by Margot Roosevelt in the Los Angeles Times: An effort by a handful of UC Berkeley scientists to reexamine temperature data underlying global warming research has landed in the center of a national political debate over government regulation. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study is led by… Continue reading →
Please see this short debate on Democracy Now!. A plague on both your houses! Just put the emphasis, the scientific research, the funding toward solar and wind and other sustainable! Continue reading →
Your tax dollars at work Trillions for Iraq and Afghanistan Domestic spending freeze How is the war economy working for you? by Chris Hedges in truthdig: Power does not rest with the electorate. It does not reside with either of the two major political parties. It is not represented by the press. It… Continue reading →
by Stephen Lerner in The Nation: “Beck, right-wingers and Wall Street sympathizers went ballistic because they knew the ideas I talked about are far from being a secret leftist conspiracy; in fact, they’re in sync with the thinking of most Americans. In my talk, I raised a very simple yet powerful… Continue reading →
by Allison Kilkenny for The Nation: Corporate tax dodging has proven to be an incredibly unifying issue, one that actually unites Republicans, Independents and Democrats. Even papa bear Bill O’Reilly recently teed off on GE, which didn’t pay any taxes in 2010 despite making a whopping $14 billion in… Continue reading →
The Kill Team Here’s what’s being done in your name. (Warning! The pictures are disturbing! Viewer discretion is advised.) War crime files and Death zone and Motorcycle kill Continue reading →
From Democracy Now!: One of the worst things about executing an innocent prisoner, exonerated by DNA and recanting witnesses, is that the actual perpetrator is free and might do it again. More than anything else, this makes capital punishment an example of the original, primitive, barbaric scapegoat… Continue reading →
by Philip Giraldi for The American Conservative (never let it be said that I never cite conservative sources): The attack on the USS Liberty by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, has almost faded from memory, but new evidence suggests that the White House might actually have had… Continue reading →
by Mark Hertsgaard for The Nation: “If anything demonstrates the blind spots in Obama’s oft-stated support for clean energy—and the nation’s need for a bold alternative vision—it is his response to the Fukushima crisis, which at press time had made tap water in Tokyo, nearly 200 miles away, unsafe… Continue reading →
by Geoffrey Redick for the Bob Edwards Show, an interview with Izzeldin Abuelaish, When three of Abuelaish’s daughters were killed in the Gaza War, he looked deep within himself, and found no hatred, only a desire for peace and understanding. That reaction is what makes Abuelaish a unique voice, and… Continue reading →
From Democracy Now!: As many as half-a-million protesters marched in London Saturday to protest Britain’s deepest cuts to public spending since World War II. The protests come after officials estimated corporate taxes would be reduced, even as the government tackles a $235 billion deficit and plans… Continue reading →
by T. Christian Miller and Daniel Zwerdling for ProPublica: More than 2 million troops have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Tens of thousands have returned with a bedeviling mix of psychological and cognitive problems. For decades, doctors have recognized that soldiers can suffer… Continue reading →
by Glenn Greenwald for Salon: “In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, [current Obama administration official Cass] Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-“independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups… Continue reading →
from Reuters: Trace amounts of radioactive iodine linked to Japan’s crippled nuclear power station have turned up in rainwater samples as far away as Massachusetts during the past week, state officials said on Sunday. The low level of radioiodine-131 detected in precipitation at a sample location in… Continue reading →
by David Kocieniewski in The New York Times. “The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.” Continue reading →
by Bob Herbert in The New York Times. “So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here… Continue reading →
from Reuters through Common Dreams. Israel’s expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and eviction of Palestinians from their homes there is a form of ethnic cleansing, United Nations investigator Richard Falk said on Monday. [The] continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem… Continue reading →
Today is the 100th anniversary of this tragedy (travesty). Today preservation organizations, historians, artists, and labor activists commemorate the event, which inspired New Deal legislation protecting workers (including Social Security), now under attack. This is an excellent documentary. Of… Continue reading →
by Chip Ward in Tomgram. Here is Tom Englehardt’s introduction: With the Fukushima nuclear complex still at the edge, the official response here is so bracingly… well, ho-hum. A top Nuclear Regulatory Commission official has just offered reassurance that nothing at Fukushima warrants “any immediate… Continue reading →
by John Nichols in The Nation The grotesque extremes to which Muammar Qaddafi has gone to threaten the people of Libya—and to act on those threats—have left the self-proclaimed “king of kings” with few defenders in northern Africa, the Middle East or the international community. Even among frequent… Continue reading →
”There were alternative forms of intervention that might have been pursued…. This binary choice–do nothing or engage in this kind of an extensive use of force with a relatively open-ended authorization through the Security Council, is a false framing.” Check out a debate on Democracy Now! on… Continue reading →
Here are several places to commemorate this tragedy on its centennial: The Nation and NPR1 and NPR2 and NPR3 and NPR4. Here’s from a comment of the excellent Nation article: All of the rhetoric about dirty theiving unions cannot stand the truth: Corporations will not police themselves when it comes… Continue reading →
by Joseph Dana and Noam Sheizaf in The Nation Kind of reminds me of northern whites participating (as guests) in Mississippi in 1964. Changes the dynamic. Freie Palästina = Free Palestine = الحرية لفلسطين = חרות לפלסט Continue reading →
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has officially issued a new 20-year operating license to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power station, despite opposition from Vermont’s congressional delegation. The NRC voted on the license just before the Japanese nuclear crisis, but the commission delayed… Continue reading →
Amy Goodman interviews Jeremy Scahill. The Obama administration has really escalated the covert war inside of Yemen and has dramatically increased the funding to Yemen’s military, particularly to its elite counterterrorism unit, which is trained by U.S. Special Operations Forces…. The fact is that… Continue reading →
Those companies and others say they’ll bring home billions in earnings—but only if they get a big tax break. Here is the whole story. U.S. multinationals have more than $1 trillion in profits stashed in overseas subsidiaries. Some of the companies with the most money squirreled away say they’re… Continue reading →
Check out this radiation dose chart: Sleeping next to someone = 0.05 microSieverts [Item 1] X 2: Eating 1 banana = 0.10 microSieverts [Item 2] X 10: 1 arm X-ray, or using a CRT monitor for a year = 1 microSievert {Item 3] X 5: Dental or hand X-ray = 5 microSieverts [Item 4] X 2: Background dose… Continue reading →
Here is a debate about this abominable decision waged by two respected constitutional lawyers. The first decade of this century opened with the Supreme Court’s coup in Bush v. Gore, and closed with a putsch granting First Amendment rights to huge corporations to spend as much as they want to buy an… Continue reading →
Check out columnist Leonard Pitts on the futility of trying to argue with facts. “Then the lie passed into history and became truth.” — 1984 by George Orwell Ignore any inconvenient truth, any unsettling information that might force you to think or even look with new eyes upon, say, the edifice of… Continue reading →
See this short Quantico video, where Daniel Ellsberg remarked that Quantico is our Tahrir Square.” Continue reading →
by Nicholas Kusnetz and Marian Wang at ProPublica Since this time last year, we’ve seen a deadly mine disaster, the worst oil spill in U.S. history, and now a nuclear crisis in Japan. That got us wondering—how does one compare or quantify the human cost of different sources of energy? Check out the… Continue reading →
by Eric Tucker From Associated Press March 20, 2011 2:38 AM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) More than 100 anti-war protesters, including the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, were arrested outside the White House in demonstrations marking the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The protesters… Continue reading →
Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon and Murder in Bahrain Posted by Nick Turse at 10:00am, March 15, 2011. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been one busy official of late. Last week, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, he managed to apologize for U.S. helicopters killing nine boys collecting wood… Continue reading →
by Robert Freeman “Gentlemen, I warn you. Though the violence is not yet upon us, we are sleeping on a volcano.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, addressing the French parliament, January, 1848 In 1848, a series of revolutions convulsed Europe. From Berlin to Budapest, Venice to Vienna, Paris to Prague… Continue reading →
Here is from David Fenton’s blog: “To hear the mainstream discourse tell it, clean energy may be a nice idea, but it’s prohibitively expensive. Going green, it’s said, will cost jobs and strangle growth at a time when America must do whatever it takes to get our economy and people working again… Continue reading →
See this excellent article by Rebecca Solnit. Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be. Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its… Continue reading →
As reported by ANSWER coalition (check the link for pictures): On March 19, thousands of people took to the streets to demand an end to U.S. war and military intervention abroad and funding for people’s needs at home. Mass demonstrations took place in Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles… Continue reading →
For jobs, healthcare, education, mortgage relief, housing, infrastructure, environmental protection, veterans benefits, childcare, city and state budget relief–to restore vital social programs and to meet urgent human needs: Bring all the troops and war $$$ home now! Consider, as you file your 201… Continue reading →
by Ralph Nader The tumultuous managerial shakeup at National Public Radio headquarters for trivial verbal miscues once again has highlighted the ludicrous corporatist right-wing charge that public radio and public TV are replete with left-leaning or leftist programming. Ludicrous, that is, unless… Continue reading →
From the “Balkinization” blog of Jack Balkin, provided evidence that validated his 2006 prediction that the next president, whether Democratic or Republican, would ratify and continue many of President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism policies. What he called the National Surveillance State… Continue reading →
From Firedoglake is this article (with photo) from CodePink activist Logan Price, who, clad only in jock strap in front of the State Department on March 14, 2011, protested the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning. Our military has sent so many of my peers – idealistic young Americans – to die… Continue reading →
From the Atlantic, the U.S. will ultimately spend $1 trillion for 2,443 F-35 fighter planes. Where’s the outrage over Washington’s culture of waste? Money is pouring into the F-35 vortex. In 2010, Pentagon officials found that the cost of each plane had soared by over 50 percent above the original… Continue reading →
Check out this, and see the video of Carlin saying these things in 2005: The reason education sucks and will never, ever, ever be fixed is because the owners of this country don’t want that. … I’m talking about the real owners, the big, wealthy business interests that control things and make all the… Continue reading →
Ralph Nader, the former presidential candidate and longtime consumer advocate, and Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower, who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, were interviewed on Democracy Now! (click here and here… Continue reading →
Stop the Republican attacks! from Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter by Jack A. Smith, editor of the newsletter Republican politicians in Washington, DC, and the nation’s state houses are virtually wilding in the streets. It’s as though they are drunk with power, even though the Democrats actually… Continue reading →
As reported in AlterNet, there has been a shift in Israel’s security priorities: from targeting the armed Palestinian resistance to primarily focusing on Palestinian and Israeli activists involved in popular protest and building international pressure abroad. Apparently, the intent of Israel’s… Continue reading →
From CNN: By Terry A. Kupers, Special to CNN Army Pfc. Bradley Manning has been imprisoned in the Quantico Marine Corps Brig for nine months, suspected of giving highly classified State Department cables to the website WikiLeaks. He has not been tried, yet is kept in solitary confinement in a… Continue reading →
As reported in The Nation, the nuclear crisis in Japan is out of control: Three reactors are in partial meltdown, two are leaking radiation, at least one pool full of 80 tons of “spent” uranium fuel rods may be burning, two other such pools are getting very hot. Three major explosions have destroyed… Continue reading →
by Chris Hedges Sanctuary for Independent Media, Troy, NY 15 October 2010 from Alternative Radio (www.alternativeradio.org) Chris Hedges is an award-winning journalist who has covered wars in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central America. He writes a weekly column for Truthdig.org and is a senior… Continue reading →
Dr. Eban Goodstein, director of the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College and author of “Economics and the Environment,” who has coordinated climate education events at more than 2,500 institutions, explains the role green technology could play in the economic recovery: Academic Minute Continue reading →
Now going around on Facebook and elsewhere: A CEO, a tea party member, and a union worker are all sitting at a table when a plate with a dozen cookies arrives. Before anyone else can make a move, the CEO reaches out to rake in eleven of the cookies. When the other two look at him in surprise, the… Continue reading →
The second most cloudy country in Europe capitalizes on solar power. Meinen Glückwunsch, Deutschland! www.youtube.com Continue reading →
by Paul Cienfuegos speech delivered in Portland, Oregon, 26 February 2010 from Alternative Radio (www.alternativeradio.org) Paul Cienfuegos is a community organizer and activist. He co-founded Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County in Northern California an organization which works to dismantle… Continue reading →
The United States flag with its 50-star union section in its bottom left is a sign of distress, and I have used that symbol as a logo for this “Flag in Distress” Web site. I believe that this country is in a state of national distress. Those who would argue that I should not display the flag that… Continue reading →