbal antiseptics (like the lavender-based Tooth & Gums Tonic) to the deep pockets below the gum line, where anaerobic (oxygen-hating) bacteria thrive. I also suggest pouring hydrogen peroxide on a toothbrush, then scrubbing the gum line to eliminate bacteria.
EXPERT TIPS: To prevent periodontal disease in the first place, brush, floss, and scrape your tongue twice a day, and get a professional cleaning twice a year. You can also keep harmful bacteria from infecting your gums by supporting your immune system with acupuncture, a mostly vegetarian diet, and supplements like omega-3s, CoQ10, vitamin B, and calcium.
—Lewis Gross, D.D.S., a holistic dentist in New York City
via How can I treat gum disease? – Expert Advice | Health Wellness – Natural Health.
You can prevent cancer
You can prevent cancer
Just make these expert-approved changes in diet, stress management and exercise.
The way you eat, how much you exercise, and how well you deal with stress affects your risk of developing cancer— and you have more control over preventing the disease than was previously thought. That’s the latest word from the world’s top scientists who spent more than five years analyzing thousands of studies to come up with this definitive conclusion. The results of their meta-analyses were released recently by the World Cancer Research Fund/ American Institute for Cancer Research.
REDUCE YOUR RISKS.
Why does lifestyle have such an impact? “When your body loses normal genetic control—often through nutritional deficiencies and environmental toxins, as well as the aging process—the cells will grow into cancers before the immune system can eliminate them,” explains Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D., an internist who practices complementary therapy. But by eating the right foods, exercising wisely, and reducing stress, you can shore up your immune system and improve your odds against triggering the disease. In fact, scientists say healthy living and early detection could prevent up to 70 percent of all cancers. Follow our comprehensive guide—and decrease your risk.
{CANCER-PROOF YOUR} BODY.
To get the most cancer-fighting benefits from exercising and watching your weight, follow these proven tips:
via You can prevent cancer – Health – Natural Health.
Solar thermal surge possible by 2050
Solar thermal surge possible by 2050
Solar thermal power has the potential to generate up to a quarter of the world’s electricity by 2050, according to a new report by pro-solar groups.
The study, by Greenpeace, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association (ESTELA) and the International Energy Agency‘s (IEA) SolarPACES group, says huge investments would also create jobs and fight climate change.
“Solar power plants are the next big thing in renewable energy,” says Sven Teske of Greenpeace International and co-author of the report.
The report focuses on a technique called concentrating solar power (CSP), which uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy and convert it to heat and then to electricity.
CSP plants are suited to hot, cloudless regions such as deserts in the Sahara or the Middle East.
via Solar thermal surge possible by 2050 › News in Science (ABC Science).
What’s So Hot About Chili Peppers?
What’s So Hot About Chili Peppers? || Smithsonian Magazine 
An American ecologist travels through the Bolivian forest to answer burning questions about the spice
Seated in the bed of a pickup truck, Joshua Tewksbury cringes with every curve and pothole as we bounce along the edge of Amboró National Park in central Bolivia. After 2,000 miles on some of the worst roads in South America, the truck’s suspension is failing. In the past hour, two leaf springs—metal bands that prevent the axle from crashing into the wheel well—jangled onto the road behind us. At any moment, Tewksbury’s extraordinary hunting expedition could come to an abrupt end.
A wiry 40-year-old ecologist at the University of Washington, Tewksbury is risking his sacroiliac in this fly-infested forest looking for a wild chili with a juicy red berry and a tiny flower: Capsicum minutiflorum. He hopes it’ll help answer the hottest question in botany: Why are chilies spicy?
Bolivia is believed to be the chili’s motherland, home to dozens of wild species that may be the ancestors of all the world’s chili varieties—from the mild bell pepper to the medium jalapeño to the rough-skinned naga jolokia, the hottest pepper ever tested. The heat-generating compound in chilies, capsaicin, has long been known to affect taste buds, nerve cells and nasal membranes (it puts the sting in pepper spray). But its function in wild chili plants has been mysterious.
via What’s So Hot About Chili Peppers? | Science & Nature | Smithsonian Magazine.
Still Digging Up Exxon Valdez Oil, 20 Years Later
Still Digging Up Exxon Valdez Oil, 20 Years Later – TIME
Twenty years since the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in southeastern Alaska on March 24, 1989, spreading an 11-million-gallon crude-oil inkblot into Prince William Sound, the formerly pristine coastal waters once again appear clean and untouched.
Birds like the arctic tern and the endangered Kittlitz’s murrelet can be seen skimming the astonishingly beautiful Alaskan coastline while sea otters backstroke through the cold, clear waters of the Sound. It is a remarkable turnaround since the Exxon spill, the worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history — the immediate shock of which killed hundreds of thousands of shorebirds that made their home in the Sound along with sea otters that choked on the crude. Over the long term, populations of orcas, killer whales, herring and other species would be injured by the accident. (Read “Remembering the Lessons of the ‘Exon Valdez.’”)
via Still Digging Up Exxon Valdez Oil, 20 Years Later – TIME.
Another Blow for Angioplasty
Another Blow for Angioplasty - BusinessWeek
A major heart study adds to the growing evidence that expensive angioplasties are no better than drugs alone in saving lives
Editors note: For a CBS Evening News report on angioplasty made in collaboration with BusinessWeek, click here, or go to CBS Evening News and search for angioplasty.
There’s a powerful logic to the argument that people will live longer and have fewer heart attacks if their clogged arteries are repaired with a procedure called angioplasty. Most commonly, the arteries are widened with a tiny balloon threaded through their blood vessels, then kept open with slender mesh tubes called stents. The logic has turned this medical procedure into a huge—and profitable—business. Each year in the U.S., more than 1.2 million angioplasties are performed, at a cost of more than $25 billion. The cardiologists who open arteries love the sense that they are warding off death, and patients “think the angioplasty saved their lives,” says Floyd J. Fowler Jr., president of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making
via Another Blow for Angioplasty – BusinessWeek.
Parasite puzzle: scientists mull coextinction conundrum
OPS: Something that Thom Hartmann has been talking about for years
Parasite puzzle: scientists mull coextinction conundrum
Most of us feel anguish over the loss of endangered species like the panda or the polar bear. But what happens to the parasites that are hosted by such animals? And although most people would side with the panda over the parasite, which group should we be more concerned about?
In a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, North Carolina State University biologist Rob Dunn examines the concept of coextinction; or the domino effect of extinctions caused by species loss. Mathematical models suggest that coextinctions due to the actions of humans are very common, the paper asserts. Yet, counterintuitively, there have been few reported cases of coextinction in scientific literature.
via Parasite puzzle: scientists mull coextinction conundrum.
Some wine can improve if stored in a carton rather than in a bottle
Box clever | The Economist
Some wine can improve if stored in a carton rather than in a bottle
AMONG snobs and sommeliers, nothing can compete with wine in a glass bottle sealed with a cork stopper. Yet as cheap alternatives to cork have become available and high fuel prices have made transporting glass more expensive, some winemakers have adopted an alternative method of storage: putting wine in cartons, like those used for milk, made from layers of polythene, paper and aluminium foil. Admittedly, serving wine from a carton lacks the aesthetic appeal of a bottle, and cartons have also been criticised for allowing flavour-destroying oxygen to seep in during storage. A new study, however, reveals that although the criticism of wine cartons for allowing oxidation is valid, they have the advantage of soaking up chemicals that can ruin the flavour in other ways.
High levels of chemicals called alkyl-methoxypyrazines can make wines taste as though the fruit from which they were made was under-ripe or low-quality. Originally grapes themselves were thought to be the only source of this class of compounds in wine, but recent research has shown that invasive Asian lady beetles (also known as Harlequin ladybirds) are also involved in the process. These beetles eat grapes and can accidentally get mixed into the winemaking process. They then contribute to the formation of these undesirable chemicals in some North American and French wines.
via The science of ageing wine: Box clever | The Economist.
Fox, MSNBC air NY Times’ cropped video of Sotomayor’s affirmative action comments
Fox, MSNBC air NY Times’ cropped video of Sotomayor’s affirmative action comments | Media Matters for America
SUMMARY: MSNBC and Fox News aired portions of a New York Times video package that cropped remarks Sonia Sotomayor made regarding affirmative action. The editing omitted her statement that she is “from what is traditionally described as a socio-economically poor background.”
On June 11, MSNBC and Fox News aired portions of a New York Times video package that cropped remarks Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor made regarding affirmative action during a panel discussion with female judges in the early 1990s. The cropped video featured the following remarks by Sotomayor, but omitted the portion in italics: “I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am a Puerto Rican, born and raised in the South Bronx, and from what is traditionally described as a socio-economically poor background. My test scores were not comparable to that of my colleagues at Princeton or Yale — not so far off the mark that I wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions” (42:00). The cropping of Sotomayor’s comments in this way allows conservatives, such as Sean Hannity, to distort Sotomayor’s remarks by suggesting that Sotomayor said her ethnicity was the only reason she was admitted to Princeton and Yale.
The Times video package that aired on Fox News and MSNBC included the following comments, with no indication that they had been cropped:
Scarborough revisionism: claims he didn’t fault DHS for “targeting right-wingers”
Scarborough revisionism: claims he didn’t fault DHS for “targeting right-wingers” | Media Matters for America
SUMMARY: Referring to a DHS report on “rightwing extremists,” Joe Scarborough stated that “what upset most of us … was the fact not that they were targeting right-wingers, it’s that they were targeting veterans.” In fact, when the report was made public, Scarborough not only criticized it for what he said was its “targeting veterans,” but also stated that “they’re going after conservatives first.”
Right-wing media and the fringe: A growing history of violence (and denial)
Right-wing media and the fringe: A growing history of violence (and denial) | Media Matters for America
This week, the country’s attention was captured by the horrific shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, allegedly by James W. von Brunn, an 88-year-old man with ties to white supremacist and anti-Semitic organizations. The fatal shooting came just two months after an April 7 Department of Homeland Security report detailing potential increases in right-wing extremism.
As Media Matters for America documented, the DHS report was immediately and vehemently rejected by numerous conservative commentators, such as Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, and David Asman, who portrayed it as an illegitimate and politically motivated assault on conservatives. (Media Matters Senior Fellow Karl Frisch puts the attacks in even broader perspective here.)
Neo-Nazis are in the Army now
OPS: Great – let’s give the most insane people on the street some serious Military training and see what happens. This is another reason we need a Draft. The more fodder – the more choosy they can be
Neo-Nazis are in the Army now | Salon News
Why the U.S. military is ignoring its own regulations and permitting white supremacists to join its ranks.
Editor’s note: Research support for this article was provided by the Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund.
June 15, 2009 | On a muggy Florida evening in 2008, I meet Iraq War veteran Forrest Fogarty in the Winghouse, a little bar-restaurant on the outskirts of Tampa, his favorite hangout. He told me on the phone I would recognize him by his skinhead. Sure enough, when I spot a white guy at a table by the door with a shaved head, white tank top and bulging muscles, I know it can only be him.
Over a plate of chicken wings, he tells me about his path into the white-power movement. “I was 14 when I decided I wanted to be a Nazi,” he says. At his first high school, near Los Angeles, he was bullied by black and Latino kids. That’s when he first heard Skrewdriver, a band he calls “the godfather of the white power movement.” “I became obsessed,” he says. He had an image from one of Skrewdriver’s album covers — a Viking carrying a staff, an icon among white nationalists — tattooed on his left forearm. Soon after he had another white power symbol, a Celtic cross, emblazoned on his stomach.
At 15, Fogarty moved with his dad to Tampa, where he started picking fights with groups of black kids at his new high school. “On the first day, this bunch of niggers, they thought I was a racist, so they asked, ‘Are you in the KKK?’” he tells me. “I said, ‘Yeah,’ and it was on.” Soon enough, he was expelled.
via Neo-Nazis are in the Army now | Salon News.
Newt Gingrich, zombie politician
Newt Gingrich, zombie politician – Los Angeles Times
The former House speaker resigned under a cloud of dishonor and disgrace, but now the dead man talking walks among us again.
At this point in the recession, you’ve probably become familiar with the term “zombie bank,” a financial institution that can continue operating, thanks to government support, even though its debts outweigh its assets. Now it’s time to add a related descriptor to our public discourse: “zombie politician.” The term describes a political figure whose electoral worth is less than zero and whose ideas are totally bankrupt, but who can continue to offer up political guidance because he’s kept on life-support by media-generated oxygen.
Or if you prefer a shorter definition of a zombie pol, try this one: Newt Gingrich.
via Newt Gingrich, zombie politician – Los Angeles Times.
Netanyahu bows to Obama, accepts Palestinian state
Netanyahu bows to Obama, accepts Palestinian “state” – | Reuters
RAMAT GAN, Israel (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on Sunday to uncommon pressure from Washington by finally giving his endorsement — with conditions — to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
But in a speech answering President Barack Obama‘s address to the Arab world 10 days ago, the right-wing leader’s defense of Jewish settlement on occupied land may fail to dispel tension with the White House, as the two men try to set new terms for the Middle East peace process in their first months in office.
Obama called Netanyahu’s shift in position on Palestinian statehood as an “important step forward,” even as aides to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were denouncing the speech as “sabotaging” negotiations by restating Israel’s refusal to share the city of Jerusalem or accept Palestinian refugees.
via Netanyahu bows to Obama, accepts Palestinian state | Reuters.
Iran protest cancelled as leaked election results show Mahmoud Amadinejad came third
Iran protest cancelled as leaked election results show Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came third - Telegraph
Iran’s reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi has called off a major rally to protest last Friday’s election results, amid claims police had been cleared to open fire on protesters.
Supporters had been due to turn out en masse in Tehran on Monday afternoon, despite government warnings to stay off the streets.
But this morning, a statement on Mr Mousavi’s campaign website announced that the demonstration had been postponed – although it said Mr Mousavi would go to the site to ensure any supporters who showed up remained calm.
via Iran protest cancelled as leaked election results show Mahmoud Amadinejad came third – Telegraph.
The best and worst cities to live in
The best and worst cities to live in - - Telegraph
The world’s ten best and ten worst cities in which to reside, according to Mercer’s 2009 Quality of Living survey.
The best
Australia’s largest city, with a population of nearly four and a half million, Sydney’s beaches, beautiful harbour and cultural attractions – including the Sydney Opera House – are its big draws, although, according to Mercer, it is the world’s 15th most expensive city.
via The best and worst cities to live in – Telegraph.
Summer Slowdown: Without Signs Of Economic Growth, Stocks To Drift
Summer Slowdown: Without Signs Of Economic Growth, Stocks To Drift
NEW YORK — The summer slowdown is setting in on Wall Street.
The stock market has been drifting, stalling a three-month rally, and analysts say investors need to see more concrete signs of economic growth before they’ll take stocks higher.
At the same time, concerns are growing over climbing interest rates, a falling dollar and rising commodity prices _ all factors that could inhibit recoveries for the market and the economy.
But with trading entering a traditionally slow period, stocks’ moves will likely be more sedate this week, especially in the absence of any economic reports. Analysts say that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
via Summer Slowdown: Without Signs Of Economic Growth, Stocks To Drift.
Republicans step up the anti-Obama-speak
Republicans step up the anti-Obama-speak – TheHill.com
Republicans in Washington are offering up some of the strongest language yet in their efforts to distinguish themselves from the 5-month-old Obama administration’s economic policies.
In recent weeks, GOP leaders and rank-and-file members have offered stinging rebukes of the Democratic control in Washington in terms that Democrats say have gone over the line.
Last week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor said Obama’s handling of the faltering U.S. auto industry is “almost like looking at Putin’s Russia.”
That came as Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) was drawing heat from Democrats for saying that he told Chinese leaders that “the budget numbers that the U.S. has put forward should not be believed” and that Congress would spend more than what is contained in the budget.
via TheHill.com – Republicans step up the anti-Obama-speak.
Sebelius: Health Plan Would Cut Costs
Sebelius: Health Plan Would Cut Costs - WSJ.com
WASHINGTON — The administration’s top health-policy official on Sunday said President Barack Obama’s plan to create a government-run health insurance program would bring competition to private insurers and lower health-care costs nationwide.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that in many markets, private insurers currently have no competitors, giving them wide latitude to raise premiums on customers. She said a government-run option, as long as it followed the same rules as private providers, would force such insurers to lower prices to keep existing customers.
“Most Americans understand that choice and competition is what we want,” Ms. Sebelius said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You can write the rules for a level playing field. The president does not want to dismantle privately owned planned…. He wants to strengthen the marketplace.”
via Sebelius: Health Plan Would Cut Costs – WSJ.com.
S.C. GOPer: Gorilla ‘one of Michelle’s ancestors’
S.C. GOPer: Gorilla ‘one of Michelle’s ancestors’
A high-ranking South Carolina Republican activist has issued an apology after comparing First Lady Michelle Obama to a gorilla.
Rusty DePass, a former chairman of the Richland County Republican Party, made the comments in a friend’s Facebook status update line after a gorilla was reported to have escaped from Columbia’s Riverbanks Zoo.
According to FitsNews, the status line read: “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors — probably harmless.”
DePass told the Associated Press that he made the comment in reference to President Barack Obama’s views on evolution.
From FitsNews:
via Raw Story » S.C. GOPer: Gorilla ‘one of Michelle’s ancestors’.
Video blog: The Iranian uprising
Video blog: The Iranian uprising
With the extraordinary events in Iran the past couple days following the country’s presidential election, and the government’s subsequent crackdown on the Internet, telephone communications and freedom of the press, I thought it appropriate to piece together as much video of the uprising as possible.
These are just some of the videos that the government of Iran does not want you to see.
Meanwhile, here’s a list of English-language Twitter’ers in Iran right now, posting updates as news breaks.
**Update: Also, if you spot any new video online you think we (and our readers) should see, drop a link in comments.
This video of protesters and police clashing in the streets of Tehran was published to YouTube on Sunday, June 14, 2009.
via The Raw Story » Video blog: The Iranian uprising.
NYT editorial on drug war: Time to legalize (or at least decriminalize)
NYT editorial on drug war: Time to legalize (or at least decriminalize) – The Raw Story »
In a major coup for pro-legalization group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Nicholas Kristof, columnist for The New York Times, hitched himself to the group’s mantra in a Sunday editorial exploring the downfalls of a government fighting a war against its own people.
From The New York Times:
Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:
First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.
Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.
Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)
via The Raw Story » NYT editorial on drug war: Time to legalize (or at least decriminalize).
History Offers A Solution To U.S. Trade Deficit
OPS:…something Thom Hartmann has been talking about for years
History Offers A Solution To U.S. Trade Deficit
Anyone who examines U.S. trade and tariff history quickly learns that the USA did not practice free trade before 1933.
The following article originally appeared on TradeReform.org and was written by Richard Schmale, a retired executive.
Anyone who examines U.S. trade and tariff history quickly learns that the USA did not practice free trade before 1933. From the early days of the republic until 1933, America practiced a policy of high tariffs expressly designed to protect domestic manufacturing. Over the period 1820-1933, tariffs ranged from 35 to 50 percent. Henry Clay and later Abraham Lincoln supported the policy. This “protectionism” actually worked well and America experienced great prosperity. The country developed a formidable industrial base that later helped us win two World Wars. In America’s protected home market, industrial wages soon rose above those in Europe because American workers did not have to compete against foreign workers earning a fraction of their wage.
In 1933, the USA’s trade policy underwent a complete and radical 180 degree paradigm change. Suddenly a successful century-long policy of protective tariffs was gone; gone and replaced by a new-to-the-U.S. policy of free trade. The principal agent of change in 1933 was Franklin Roosevelt’s then new Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Hull was a former congressman and senator, and a co-sponsor of the 1913 bill creating the U.S. income tax. Hull considered himself a visionary on the subject of free trade which he was firmly convinced would create nothing less than world peace by eliminating trade rivalries that he believed were the principal cause of all war. Hull took his inspiration from Woodrow Wilson’s famous 14 points for peace after the first World War, point 3 having been a call for “open trade”. During most of the remainder of the 1930s and again at the close of World War II, Hull used his knowledge of the workings of Congress and the authority ceded him by FDR to have a series of trade bills enacted which codified his free trade philosophy; thus setting this country on the trajectory we are on today. Hull never envisioned a 2009 wherein American workers are forced to compete against third world workers paid as little as 30 cents per hour. Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln would never have countenanced this threat to American wages. Nowadays, American manufacturers often transform into virtual shell companies which are merely importers that contract actual manufacturing overseas to save up to 90% and more on wage costs. Sometimes referred to as “labor arbitrage”, outsourcing manufacturing is a pernicious business plan in which greed displaces a former sense of a shared community and a formerly implicit social contract among Americans. Outsourcing has a snowball effect because some companies may feel compelled to outsource in order to stay in business if their competitors have already moved manufacturing overseas to cut costs. The American worker is now expendable.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
White House Tries to Strong Arm Progressive Dems — We Can’t Let That Happen
White House Tries to Strong Arm Progressive Dems — We Can’t Let That Happen.
The White House wants progressive House Democrats to abandon their constituents and their principles and vote for the War/IMF supplemental.
Here’s the lesson I want Rahm Emmanuel and Timothy Geithner to learn. To paraphrase another President from Illinois: you can piss on all of the progressive Democrats some of the time, and some of the progressive Democrats all of the time, but you cannot piss on all of the progressive Democrats, all of the time.
What makes the present situation particularly outrageous is this: the White House and the House leadership now want progressive Democrats in the House to abandon their constituents, their commitments, and their principles and vote for the War/IMF supplemental. But when progressive Democrats tried to have input into the process earlier, they were locked out by the leadership, on orders from the White House and Treasury.
Representative Jim McGovern tried to introduce an amendment on the war supplemental requiring the Pentagon to submit to Congress an exit strategy from Afghanistan. But McGovern’s amendment was not even allowed to be considered. As a freestanding bill [H.R.2404], McGovern’s amendment has 85 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors.
via White House Tries to Strong Arm Progressive Dems — We Can’t Let That Happen | | AlterNet.
The Healthcare War is Now Official
Obama Must Take On the Giant Lobbyists Blocking Health Care Reform
The Healthcare War is Now Official
This is one of those battles that define the state of American democracy.
Robert Reich
Yesterday the American Medical Association came out against a public option for health care. And yesterday the President reaffirmed his support for it. The next weeks will show what Obama is made of — whether he’s willing and able to take on the most formidable lobbying coalition he has faced so far on an issue that will define his presidency.
And make no mistake: A public option large enough to have bargaining leverage to drive down drug prices and private-insurance premiums is the defining issue of universal health care. It’s the only way to make health care affordable. It’s the only way to prevent Medicare and Medicaid from eating up future federal budgets. An ersatz public option — whether Kent Conrad’s non-profit cooperatives, Olympia Snowe’s “trigger,” or regulated state-run plans — won’t do squat.
The last president to successfully take on the giant health care lobbies was LBJ. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted because he weighed into the details, twisted congressional arms, threatened and cajoled, drew lines in the sand, and went to war against the AMA and the other giant lobbyists standing in the way. The question now is how much LBJ is in Barack Obama.
via Robert Reich’s Blog.
Eating Meat Is Not Natural
Eating Meat Is Not Natural
Eating meat is a relatively recent phenomenon in human evolution. And our bodies have never adapted to it.
Going through the reader feedback on some of my recent articles, I noticed the frequently stated notion that eating meat was an essential step in human evolution. While this notion may comfort the meat industry, it’s simply not true, scientifically.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The China Study (please check out the link), explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today. He explains that “the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”
That jibes with what Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging — eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”
via Eating Meat Is Not Natural | | AlterNet.
Legal Pot in California in 2010? “Oaksterdam” Provides the Model
Legal Pot in California in 2010? “Oaksterdam” Provides the Model
Pot entrepreneur Richard Lee envisions a professional marijuana industry much like the one that exists in Amsterdam.
There is a buzz moving through the culture, as the public attitudes around cannabis use are rapidly shifting, that the legalization of marijuana in some states, particularly California, is a growing possibility.
Recent polling by Zogby in May demonstrated that a majority of Americans, say it “makes sense to tax and regulate” marijuana. The Zogby poll, commissioned by the conservative-oriented O’Leary Report, found 52 percent in favor of legalization, only 37 percent opposed. As Ryan Grim reports on the Huffington Post , a previous ABC News/Washington Post poll found 46 percent in support. In California, a Field Poll found 56 percent backing legalization and as a result California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for an open debate on legalization, all which suggest that American society may be reaching a tipping point when it comes to legal pot.
An array of new circumstances — Democrats in power, economic recession leaving states starving for revenue that could come from taxing cannabis sales, less funds for law enforcement and Mexican drug operatives moving into the US to grow huge amounts of untaxed pot, contributing to the horrible drug violence South of the Border — support the growing public support for legalization of pot.
via Legal Pot in California in 2010? “Oaksterdam” Provides the Model | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam
Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam | CommonDreams.org
From 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, which contained large quantities of Dioxin, in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives. Dioxin is one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).
Between 2.5 and 4.8 million people were exposed to Agent Orange. 1.4 billion hectares of land and forest – approximately 12 percent of the land area of Vietnam – were sprayed.
The Vietnamese who were exposed to the chemical have suffered from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Children and grandchildren of those exposed have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded. They may never grow back and if they do, it will take 50 to 200 years to regenerate. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles have become extinct, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, contributing to the warming of the planet and dislocation of crop and animal life.
via Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam | CommonDreams.org.
Poll: Most Israelis could live with a nuclear Iran
Poll: Most Israelis could live with a nuclear Iran - Haaretz -
Only one in five Israeli Jews believes a nuclear-armed Iran would try to destroy Israel and most see life continuing as normal should the Islamic Republic get the bomb, an opinion poll published on Sunday found.
The survey, commissioned by a Tel Aviv University think-tank, appeared to challenge the argument of successive Israeli governments that Iran must be denied the means to make atomic weapons lest it threaten Israel’s existence.
Asked how a nuclear-armed Iran would affect their lives, 80 percent of respondents said they expected no change. Eleven percent said they would consider emigrating and 9 percent said they would consider relocating inside Israel.
via Poll: Most Israelis could live with a nuclear Iran – Haaretz – Israel News.
Stay the Course
Stay the Course - - NYTimes.com
Don’t Give Up On Rescue That’s Pulled Us A Few Inches Back From Edge Of Abyss
Paul Krugman
The debate over economic policy has taken a predictable yet ominous turn: the crisis seems to be easing, and a chorus of critics is already demanding that the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration abandon their rescue efforts. For those who know their history, it’s déjà vu all over again — literally.
For this is the third time in history that a major economy has found itself in a liquidity trap, a situation in which interest-rate cuts, the conventional way to perk up the economy, have reached their limit. When this happens, unconventional measures are the only way to fight recession.
Yet such unconventional measures make the conventionally minded uncomfortable, and they keep pushing for a return to normalcy. In previous liquidity-trap episodes, policy makers gave in to these pressures far too soon, plunging the economy back into crisis. And if the critics have their way, we’ll do the same thing this time.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Stay the Course – NYTimes.com.
Iran&squo;s supreme leader orders investigation into election results
Iran’s supreme leader orders investigation into election results | Herald Sun, AU
IRAN’S supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered an investigation into claims of fraud in last week’s presidential election.
Ayatollah Khamenei told defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi at a meeting today to pursue his complaints over the election through legal means and settle the issue calmly, state television said.
It is a stunning turnaround for Iran’s most powerful figure, who previously welcomed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apparent landslide victory.
via Iran&squo;s supreme leader orders investigation into election results | Herald Sun.
Single Payer v. Public Option
Single Payer v. Public Option
Nick Skala was in a bit of shock.
In early June, he was invited to speak before the Progressive Caucus of the House of Representatives about single payer health care.
There are about 71 members of the House who belong to the Progressive Caucus — about a third of the Democratic Caucus.
Skala is a true believer in single payer — having spent four years with Physicians for a National Health Program.
So, yes of course, he would love to speak before the Progressive Caucus to explain why single payer was the only way to control costs and cover everyone.
And that Obama’s public option was bound to fail.
He sent his presentation ahead of time to Bill Goold, the executive director of the Progressive Caucus, and Darcy Burner, executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Foundation.
Both were not pleased with Skala.
“Bill Gould emailed me after reading my testimony and materials I was going to present to tell me that they were not acceptable and that there could be no comparison between single payer and the public option with side by side comparison,” Skala told Single Payer Action. “Darcy Burner told me that they would construe talking about the public option — even comparing it to single payer — as an attack on the members of the Progressive Caucus.”
“Now, I can’t see how honest discourse about whether or not a public option will work — especially when it comes from 16,000 doctors and the majority of nurses — as an attack on anybody who supports it. We see it as telling the truth.”
Despite Goold’s and Burner’s objections, on June 4, Skala went ahead and made his presentation to the caucus.
via Nick Skala: Single Payer v. Public Option « Single Payer Action.
Torturing Truth–Bi-Partisan Denial
Torturing Truth–Bi-Partisan Denial - by: Paul Rosenberg
Torture is neither new nor peripheral to American foreign policy, historian Alfred McCoy reminds us.
In 1972, fledgling historian Alfred McCoy published one of the most shocking exposés of an exposé-filled decade, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, which documented decades of cooperative relationships between the CIA and drug dealers, beginning with deals that allowed the almost-dead heroin trade to revive after WWII, and culminating in the role of the CIA in the drug trade surrounding the Vietnam War, which lead to the addiction of tens of thousands of US troops. The CIA tried-and failed-to have the book suppressed. A revised, updated and expanded version, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade was published in 2003.
One thing, at least, could be said in the CIA’s defense: McCoy never claimed that the CIA set out to promote the global drug trade. It was simply a byproduct of how it chose to “fight Communism.” But this could not be said about his subsequent investigation into the CIA’s role in developing torture techniques, the subject of his 2006 book, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror . The CIA’s development of novel torture techniques was intentional, deliberate, and took place over more than a decade at enormous cost, after which its methods were shared with authoritarian allies around the world.
McCoy previewed his findings in a 2004 article for TomDispatch, “The Hidden History of CIA Torture: America’s Road to Abu Ghraib”, an excerpt of which I’ll present on the flip. It’s safe to say that no critic has thought harder and studied more intently the hidden role and hidden costs of torture in modern American history.
via Open Left:: Torturing Truth–Bi-Partisan Denial.
Why NPR Refuses to Report on the Single Payer Movement
NPR Watch
Why NPR Refuses to Report on the Single Payer Movement … And What Should be Done About It
On June 10th the House of Representatives held the first congressional hearing on proposals for Single Payer Health Insurance. Amy Goodman highlighted the hearing on Democracy Now. But neither National Public Radio’s flagship news program (All Things Considered) nor its morning news program (Morning Edition) reported on the hearing. Instead, on June 11th, Morning Edition reported that President Obama is planning to conduct a town hall meeting on health care. With respect to the health insurance debate, what the President is planning to do (news via press release!) is apparently more news worthy than what the House of Representative had already done the day before.
I did a search on NPR’s web site. Results were slightly different for single payer and “single payer”. Here are the results:
“Single payer” search of all programs all time periods available:
*
157 hits
*
21 hits on single payer in 2009.
* 2009 hits: 1 hit on Talk of the Nation; 5 hits on Morning Edition ; 3 hits on NPR’s Health Blog; 3 hits on All Things Considered; 5 hits on Tell Me More; 1 hit on Fresh Air; 3 hits on News and Notes.
“Single payer” search of all programs all time periods available:
*
38 hits;
*
11 hits in 2009
*
2009 hits: 3 hits on All Things Considered; 3 hits on Morning Edition; 1 hit on NPR’s Health Blog; 1 hit on Talk of the Nation; 3 hits on Tell me More;
These stories mention single payer. I can find no NPR news reports or other shows which actually focused on single payer or on the movement to achieve it.
via Felice Pace: Why NPR Refuses to Report on the Single Payer Movement.
Reporters arrested, news sites shut down in Iran
Reporters arrested, news sites shut down in Iran
International press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders is calling on the international community not to recognize the results of Friday’s presidential election in Iran “because censorship and a crackdown on journalists are preventing a democratic electoral process.”
“Arrests of journalists and media censorship measures are growing as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ‘victory’ continues to be disputed,” the organization said in a statement.
The group cited a litany of apparent censorship measures taken since protests and riots gripped Teheran and other parts of the country in the wake of a surprising — and now doubtful — landslide victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
From the Reporters Without Borders statement:
via Raw Story » Reporters arrested, news sites shut down in Iran.
Foreign media say Iran blocking coverage of protests
Foreign media say Iran blocking coverage of protests
Several foreign news organisations complained Sunday that Iranian authorities were blocking their reporters from covering protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election.
German public television channels ZDF and ARD said their reporters were not allowed to broadcast their reports, while the BBC said the signals of its Persian services were being jammed from Iran.
The Dubai-based Arab news channel Al-Arabiya in Tehran was forbidden from working for a week and Dutch broadcaster Nederland 2 said its journalist and cameraman were arrested and ordered to leave the country.
Foreign media converged in Iran to cover Friday’s presidential election
via The Raw Story | Foreign media say Iran blocking coverage of protests.
In wake of mass protests, Iran cuts off cell phones, YouTube, Facebook
OPS: take note Kids – this is how it will happen here too.
In wake of mass protests, Iran cuts off cell phones, YouTube, Facebook
The main mobile telephone network in Iran was cut in the capital Tehran Saturday evening while popular Internet websites Facebook and YouTube also appeared to be blocked, correspondents said.
The communication cuts came after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a landslide re-election victory, sparking rioting in the streets by opposition supporters who claimed the result had been rigged.
The mobile phone network stopped working at 10:00 pm (1730 GMT), just before Ahmadinejad went on television to declare the election a “great victory” and even as baton-wielding police were clashing with protestors in the streets of Tehran, according to witnesses.
Iran has two national networks run by state-owned MCI (Telecommunication Company of Iran) and the private firm Irancell.
via Raw Story » In wake of mass protests, Iran cuts off cell phones, YouTube, Facebook.
NYC officials duped into approving first gay marriage
NYC officials duped into approving first gay marriage
New York City’s marriage-licensing officials were either asleep at the switch or chose to make a profound political statement when they granted a marriage licence late last month to two men.
In a New York Post exclusive, “Hakim Nelson and Jason Stenson married on May 26 with nary a raised eyebrow among the oblivious city bureaucrats who not only OK’d the marriage license, but conducted the ceremony, despite gay marriage being illegal in the state.”
The Post notes that one half of the blissfully married duo arrived for their wedding ceremony in a dress, which was perhaps enough to fool city officials.
“Is our system 100 percent foolproof? What system is? We do the best job we can,” an unnamed source told the tabloid. ”If someone is trying to willfully sneak through, we try to stop it. But you have instances of females [who] have male names and vice versa. You’ve heard of a boy named Sue, right?”
via Raw Story » NYC officials duped into approving first gay marriage.
Dirty Equipment May Have Exposed 10,000 Veterans To HIV, Other Infections
Hearing to air VA mistakes with hospital equipment 
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A congressional panel is pressing the Department of Veterans Affairs to disclose on Tuesday whether non-sterile equipment that may have exposed 10,000 veterans to HIV and other infections was isolated to three Southeast hospitals or is part of a wider problem.
“Somebody is going to have to take responsibility,” said U.S. Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs’ oversight and investigation subcommittee.
The subcommittee scheduled Tuesday’s hearing in Washington to discuss mistakes involving endoscopic equipment used for colonoscopies and other procedures at its hospitals in Miami, Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Augusta, Ga. with top agency officials and to receive a yet-unreleased report by the VA’s inspector general.
Roe said he had not yet seen the report but was told in a briefing Friday that the VA’s inspector general conducted a random check on 42 VA locations.
via Hearing to air VA mistakes with hospital equipment.
Kyl: Who cares if Europe doesn’t like Guantanamo, they didn’t like when we invaded Iraq either.
Kyl: Who cares if Europe doesn’t like Guantanamo, they didn’t like when we invaded Iraq either.
On CSPAN’s Newsmakers today, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) attacked President Obama’s efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. “The real question is why do it and the only answer is, ‘well, it’s a symbol,’” said Kyl, adding that “the terrorists don’t need Guantanamo to figure out that they don’t like the United States.” When the host noted that Guantanamo “has been an issue in Europe, among leaders, our allies,” Kyl replied, “big deal.” “They didn’t like the fact that we invaded Iraq and replaced Saddam Hussein either.” Watch it:
CIA Director says Cheney sounds like he is ‘wishing that this country would be attacked again.’
CIA Director says Cheney sounds like he is ‘wishing that this country would be attacked again.’
cheney1In her profile of CIA Director Leon Panetta in this week’s New Yorker, Jane Mayer reports that Panetta believes former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism almost suggests “he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again”:
Panetta, pouring a cup of coffee, responded to Cheney’s speech with surprising candor. “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue,” he told me. “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”
Hatch bristles over criticisms that he’s at fault for problems of the Bush years: ‘Don’t you believe that B.S.’
Hatch bristles over criticisms that he’s at fault for problems of the Bush years: ‘Don’t you believe that B.S.’ 
hatchbush Yesterday at Utah’s GOP convention, the state’s two U.S. senators — Orrin Hatch (R) and Bob Bennett (R) received only “polite receptions,” compared to the boisterous applause received by some of the state’s representatives. From the Deseret News:
Hatch, at one point in his speech, appeared upset when some delegates applauded as a way of blaming national Republicans, himself included, for the deficit and other problems of the Bush years.
“Don’t you believe that B.S.,” Hatch said loudly. But some of the 1,800 delegates clearly did.
Rebuilding healthcare without the middlemen
Rebuilding healthcare without the middlemen - The Boston Globe
PRESIDENT OBAMA says that if healthcare is not reformed this year, “we’re not going to get it done.” His Council of Economic Advisers warns that healthcare expenditures, currently 18 percent of gross domestic product, will nearly double to 34 percent by 2040 unless costs are contained. The number of uninsured people in the United States would expand from its current 46 million to 72 million by 2040. “The American healthcare system is on an unsustainable path,” the council said. “Expenditures as a share of GDP are already substantially higher than in other developed countries . . . This growth threatens to have a devastating impact.”
Even if Congress responds to Obama’s alarm, it is doubtful reform will put us on par with other developed countries. Obama has already taken a single-payer system off the table, despite repeatedly acknowledging the clear benefits of eliminating the administrative costs of middlemen insurance companies. In a May town hall in New Mexico, he said to applause, “If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense. That’s the kind of system you have in most industrialized countries around the world.”
via Rebuilding healthcare without the middlemen – The Boston Globe.
USA Today report: Workers face worst conditions since the Great Depression
USA Today report: Workers face worst conditions since the Great Depression
Even as US unemployment rolls soar to their highest levels in post-war history, employed workers face the worst conditions since the Great Depression, according to a front-page article in Friday’s USA Today.
Based on its analysis of employment data, the newspaper reports that pay cuts, reduced hours, furloughs and involuntary part-time work have driven the working class back to conditions not seen since the 1930s.
USA Today writes that in the first quarter of 2009, US businesses cut total wages at a staggering 6.2 percent annual rate. It notes that paychecks are being further slashed by reduced hours of work. The employed worked fewer hours in May—an average of just 33.1 hours a week—than at any time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records in 1964.
Part-time labor, the report continues, is at an all-time high, and overtime at a record low. A record 9 million people want full-time work but can find only part-time positions.
via USA Today report: Workers face worst conditions since the Great Depression.
Small Banks, Radical Vision :: How Local Banks Can Change the World, One Investment at a Time
Small Banks, Radical Vision
Local banks can change the world, one neighborly investment at a time.
William Spademan is a radical banker. In an era when Wall Street executives frequent talk shows to defend lavish bonuses “earned” through reckless speculation, Spademan has been working to create a new kind of bank that would empower communities instead of enriching a powerful few.
“If you give any community the ability to create and control money, [it] can decide for itself what to invest in—[and] what needs to be done,” Spademan says.
After spending decades in the nonprofit world, Spademan found himself reluctantly turning to the realm of banking in an effort to mitigate economic inequality and assuage poverty.
“I was kind of repulsed by the whole idea of economics and money,” Spademan says. His new banking model is informed by years of community activism. Spademan founded the Center for Peace and Justice in Brunswick, Maine, in the late 1980s and continues to operate a group that provides financial support to nonprofit organizations.
via Small Banks, Radical Vision :: How Local Banks Can Change the World, One Investment at a Time.
Finding the best composter on the market.
Soil YourselfThe search for the best composter on the market.
I recently moved back to the United States after a long stint in Berlin, and I’ve been suffering the effects of Euro nostalgia ever since. I miss the 1-yard-tall Hefeweizens, the civilized city biking, and the oddball 1980s haircuts. But what I find myself pining away for most regularly is how Berliners handle garbage. That’s right: garbage. In the German capital, sanitation goes far beyond the old trash-recycling binary—the city also collects organic matter (excluding meat) in “bio” bins and carts them away weekly for composting.
Although municipal authorities in San Francisco and Minnesota collect organic food waste, most U.S. cities recycle paper, plastic, glass, and metals, at most. I live in superliberal New Haven, Conn., where no politician would dare to cut city recycling, and even we don’t compost. If I want to go greener in the United States, that effort will be strictly DIY.
I resent having to do on my own what any green-minded city should do for me. But this year, urbanites across the States are hitting the mud patch: Michelle Obama’s mucking around her organic garden, and it’s a big eat-at-home, grow-your-own year for budget-conscious entertainers. So I’m hopping on the bandwagon by shopping for a no-fuss, urban-friendly composter.
via Finding the best composter on the market. – By Jude Stewart – Slate Magazine.
Venezuela: Why We Banned Coke Zero
Venezuela: Why We Banned Coke Zero
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s Health Ministry said Friday it banned sales of Coca-Cola Zero because the company failed to declare that the no-calorie soft drink uses an artificial sweetener allegedly harmful to health.
Health officials said tests show the cola contains sodium cyclamate. Coca-Cola Co. disputes that, saying the product sold in Venezuela uses different artificial sweeteners, Acesulfame-K and Aspartame.
Cyclamate is not prohibited in Venezuela. But the ministry said the company failed to report sodium cyclamate as an ingredient in Coca-Cola Zero when it received its initial health permit to begin selling the drink in April.
via Venezuela: Why We Banned Coke Zero.
Obama To Roll Out Vast Overhaul Of System That Governs Wall Street, Banks
Obama To Roll Out Vast Overhaul Of System That Governs Wall Street, Banks
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is ready to roll out an overhaul of the intricate rules and systems that govern America’s troubled financial institutions, proposing the most ambitious revision since the Great Depression.
The goal is to prevent a recurrence of the economic crisis that erupted in the United States and exploded last fall with devastating consequences still reverberating around the world.
Unlike the government’s temporary ownership stake in automakers and major financial companies, the regulatory changes set to be announced Wednesday are designed to be permanent. They could result in a major realignment of power and authority among government agencies that set the rules for banking, lending and investing and touch American lives through daily transactions, from credit cards to mortgages and mutual funds.
via Obama To Roll Out Vast Overhaul Of System That Governs Wall Street, Banks.
The Secret To Getting What You Want
The Secret To Getting What You Want
One of the interesting things about yoga is you can see most everything about a person by the way they practice. When you become aware of this fun psychoanalytic fact, you can start learning all kinds of useful things about yourself. You have the ability to change your practice and your life.
We all know that the body and mind are connected. But when we really take the time to reflect on how much they are in sync, we start to understand that they’re actually the same. Have you ever gotten a headache from stress and thought about how that happened? Maybe you got stuck in the middle of a frustrating situation. You had a thought that sparked a series of thoughts that developed into stress and tension. That tension had no place to release and gave you a headache. If we can give ourselves headaches with our thoughts what else can we do?
The power of being a positive person is an essential tool that everyone should develop. Good actors have the ability to trick their brains and nervous systems to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Imagination is their preparation and kick-start. Once they have that going their body is able to respond naturally. The fun part is that your body doesn’t know you’re imagining. Your nervous system isn’t able to differentiate whether you are an actor in a scene fighting with your boyfriend, or having the time of your life. You systems all align together with your thoughts. In a way, we can use imagination to fake it ’til we make it. Our perception of feelings, including pain, pleasure, anxiety, complacency, is all a choice. We can choose to go along with what we feel if that’s what we want, or choose to amend our thoughts and direct ourselves in a way that we want.
via Tara Stiles: The Secret To Getting What You Want.
Projection: It’ll be years before jobs return to much of U.S.
Projection: It’ll be years before jobs return to much of U.S. | McClatchy
WASHINGTON — Unlike the labor market collapse that killed millions of U.S. jobs in a matter of months, the nation’s return to peak employment will not be nearly as uniform nor as swift.
While signs indicate that the worst of the recession may be over, only six metropolitan areas across the country are expected to regain their pre-recession employment levels by the end of 2009, according to projections from IHS Global Insight, a leading economic forecaster.
The areas poised for a jobs rebound later this year are: Anchorage, Alaska; Champaign-Urbana, Ill.; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Columbia, Mo.; Laredo, Texas; and the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux areas of Louisiana.
Only five areas are expected to see a similar jobs recovery in 2010: Las Cruces, N.M. and El Paso, San Antonio and the McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr and Austin-Round Rock areas of Texas.
Most of the country — 286 o
via Projection: It’ll be years before jobs return to much of U.S. | McClatchy.
‘Save our CEOs’ Teaser for Michael Moore’s New Film Hits Theaters!
At select theaters in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. audiences were treated to this surprise teaser for Mike’s new film. Since we didn’t already give the CEOs enough, ushers entered the theaters with collection jars and some audience members actually pitched in!
YouTube – ‘Save our CEOs’ Teaser for Michael Moore’s New Film Hits Theaters!.
Israeli Prime Minister Calls For Creation Of Limited Palestinian State
Netanyahu Peace Speech: Israeli Prime Minister Appeals To Arab Leaders For Peace
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sunday called for creation of a limited Palestinian state for the first time, saying it would have to be disarmed.
Netanyahu made the call during a major policy speech about his Mideast peacemaking intentions.
“In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel,” he said.
“If we get this guarantee for demilitarization and necessary security arrangements for Israel, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, we will be willing in a real peace agreement to reach a solution of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state,” he said.
Up to now Netanyahu has resisted endorsing the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a Mideast peace settlement, drawing intense pressure from the administration of President Barack Obama.
via Netanyahu Peace Speech: Israeli Prime Minister Appeals To Arab Leaders For Peace.
Resignation of David M. Walker, the most important economic indicator of things to come: The Fall of Rome
Resignation of David M. Walker, the most important economic indicator of things to come: The Fall of Rome
Since the global financial meltdown seems to be the main concern with our corporate world, let’s begin with this topic.
David M. Walker and the Fall of Rome
There have been a few major economic events in the last few years, but I consider the resignation, in March 2008, of David M. Walker from his commission of Comptroller General of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office to be the harbinger of what is to come.
Walker resigned 5 years before the end of his 15-year term expired. His reasons for resigning were that he was limited to what he could do and that the United States was in danger of collapsing in much the same manner as the Roman Empire.
“Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were ‘striking similarities’ between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including ‘declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government’.”
For months before his resignation he traveled the country educating Americans about the financial crisis and the pending bankruptcy of the United States.
60 Minutes segment with David Walker originally broadcast on March 4, 2007
video at link
via Chycho.com – Analysis and discussion about the world we live in..
The Queen installs a vegetable patch at Buckingham Palace
The Queen installs a vegetable patch at Buckingham Palace - Telegraph
The Queen has joined the “grow your own” revolution after creating a vegetable plot at Buckingham Palace.
For the first time since the Second World War vegetables are being grown in the Palace’s grounds alongside ornamental plants.
The move comes amid a surge in demand from people up and down the country to have their own allotment to grow their own food during the recession.
via The Queen installs a vegetable patch at Buckingham Palace – Telegraph.
Expert Advice On Dealing With A Prior Administration’s Use of Torture
Expert Advice On Dealing With A Prior Administration’s Use of Torture 
By JOHN W. DEAN
No official announcement has been made that the Obama Administration is not going to prosecute anyone – other than a few low-level soldiers who photographed themselves and already have been prosecuted – for torturing detainees in our so-called war on terror. But it has become clear that President Obama’s announced desire to look forward, not backward, embodies such a decision.
Still, we must all hope that the Obama Administration makes more than a non-decision type of decision, and does not merely resolve the matter by silence and inaction. There are, in fact, precedents, and studies, that illuminate the grave problems confronting a democracy in making a choice when faced with the options of prosecuting and punishing versus forgiving and forgetting. I discovered this material some years ago when studying authoritarian governance.
The Insights of Samuel P. Huntington
I provided evidence in my recent book Conservatives Without Conscience that the Bush/Cheney presidency was the most authoritarian in American history. When doing research for that book, I read a work by the late Samuel P. Huntington, the highly- regarded Harvard political scientist and former president of the American Political Science Association. More specifically, I was interested in Professor Huntington’s survey of the transition to democracy, during the mid-1970s through the 1980s, of some thirty countries that had previously been under authoritarian rule, which Huntington wrote about in The Third Wave: Democratization In the Late Twentieth Century.
via Expert Advice On Dealing With A Prior Administration’s Use of Torture.
Big Pharma Concocts First Swine Flu Vaccine
Big Pharma Concocts First Swine Flu Vaccine
It looks like governments around the world will either force these vaccinations on the public or launch a massive propaganda campaign to trick you into submitting to a jab. If they attempt to force these untested and essentially experimental vaccinations on you, cite the Nuremberg Code, which states: “The voluntary consent of the human subject is essential.” No experimental vaccine should be “conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur, except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as a subjects.” In addition to the “experimental physicians” submitting to their own toxins, Obama, every member of Congress, the CEOs of the drug companies, all members of WHO and the United Nations, all members of the CFR and Bilderberg, etc., should submit to a jab. A third party should be on hand to make sure these folks do not get a saline injection instead of the vaccine:
Swiss drugs giant Novartis has completed a first batch of swine flu vaccine for pre-clinical trials and aims to make a version available from September, the company said.
“Novartis has successfully completed the production of the first batch of influenza A(H1N1) vaccine, weeks ahead of expectations,” the company said. The 10-litre batch “will be used for pre-clinical evaluation and testing and is also being considered for use in clinical trials”.
Novartis hopes to start clinical trials in July and “expects licensure in the fall (September to November) of 2009″, it said. It added that “more than 30 governments have made requests to Novartis to supply them with influenza A(H1N1) vaccine ingredients.”
The company used cell-based technology to produce the vaccine, a faster method than the traditional technology that uses eggs, according to Novartis. (AFP, June12, 2009)
via Big Pharma Concocts First Swine Flu Vaccine.
How long can the Dollar Last as the World’s Reserve Currency?
How long can the Dollar Last as the World’s Reserve Currency? – by Bob Chapman
The big question is how long can the dollar last as the world’s reserve currency? Needless to say, that is not an easy question to answer. We recently called the top on the dollar at 89.50 on the USDX. The USDX is six currencies versus the dollar on a weighted basis. More than a year ago the dollar hit a low on the USDX at 71.18. A phenomenal rally ensued from that level expedited by de-leveraging and the closing out positions within the carry trade. A good example of the carry trade was when a bank in NYC borrowed yen. At ½% interest, sold the yen for dollars and bought dollar denominated securities.
All of that is now history as the dollar comes under increasing pressure. We believe the dollar could test 71.18 this year. We also believe the dollar could break down to 40 to 55 over the next few years. The collapse of the dollar is certain. The Treasury and the Fed have committed the American taxpayer to $13.8 trillion of debt and before the dollar goes where it is ultimately going that figure could reach $30 trillion.
In modern times such fiscal and monetary irresponsibility is unparalleled. This abdication of moral responsibility has already begun the process of dollar deterioration and rising interest rates. The result will soon be hyperinflation.
The collapse may be disastrous for all countries, but it is going to be equally disastrous for the corrupt who have brought us to this sad situation. Hopefully as painful as it will be it could create many new opportunities for some. One thing we see as certain is that the elitists will find themselves targets of civil and criminal charges and targets of contempt and derision. The new world order they so arrogantly and confidentially predicted with one world government will again have been a failure.
via How long can the Dollar Last as the World’s Reserve Currency?.
De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire
De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire
The Yekaterinburg Turning Point
by Prof. Michael Hudson
The city of Yakaterinburg, Russia’s largest east of the Urals, may become known not only as the death place of the tsars but of American hegemony too – and not only where US U-2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, but where the US-centered international financial order was brought to ground.
Challenging America will be the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China).
The attendees have assured American diplomats that dismantling the US financial and military empire is not their aim. They simply want to discuss mutual aid – but in a way that has no role for the United States, NATO or the US dollar as a vehicle for trade. US diplomats may well ask what this really means, if not a move to make US hegemony obsolete. That is what a multipolar world means, after all. For starters, in 2005 the SCO asked Washington to set a timeline to withdraw from its military bases in Central Asia. Two years later the SCO countries formally aligned themselves with the former CIS republics belonging to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), established in 2002 as a counterweight to NATO.
via De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire.
US moves to spur bank buy-outs
US moves to spur bank buy-outs – FT.com
New rules eyed for private equity
US financial regulators are drawing up new rules to facilitate private equity acquisitions of troubled banks in an effort to unlock tens of billions of dollars that could be deployed to recapitalise ailing lenders.
People close to the situation said the plan, which has yet to be finalised and could still change, might require private equity companies to inject substantial capital into troubled lenders and agree not to sell them for at least two years.
via FT.com / US / Economy & Fed – US moves to spur bank buy-outs.
N Korea responds to UN with nuclear threats
N Korea responds to UN with nuclear threats - FT.com
Will ‘weaponise all plutonium’
North Korea has vowed a military response to any US-led attempts to isolate it, arguing that fresh United Nations sanctions introduced on Friday cannot halt its nuclear missile programme.
The communist state on Saturday said it would weaponise all plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods and that it would start to enrich uranium, as it had threatened to in April.
The UN Security Council on Friday passed a raft of fresh sanctions against Pyongyang, which riled the international community by testing a nuclear bomb last month and firing a long-range missile over Japan in April. Under resolution 1874, the 15-member council imposed financial embargoes, limits on arms trade and intrusive searches of North Korean ships suspected of busting sanctions.
“This is yet another vile product of the US-led offensive of international pressure aimed at undermining the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s ideology and the system chosen by its people by disarming the DPRK and suffocating its economy,” North Korea’s foreign ministry said
via FT.com / Asia-Pacific – N Korea responds to UN with nuclear threats.
Bad science: cocaine study that got up the nose of the US
Cocaine study that got up the nose of the US | The Guardian
“Health problems from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use,…”
In areas of moral and political conflict people will always behave badly with evidence, so the war on drugs is a consistent source of entertainment. We have already seen how cannabis being “25 times stronger” was a fantasy, how drugs-related deaths were quietly dropped from the measures for drugs policy, and how a trivial pile of poppies was presented by the government as a serious dent in the Taliban’s heroin revenue.
The Commons home affairs select committee is looking at the best way to deal with cocaine. You may wonder why they’re bothering. When the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs looked at the evidence on the reclassification of cannabis it was ignored. When Professor David Nutt, the new head of the advisory council, wrote a scientific paper on the relatively modest risks of MDMA (the active ingredient in the club drug ecstasy) he was attacked by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith .
In the case of cocaine there is an even more striking precedent for evidence being ignored: the World Health Organisation (WHO) conducted what is probably the largest ever study of global use. In March 1995 they released a briefing kit which summarised their conclusions, with some tantalising bullet points.
All quiet on the Westminster front
All quiet on the Westminster front
The Home Office has refused to release data on the use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 against photographers. The news comes as BJP, as part of its campaign to protect photographers’ rights, files more than 46 new Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover where photography can be challenged in England and Wales. Olivier Laurent reports
The Home Office has rejected a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the BJP regarding the disclosure of the list of all areas where police officers are authorised to stop-and-search photographers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
The controversial Act of Parliament, put into force in 2001, allows Chief Constables to request authorisation from the Home Secretary to define an area in which any constable in uniform is able to stop and search any person or vehicle for the prevention of acts of terrorism. The authorisation, which can be given orally, must be renewed every 28 days and only covers the areas specified in the Chief Constables’ requests.
While it is common knowledge that the entire City of London, at the behest of the Metropolitan Police, is covered by the legislation, it remains unclear which other areas in England and Wales have requested the stop-and-search powers.
via British Journal of Photography – All quiet on the Westminster front.
America’s socialism for the rich
America’s socialism for the rich – guardian.co.uk
Joseph Stiglitz
The US has a huge corporate safety net, allowing the banks to gamble with impunity, but offers little to struggling individuals
With all the talk of “green shoots” of economic recovery, America’s banks are pushing back on efforts to regulate them. While politicians talk about their commitment to regulatory reform to prevent a recurrence of the crisis, this is one area where the devil really is in the details – and the banks will muster what muscle they have left to ensure that they have ample room to continue as they have in the past.
The old system worked well for the bankers (if not for their shareholders), so why should they embrace change? Indeed, the efforts to rescue them devoted so little thought to the kind of post-crisis financial system we want that we will end up with a banking system that is less competitive, with the large banks that were too big too fail even larger.
It has long been recognised that those America’s banks that are too big to fail are also too big to be managed. That is one reason that the performance of several of them has been so dismal. Because government provides deposit insurance, it plays a large role in restructuring (unlike other sectors). Normally, when a bank fails, the government engineers a financial restructuring; if it has to put in money, it, of course, gains a stake in the future. Officials know that if they wait too long, zombie or near zombie banks – with little or no net worth, but treated as if they were viable institutions – are likely to “gamble on resurrection”. If they take big bets and win, they walk away with the proceeds; if they fail, the government picks up the tab.
via America’s socialism for the rich | Joseph Stiglitz | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
U.N. warns of catastrophe as hungry people top one billion
U.N. warns of catastrophe as hungry people top one billion
ROME (Reuters) – High food prices have pushed another 105 million people into hunger in the first half of 2009, the head of the U.N. World Food Programme said on Friday, raising the total number of hungry people to over 1 billion.
Urging rich nations at a meeting of G8 development ministers not to cut back on aid, Josette Sheeran said the world faced a human catastrophe as more people struggle to eat a decent meal.
“This year we are clocking in on average four million new hungry people a week, urgently hungry,” Sheeran told Reuters.
“For the first six months of this year, 105 million people have been added,” she said, citing figures to be released by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization next week that will raise the total number of undernourished people to over 1 billion.
In 2008, FAO said the world’s hungry numbered 963 million.
via U.N. warns of catastrophe as hungry people top one billion | International | Reuters.
GOP Headed For Minority Status
For Republicans, the Forces Aren’t With Them - washingtonpost.com
There has been much chatter about who now speaks for the Republican Party, and whether the GOP has a message or an agenda to combat President Obama’s popularity. Those questions are important to the party’s future, but the most serious problem remains the deeper demographic and political forces at work in the country.
For the past few months, political analysts and demographers have been poring over the results of the 2008 election and comparing them with presidential results from the past two decades. From whatever angle of their approach — age, race, economic status, geography — they have come to a remarkably similar conclusion. Almost all indicators are pressing the Republicans into minority status.
via The Take: GOP Comeback Limited by Demographics, Political Forces – washingtonpost.com.
Britain to unveil Iraq inquiry this week: reports
Britain to unveil Iraq inquiry this week: reports – The Raw Story |
The British government will announce an inquiry into the war in Iraq this week, media reported.
The move is expected to be confirmed in a statement to parliament, the Observer newspaper and Press Association domestic news wire said, quoting unnamed sources. It will probably come as early as Tuesday, the Observer said.
The probe is set to be announced days after Prime Minister Gordon Brown fended off a crisis which threatened his leadership prompted by historically bad results in European and local election results on June 4.
A new You Gov/Sunday Times poll gave Brown’s ruling Labour party 24 percent support compared to 40 percent for the main opposition Conservatives led by David Cameron.
The inquiry will likely examine the circumstances leading up to Britain’s decision under Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair to join the US-led invasion in March 2003, and its aftermath.
via The Raw Story | Britain to unveil Iraq inquiry this week: reports.
Minuteman leader arrested for double homicide
Minuteman leader arrested for double homicide
The leader of the Minuteman American Defense group is in an Arizona jail Saturday following his arrest on suspicion of the murders of Raul Flores, 29, and Brisenia Flores, 8, during a home invasion.
From NBC News 4 HD in Arizona:
Three people have been arrested in connection with last months deadly double homicide in Arivaca that left a nine-year-old and her father dead. One of the people arrested for the homicide is the National Executive Director of the Minuteman American Defense group (M.A.D.), a group known for patrolling the border, and is dedicated to “Defending America’s Borders” according to their website – http://minutemenamericandefense.org/
Jason Eugene Bush, 38, Shawna Forde, 42 and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 43, were all taken into custody and charged in connection with the murders of 29-year-old Raul Flores and 8-year-old Brisenia Flores. Both were killed during an alleged home invasion.
According to authorities, Bush, Forde, and Gaxiola broke into the home of the Flores family just after midnight on May 30th. At the time, the mother, father and daughter were home. The invaders reportedly shot the three members of the Flores family, killing the father, Raul, and the daughter, Brisenia. The invaders then left the scene.
The NBC affiliate goes on to say that the family’s mother survived the attack and even fired back when the assailants returned. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department has settled on Bush as the shooter in all three cases.
via The Raw Story » Minuteman leader arrested for double homicide.
Is TV Worth the Transition?
Is TV Worth the Transition? | CommonDreams.org
by Ralph Nader
At twelve noon on June 12, 2009, the end of analog television’s era was also when I let my set go dark. The last declaration I saw was that there were about three million of us disconnected but, no worry, we can still order the “converter box” to bring all those programs back to our living rooms. Going dark on tv was not that hard-at least for a while. My recent memories had too many “yuks” and too few “harks”.
President John F. Kennedy’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, shocked a broadcast industry audience when he called television a “vast wasteland”. That was in 1961!
Had he not mellowed as a corporate lawyer with a lucrative practice, what would Newton Minow say today? What is the superlative of “vast wasteland”?
Television today-over the air and cable-with the usual exceptions, could empty the dictionary of disparaging adjectives. Some times slots-such as daily afternoon talk-entertainment shows-are so bad, so sadomasochistic and exploitive, that they escape the media critics. Why would Tom Shales-the insightful Washington Post critic who writes like a dream-want to apply his talented eye to shows that invoke the Latin phrase “res ipsa louitur”: the thing speaks for itself?
via Is TV Worth the Transition? | CommonDreams.org.
Progressive Democrats We Can Believe In
Video at link
Progressive Democrats We Can Believe In | CommonDreams.org
by Robert Naiman
Can Jane Hamsher’s internet army teach Rahm Emmanuel and Timothy Geithner a lesson about accepting the input of progressive Democrats? That would be change I could believe in. Here she makes the case against progressive Democrats caving in to leadership pressure that they vote for the War/IMF Supplemental:
Here’s the lesson I want Rahm Emmanuel and Timothy Geithner to learn. To paraphrase another President from Illinois: you can piss on all of the progressive Democrats some of the time, and some of the progressive Democrats all of the time, but you cannot piss on all of the progressive Democrats, all of the time.
What makes the present situation particularly outrageous is this: the White House and the House leadership now want progressive Democrats in the House to abandon their constituents, their commitments, and their principles and vote for the War/IMF supplemental. But when progressive Democrats tried to have input into the process earlier, they were locked out by the leadership, on orders from the White House and Treasury.
via Progressive Democrats We Can Believe In | CommonDreams.org.
The Greenhorns trailer
The Greenhorns is a documentary film about young farmers.
YouTube – The Greenhorns trailer.
Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns?
Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns? | CommonDreams.org
by Bill Moyers & Michael Winship
You know by now that in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite named James W. von Brunn allegedly walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle and killed security guard Stephen T. Johns before being brought down himself. He’s 88 years old, with a long record of hatred and paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati and a Global Zionist state. How bitter the bile that has curdled for so many decades.
You will know, too, of the recent killing, while ushering at his local church, of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country still performing late term abortions. Sadly, this case was proof that fatal violence works. His family has announced that his Wichita, Kansas, clinic will not be reopened.
You may be less familiar with the June 1st shootings in an army recruiting office in Little Rock that killed one soldier and wounded another. The suspect in question is an African-American Muslim convert who says he acted in retaliation for US military activity in the Middle East.
via Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns? | CommonDreams.org.
Option ARMs Next Wave of Foreclosures
Option ARMs Next Wave of Foreclosures
The economy is facing down a $750 billion problem that is still getting worse.
During the housing boom of the past few years new homebuyers were increasingly drawn to option adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). These offered incredibly low monthly rates which were promised to stay down if market conditions continued unchanged.
If the stock market had never collapsed, if manufacturing output and employment had not stagnated, if the economy had continued its artificial growth these ARMs would still be affordable for most consumers. Unfortunately, after a year of violent market corrections the ARM industry is on its heels.
According to Bloomberg News more than $750 billion worth of option ARMs were signed from 2004 to 2008. That means the economy is facing down a $750 billion problem that is still getting worse. People whose monthly payments had been as low as $100 are now looking at paying twenty or thirty times that amount when their option rates adjust in the next few years.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Rules of Disengagement: What You Can Do End Illegal Wars
Rules of Disengagement: What You Can Do End Illegal Wars
By Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd,
The authors of a new book share the success stories of war resisters and ways soldiers and citizens can use their rights to end the wars of today.
The continuing occupation of Iraq and the growing war in Afghanistan are leaving permanent physical and emotional scars on a whole generation of soldiers. Not since Vietnam have so many GI’s objected to a war, and never have military families spoken out so strongly for withdrawal. This new book comes to the aid of distressed military personnel and their families. It examines the reasons men and women in the military have disobeyed orders and resisted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With a practical as well as theoretical focus, this book discusses what resisters have done, and what readers can do, to help end illegal orders and wars. It also examines race and sex discrimination in the military, including the epidemics of rape, sexual assault, and suicide in the military, as well as inadequate health care for service members. It examines the dehumanization of soldiers and civilians, and the ways in which military training promotes racial and sexual violence.
via Rules of Disengagement: What You Can Do End Illegal Wars | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
Take Action This Weekend: Urge Congress to Vote “No” on the War Supplemental
Video at link
Take Action This Weekend: Urge Congress to Vote “No” on the War Supplemental
Want to know what $96.7 billion more in wartime spending will go toward?
Want to know what 21,000 more US troops and $96.7 billion more in wartime spending will go toward? Gen. Petraeus says insurgent attacks in Afghanistan are at their highest level since 2001; there were 400 attacks in the last week alone. Both Generals Petraeus and McChrystal expressed the desire to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, but how can they possibly achieve that lofty goal with more troops on the ground? It stands to reason that more troops will mean more incidents of violence, increasing calls for more US airstrikes, which in turn will mean more civilian casualties.
Fortunately, there’s a chance to defeat the war supplemental and you can even take action this weekend. Here’s what FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher recommends:
via Take Action This Weekend: Urge Congress to Vote “No” on the War Supplemental | World | AlterNet.
Congress Finally Gets Tough on Food Safety
Congress Finally Gets Tough on Food Safety
Every few months, it seems, a new food-contamination scandal grips the nation, playing out in the same troubling way. Someone dies of a food-borne infection with a scary Latin name. The government recalls a dinner-table staple and traces its contamination to dirty irrigation water or a processing plant. Everything returns to normal until the next case of killer spinach or poisoned peanuts stalks the nation.
Despite the toll – 5,000 deaths and 325,000 hospitalizations a year – Congress has typically been unwilling to strengthen controls on the growing, manufacturing and handling of food in the face of powerful industry resistance. But as profits and consumer confidence have plummeted with each new outbreak, the political climate has changed – so much so that earlier this week, a House panel reached unusual bipartisan consensus on the most sweeping reform of the food-safety system in at least 50 years.
The bill gives the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broad new powers to regulate produce at the farm level and review corporate records on activities ranging from food-processing to pathogen-testing. Inspections that now occur an average of once every 10 years would take place as often as once every six months for certain items. Foreign governments whose companies send high-risk products to the U.S., like seafood from China, would be required to certify that those exports comply with U.S. health standards. (See pictures of urban farms.)
via Congress Finally Gets Tough on Food Safety – Yahoo! News.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
