Photos of Rare Birds

A friend recently sent me some photos of these extreamly rare and beautiful birds. Enjoy!

1. Himalayan Monal

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"Bob Chapman"- QE 3 and Toxic Assets, The Fed's "Monetary Ammunition"

Many people believe the Jackson Hole was a non-event, a failure and it was. QE 3 was not announced, as we predicted. We believe that was being saved for mid-September when the $300 billion rollover in Treasury securities is completed. Mr. Bernanke has failed in a number of respects, the most glaring being zero interest rates for 2-years and no housing recovery.

Even purchasing $1.3 trillion in toxic mortgages has only helped the banks. We still do not know what the Fed paid and what these bonds are worth. No matter what happens the Fed has to again purchase about $900 billion more Treasuries this new upcoming fiscal year. There is no way to avoid that and if they have to buy Agencies and more toxic bonds the figures will be higher. Auction failures cannot be tolerated. This will, of course, increase inflation in 2013 and 2014. Sales to consumers and profits will fall as a result.

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"Katha Pollitt"- The Poor: Still Here, Still Poor

Published on Friday, September 9, 2011 by The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/article/163212/poor-still-here-still-poor

What ever happened to poor people? Even on the left, Cornel West and Tavis Smiley’s Poverty Tour was an exception. Mostly, the talk is of the “middle class”—its stagnant wages, foreclosed houses, maxed-out credit cards and adult kids still living in their childhood bedrooms. The New York Times’s Bob Herbert, the last columnist who covered poverty consistently and with passion, is gone. Among progressive organizations, Rebuild the Dream, a new group co-founded with much fanfare by Van Jones and MoveOn, is typical. It bills its mission as “rebuilding the middle class”—i.e., the “people willing to work hard and play by the rules.” (What are those rules? I always wonder. And do middle-class people really work all that hard compared with a home health aide or a waitress, who cannot get ahead no matter how hard she works and how many rules she plays by?) The ten steps in its “Contract” contain many worthy suggestions—invest in America’s infrastructure, return to fairer tax rates, secure Social Security by lifting the cap on Social Security taxes. There’s nothing wrong with any of this as far as it goes—middle-class people have indeed suffered in the current recession. But let’s not forget that the unemployment rate for white college grads is 4 percent, and every single one of them has been written up in Salon. It’s who’s missing that troubles me: poor people..

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"US Citizens Ramp Up Battle Against Fossil Fuel Industry"

Published on Friday, September 9, 2011 by the Inter Press Service
http://ipsnews.net/

Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON -- The fight against oil and gas giants is heating up in the U.S., with new waves of protest and civil disobedience springing up across the country.

.The last three weeks saw over 1,200 people arrested outside the White House in Washington D.C. in protest of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. If approved, it would travel from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, through the heartland of the U.S., threatening huge swathes of fresh water supplies and destroying communities and wildlife habitats along its way, activists say.

Then, on Wednesday, hundreds of local residents, scientists and environmentalists stormed the Shale Gas Insight conference in Philadelphia, demanding a moratorium on increased hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – which they say is contaminating water supplies, devastating animal habitats and paving the way for a major "public health hazard".

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"Yuko Takeo"- Sea Radiation from Fukushima Seen Triple Tepco Estimate

Published on Friday, September 9, 2011 by Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/09/us-japan-tepco-idUSTRE7882E720110909 

TOKYO -- Radioactive material released into the sea in the Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis is more than triple the amount estimated by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co, Japanese researchers say.

..Japan's biggest utility estimated around 4,720 trillion becquerels of cesium-137 and iodine-131 was released into the Pacific Ocean between March 21 and April 30, but researchers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) put the amount 15,000 trillion becquerels, or terabecquerels.

Government regulations ban shipment of foodstuff containing over 500 becquerels of radioactive material per kg.

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"Andrew Marszal"- Coral Reefs 'Will Be Gone by End of the Century'

Published on Sunday, September 11, 2011 by the Independent/UK
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/coral-reefs-will-be-gone-by-end-of-the-century-2352742.html

They will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist

 

Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.

. Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the planet's largest reef system and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but it may not survive the century. The claim is made in a book published tomorrow, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be "a new first for mankind – the 'extinction' of an entire ecosystem". Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

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"Glenn Greenwald"- Orwell, 9/11, Emmanuel Goldstein and WikiLeaks

Published on Saturday, September 10, 2011 by Salon
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/10/wikileaks/index.html

A strikingly good piece of investigative journalism from Associated Press finds that accusations about the damage done by WikiLeaks' latest release are -- yet again -- wildly overstated and without any factual basis.  These most recent warnings have centered on WikiLeaks' exposure of diplomatic sources whom the released cables indicated should be "strictly protected."  While unable to examine all of the names in the cables, AP focused on the ones "the State Department seemed to categorize as most risky."  It found that many of them are "comfortable with their names in the open and no one fearing death." 

In particular, many of these super-secret sources were "already dead, their names cited as sensitive in the context of long-resolved conflicts or situations" while "some have publicly written or testified at hearings about the supposedly confidential information they provided the U.S. government."  Like the Pentagon before them, even the State Department  -- which has "been scouring the documents since last year to find examples where sources are exposed and inform them that they may be 'outed'" -- is unable to provide any substantiation for its shrill, public denunciations of WikiLeaks and its "dire" warnings about the "grave danger" caused by publication of these cables:  

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"Randall Amster"- Millennial Math: 9+11=1984

It’s been a decade since the day that changed everything -- or at least, the one that finally laid it all bare. Over the years, I’ve tried to confront it, rewrite it, debunk it, historicize it, mock it, and ultimately ignore it, all to no avail. It’s not going anywhere, this Trojan Horse of the new millennium, this farce that launched a thousand ships. We’re stuck with it, even though no matter how we crunch the numbers it still doesn’t really add up. Or does it?

As it turned out, homeland insecurity was the perfect foil for the hegemony of Homeland Security. Now the architects of Total Information Awareness can legally be in our phone calls, our emails, our bank accounts, our library cards, our internet browsers, our peace groups, our medical records, our gonads, our heads, and our hearts. We’ve been hornswoggled, hoodwinked, and hijacked into accepting pervasive incursions into every vestige of individual liberty and political democracy -- all done quite ingeniously in the name of protecting liberty and preserving democracy.

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"Patrick Cockburn"- Al-Qa'ida, and the Myth Behind the War on Terrorism

Published on Sunday, September 11, 2011 by the Independent/UK
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-alqaida-and-the-myth-behind-the-war-on-terrorism-2352730.html

The atrocities against America created the image of Osama bin Laden as the leader of a global jihad upon the West. It was a fantasy that governments willingly, and disastrously, helped to perpetuate

What was the most devastating attack by al-Qa'ida in the past few months? Despite all the pious talk this weekend about combating "terrorism", few will have heard of it. It happened on August 15th when bombers killed 63 people in 17 cities up and down Iraq in the space of a few hours.

Such carnage is ignored because the US and Britain see al-Qa'ida only in relation to themselves, and because all the victims were Iraqis. The real motives of al-Qa'ida, often rooted in local struggles between Palestinians and Israelis or Sunni and Shia, are disregarded and replaced by fantasies about clashing civilizations.

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"Mizuho Aoki"- Effect of Contaminated Soil on Food Chain Sparks Fears

Published on Sunday, September 11, 2011 by The Japan Times
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110911a3.html

Cesium absorption through roots may have long-term effect on farming

by Mizuho Aoki

Six months after the nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture, the public's awareness of the threat posed by radiation is entering a new phase: the realization that the biggest danger now and in the future is from contaminated soil.

The iodine-131 ejected into the sky by the Fukushima No. 1 power station disaster was quickly detected in vegetables and tap water — even as far away as Tokyo, 220 km south of the plant.

But contamination levels are now so low they are virtually undetectable, thanks to the short half-life of iodine-131 — eight days — and stepped up filtering by water companies.

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