Bill McKibben - Keystone Pipeline Victory

By Bill McKibben, AlterNet

Posted on November 10, 2011, Printed on November 11, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153037/keystone_pipeline_victory%3A_president_puts_disastrous_pipeline_on_hold_--_may_effectively_kill_the_project

Um, we won. You won.

Not completely. The president didn’t outright reject the pipeline permit. My particular fantasy--that he would invite the 1253 people arrested on his doorstep in August inside the gates for a victory picnic by the vegetable garden--didn’t materialize.

But yesterday the president sent the pipeline back to the State Department for a thorough re-review, which most analysts are saying will effectively kill the project. The president explicitly noted climate change, along with the pipeline route, as one of the factors that a new review would need to assess. There’s no way, with an honest review, that a pipeline that helps speed the tapping of the world’s second-largest pool of carbon can pass environmental muster.

And he has made clear that the environmental assessment won’t be carried out by cronies of the pipeline company--that it will be an expert and independent assessment. We will watch that process like hawks, making sure that it doesn’t succumb to more cronyism. Perhaps this effort will go some tiny way towards cleaning up the Washington culture of corporate dominance that came so dramatically to light here in emails and lobbyist disclosure forms.

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OilPrice.com - U.S. Government Confirms Link Between Earthquakes and Hydraulic Fracturing

By: OilPrice.com | Wednesday, November 9, 2011

http://www.safehaven.com/print/23237/us-government-confirms-link-between-earthquakes-and-hydraulic-fracturing

On 5 November an earthquake measuring 5.6 rattled Oklahoma and was felt as far away as Illinois.

Until two years ago Oklahoma typically had about 50 earthquakes a year, but in 2010, 1,047 quakes shook the state.

Why?

In Lincoln County, where most of this past weekend's seismic incidents were centered, there are 181 injection wells, according to Matt Skinner, an official from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency which oversees oil and gas production in the state.

Cause and effect?

The practice of injecting water into deep rock formations causes earthquakes, both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Geological Survey have concluded.

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Winslow Myers - Social Psychosis and Collective Sanity

Published on Thursday, November 10, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/10-8

by Winslow Myers

We know from the sad experience of Nazi Germany or Khmer Rouge Cambodia that it is possible for whole nations to become mentally ill, with horrendous consequences. At the time, however, the Nazis or the Khmers had no idea that they were deeply out of touch with the reality that all people are equally worthy of respect and care.

The population of the earth recently surpassed 7 billion. As we move further into the condition of global villagehood, it becomes more important than ever to assess our shared mental health. Collectively we can less and less afford the distortions that afflict the psyches of individual persons, such as denial, regression into infantile rage, fantasy ideation, or blind projection outward onto “enemies” of our unresolved inner tensions. Everyone is aware of the potential horror, for example, of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of someone not in the clearest of minds.

The social psychosis of denial is one of the greatest of our temptations. As I write I’m sitting outdoors on my back porch in Boston. It is November 8. The “expected” temperature for an average day at this time of year might be around 40. Today it is 70. News stories in the last week have once again sounded the alarm of the amounts of CO2 going into the atmosphere being much greater than previously estimated. The displacement of millions of people by climate instability has the potential to be the primary cause of future conflict.

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Michael Nagler - The Movement Progressives Have Been Waiting For: On the Long-Term Sustainability of OWS

By Michael Nagler, Waging Nonviolence

Posted on November 10, 2011, Printed on November 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/728523/the_movement_progressives_have_been_waiting_for%3A_on_the_long-term_sustainability_of_ows

Ever since Paul Hawken published Blessed Unrest (2007), it has been clear to many that the progressive world is a million projects in search of a movement. A movement, Hawken reminded us, has “leaders and ideologies; … people join movements study [their] tracts, and identify themselves with a group,” while the Occupy movement today seems to be just a continuation of the style that is “dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent.  It has no manifesto or doctrine, no overriding authority to check with.” Can #Occupy provide the framework that will pull these far-flung but inwardly resonant energies together—and in so doing become a force that could, in Gandhi’s terms, “o’ersweep the world”? I believe we can make that happen, and we should, because in any case, as Gandhi also said, a movement that is simply against something cannot sustain itself.

The 1,500-odd sites of #Occupy already have many hopeful things going for them. They are global, as Naomi Wolf has recently pointed out, which has not been seen since millions of people attempted to stop the war on Iraq in 2003, only to have President Bush dismiss them as a “focus group” (more on that later). They are touching a nerve of widespread discontent: as one commentator said recently:

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Paul Craig Roberts - The Case for Regulation -- The Failure of Free Market Economics

By Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, November 10, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27588 

The economic mess in which the United States and Europe find themselves and which has been exported to much of the rest of the world is the direct consequence of too much economic freedom. The excess freedom is the direct consequence of financial deregulation. 

The definition of free markets is ambiguous. At times  it  means  a  market  without  any  regulation.  In other cases it means markets in which prices are free to reflect supply and demand. Sometimes it means competitive markets free of monopoly or con-centration. “Free market” economists have made a mistake by elevating an economy that is free of regulation or government as the ideal. This ideologi-cal position overlooks that regulation can increase economic efficiency and that without regulation external costs can offset the value of production. 

Before going further, let’s be clear about what is regulated. Economists reify markets: the market did this, the market did that. But markets don’t do anything. The market is not an actor; it is a social institution. People act, and it is the behavior of people that is regulated. When free market economists describe the ideal as the absence of any regulation of economic behavior, they are asserting that there are no dysfunctional consequences of unregu-lated economic behavior. 

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David Suzuki - Occupy Movement Demands Fresh Thinking -- For Our Grandchildren

Published on Thursday, November 10, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/10-6

by David Suzuki

The laws of physics tell us we can't build a rocket that will travel faster than the speed of light, that gravity governs objects on Earth, and that perpetual motion machines are not possible. In chemistry, diffusion constants, reaction rates, and atomic properties set the limits of chemical reactions and types of molecules that can be synthesized. Biology dictates our absolute need for clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy, and biodiversity for our survival and health.

Those are laws of nature and we can't change them. We have to live within their boundaries. Capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, corporations, currency, markets, and regional borders are not forces of nature. We invented them. If they don't work, we can and must change them.

Instead we try to alter nature to fit our priorities. Look at what happened at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009. We saw 192 nations gathered to deal with the atmosphere that belongs to no one -- 192 national borders, 192 economic priorities, trying to shoehorn nature to fit our creations! We should be looking for ways to make our systems work with nature, not the other way around.

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Marshall Auerback - If We Don't Solve the Jobs Crisis We May End Up With Our Streets in Flames and Society Dysfunctional

By Marshall Auerback, AlterNet

Posted on November 10, 2011, Printed on November 11, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153000/if_we_don%27t_solve_the_jobs_crisis_we_may_end_up_with_our_streets_in_flames_and_society_dysfunctional

Employers added fewer jobs than was forecast in October, which lots of folks scratching their heads over what to do about it.

In response to the latest unemployment figures, our nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, has again begun talking about additional stimulus measures, such as the purchases of mortgage backed securities (MBS) or a bond-buying program known as “QE3”. But neither of these measures worked before, so why should we expect more success this time?

The Fed’s policies are akin to putting a Band-Aid on a massive bleeding wound. Right now, the US economy is crushed by massive private indebtedness and sluggish job growth. What we really need are policies designed to promote job growth, so that people can service their debts and become open to spending again. Admittedly, the Fed isn’t the only problem. Our whole constellation of policy makers – the Fed, Congress, the Treasury and the White House – keep obsessing about the faux “costs” of the growing budget deficit, rather than the real costs of long term unemployment. And if they don’t give up this flawed economic thinking, then the burning streets and mass riots happening in Europe may soon be coming to a neighborhood near you.

The Fed’s Misguided Focus

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Juan Cole - Protest Planet – How a Neoliberal Shell Game Created an Age of Activism

Posted on November 10, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175466/

By Juan Cole

From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended.  The massive popular protests that shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of the reporting on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.   

Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting.  They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas, and squares to protest against the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity of the white-collar criminals who have run riot in societies everywhere.  They are objecting to high rates of unemployment, reduced social services, blighted futures, and above all the substitution of the market for all other values as the matrix of human ethics and life.

Pasha the Tiger

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NC WARN - Nuclear Expert Cites New Concerns about Westinghouse Reactor Design Based on Fukushima Disaster

November 10, 2011

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/11/10-0

CONTACT: NC WARN, Friends of the Earth and AP1000 Oversight Group

Groups say design approval can’t legally be finalized until Fukushima lessons are incorporated, and that NRC plans to shove costly design corrections onto Georgia, South Carolina customers

DURHAM, N.C. - November 10 - Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen has documented at least six areas of unreviewed safety concern involving the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear plant design based on the ongoing Fukushima disaster, and he says these problems require full technical review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission before the plant design can be “certified.”  Today public interest groups filed his report – which expands on problems identified by a federal task force – with NRC commissioners who are considering a final vote on the plant design without responding to a long list of problems raised earlier by experts within and outside the industry.

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Julie Steenhuysen - Sick in U.S. More Likely to Skip Care Than Elsewhere

Edmonton Journal,  Thursday, November 10, 2011

 http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Sick+more+likely+skip+care+than+elsewhere/5681529/story.html

by Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO — Americans who have a chronic illness or serious health problems are more likely to struggle to pay their medical bills or have problems getting needed care than adults with similar problems in other high-income countries, a survey released Wednesday found.

The poll of more than 18,000 adults in the United States and 10 other high-income countries found that Americans were most likely to have problems getting needed care because of the cost, or to medical debt, according to data released by the Commonwealth Fund.

“Despite spending far more on health care than any other country, the United States practically stands alone when it comes to people with illness or chronic conditions having difficulty affording health care and paying medical bills,” Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis said in a statement.

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