Robert Scheer: Amnesty for the Indefensible

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/amnesty_for_the_indefensible_20110823/

Posted on Aug 23, 2011

By Robert Scheer

They will get away with it, at least in this life. “They” are the Wall Street usurers, people of a sort condemned in Scripture, who have brought more misery to this nation than we have known since the Great Depression. “They” will not suffer for their crimes because they have a majority ownership position in our political system. That is the meaning of the banking plea bargain that the Obama administration is pressuring state attorneys general to negotiate with the titans of the financial world.

It is a sellout deal that, in return for a pittance of compensation by banks to ripped-off mortgage holders, would grant the banks blanket immunity from any prosecution. That is intended to short-circuit investigations by a score of aggressive state officials, inquiries that offer the public a last best hope to get to the bottom of the housing scandal that has cost U.S. homeowners $6.6 trillion in home equity in the past five years and left 14.6 million Americans owing more than their homes are worth.

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Roger Bybee: America’s Rampant Inequality Impossible to Deny

Published on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 by In These Times

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11855/third_world-level_inequality_in_us_now_impossible_to_deny/

by Roger Bybee

The CIA ranks the country 64th, behind Ivory Coast and Uganda—but Fox's banshees still scream 'class warfare' when Warren Buffet wants to tax the rich

For years, America’s super-rich and their allies in Congress and the media have tried to deny that a tiny elite was growing astronomically wealthy at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.

But the vast gaping canyon between the richest 1 percent and Corporate America, on the one hand, and the rest of us on the other, has become so large and well-documented that denial no longer works. The ideological combat gets especially intense when it turns to the relatively minimal taxes that corporations and the rich pay.

What defense can be offered when billionaire investor Warren Buffet admits that he pays a 15 percent capital-gains rate on most of his income, while everyone else in his office (including the secretary) pays a considerably higher rate?

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"Melissa Bell" - Nuclear Power Plants Under Surveillance after East Coast Earthquake Hits

Published on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 by The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/nuclear-power-plants-under-surveillance-after-earthquake-hits/2011/08/23/gIQAw1aUZJ_blog.html

by Melissa Bell

After a 5.9-magnitude hit Mineral, Va. Tuesday afternoon, rocking the East Coast, concerns quickly turned to the safety of nuclear power plants. With the Fukushima power plant disaster in Japan fresh in people’s minds, nuclear power companies were quick to report on the conditions of their facilities.

Two power plants in North Anna, Va., near the earthquake epicenter, shut down automatically when the quake hit. The Washington Post’s Steve Mufson reports that the plants lost power from the grid and switched to four diesel generators to power their electrical and cooling systems, according to a spokesman at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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"Jerome Taylor, Kevin Rawlinson, Laurie Martin and Charlotte Allen" - Dash for Profit in Post-War Libya Carve-Up

Published on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 by The Independent/UK

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/dash-for-profit-in-postwar-libya-carveup-2342798.html

by Jerome Taylor, Kevin Rawlinson, Laurie Martin and Charlotte Allen

British businesses are scrambling to return to Libya in anticipation of the end to the country's civil war, but they are concerned that European and North American rivals are already stealing a march as a new race to turn a profit out of the war-torn nation begins.

Business leaders with previous experience of making deals in Libya have told The Independent that plans are in hand to send a trade mission to Benghazi to meet leaders of the Transitional National Council (TNC).

Lord Trefgarne, a Conservative peer and chair of the Libyan British Business Council, said he hoped to be able to lead a group to the country "by late September, early October". He said: "Any mission would be done in consultation with the TNC and would only be made if adequate security protections were in place. I believe we should be trying to make sure we can get whatever business we can."

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Dave Murphy: Politics, Farmers and Change -- The End of Rural America

Published on Friday, August 19, 2011 by The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-murphy/family-farms_b_929955.html

by Dave Murphy

This week President Obama returned to Iowa, where he launched his successful bid to the White House, to speak about "jobs and economic security" in rural America. According to the White House, his bus tour is not a campaign trip, but veteran political observers would disagree. For farmers and rural advocates this tour is really about something much larger than electioneering or a new jobs program, it's about the survival of rural America.

While the plight of urban decay has been widely publicized in the mainstream press, similar issues facing our country cousins (myself included), lack of well paying jobs, rural brain drain, food deserts, poverty and lack of access to quality health care, have either been ignored or largely misunderstood by policy makers and the press. Today, more rural Americans are on food stamps and face bleaker economic prospects than their urban counterparts, despite the romantic image of small town life often portrayed by the media.

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Lester Brown: Expanding Deserts, Falling Water Tables and Toxins Driving People from Homes

By Lester R. Brown

http://www.ipsnews.net

WASHINGTON, Aug 23, 2011 (IPS) - People do not normally leave their homes, their families, and their communities unless they have no other option. Yet as environmental stresses mount, we can expect to see a growing number of environmental refugees. Rising seas and increasingly devastating storms grab headlines, but expanding deserts, falling water tables, and toxic waste and radiation are also forcing people from their homes.

Advancing deserts are now on the move almost everywhere. The Sahara desert, for example, is expanding in every direction. As it advances northward, it is squeezing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria against the Mediterranean coast.

The Sahelian region of Africa - the vast swath of savannah that separates the southern Sahara desert from the tropical rainforests of central Africa - is shrinking as the desert moves southward. As the desert invades Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, from the north, farmers and herders are forced southward, squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land.

A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe.

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"Brad Johnson" - Why Is Rick Perry Turning Climate Change Denial Into An Issue of Faith

Brad Johnson, Think Progress

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/08/22/301326/rick-perry-is-trying-to-make-climate-denial-a-faith-based-issue/

Climate science denial is one of the strongest anti-scientific currents running through today’s Republican Party. American conservatives, who tend to be most skeptical of the scientific consensus on greenhouse pollution, generally hold other politically relevant anti-science views, such as support for creationism and opposition to stem-cell research. As global warming touches all of our lives, people are having to reconcile the reality of a polluted world with their personal moral views.

Presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) is presenting his denial of climate science as rooted in his same faith that evolution is a hoax. Perry’s response to the greenhouse-powered drought in Texas has been to issue an official prayer for rain, while spurning man’s responsibility. On the campaign trail, he portrays the climate science as a “secular carbon cult” working against his infallible faith.

However, climate science denial has a very different provenance from other conservative anti-scientific attitudes. The facts of climate science challenge the business model of the fossil fuel industry, whereas the facts of evolution and the like challenge religious fundamentalism. The oil industry and evangelicals form two pillars of American conservatism (see the work of Allen Lichtman and Kevin Phillips), but their networks and influence are not the same. Climate denial has traditionally been spread not through conservative churches but through the secular, oil-funded media networks — the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh.

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Dean Baker: The Cult of Incompetent Bankers

By DEAN BAKER

http://counterpunch.org/baker08232011.html

The world financial system had another serious scare last week. The immediate issue was the prospect that the euro could break up. With the debt crisis spreading from smaller countries such as Greece and Ireland to the eurozone giants of Spain and Italy, events were again getting scary.

A default by the smaller countries would create serious disruptions throughout the eurozone and the larger world economy, but no one doubts that these could be contained. The European Financial Stabilization Fund (EFSB) is large enough to paper over the mess that would be created by the default of Greece or Ireland.

However the default of Spain or Italy is an entirely different matter. If either country were to default, the repercussions would be enormous, dwarfing the resources of the EFSB. A default would almost certainly make several major European banks insolvent and lead to the sort of freeze-up of the financial system that we saw after the bankruptcy of Lehman in September of 2008. With the interest rate on Italian and Spanish debt soaring, the financial markets had to take this risk seriously.

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"PF Louis" - What they won't admit about measles outbreaks: Most children who catch measles were already vaccinated

by PF Louis

http://www.naturalnews.com/033399_vaccines_measles.html

(NaturalNews) Big Pharma, the CDC and other public health organizations tell the mainstream media (MSM) what to report about outbreaks and epidemics. So you may have the impression that recent measles outbreaks are occurring because of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination refusals.

According to official public health documents kept from public attention, the opposite is true. Many stricken with measles have had the full array of three MMR vaccinations.

Measles and MMR Vaccinations

If you're old enough, you may remember that measles and mumps were common childhood diseases that came and went. The incidence of death or permanent damage was very small. Once you recovered from measles, you were immunized for life.

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"Paul Johnston" - Why a deregulated approach to GM crops is 'deeply flawed'

Paul Johnston
The Ecologist, 23 August 2011

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/1026452/response_why_a_deregulated_approach_to_gm_crops_is_deeply_flawed.html

Greenpeace's chief scientist Dr Paul Johnston on why recent proposals to expand GM technology support a flawed agricultural system and serve the biotech companies with the greatest vested interests

In a recent Ecologist interview, the scientist leading the controversial trials of genetically modified (GM) potatoes in the UK, Professor Jonathan Jones, outlined his vision for the future of GM crops, proposing economic and policy changes that appear to be based on some sweeping assumptions and his own perceptions of the supposed benefits of these crops. In my view, Prof. Jones’ vision is deeply flawed in relation to its potential scientific, ecological and public policy impacts.

Professor Jones states that in the future, he expects about 90 per cent of several important staple crops, including maize and soy, to be genetically modified, and recommends that public sector funding should be used to help biotech companies further develop these, and other GM crop varieties. In addition, he suggests that the costs of regulation to the GM industry be reduced to zero, and that the products themselves be labeled to promote their (supposed) benefits.

Professor Jones' ambitions for the future of GM would undoubtedly prove highly lucrative for Mendel Biotechnology - which he co-founded and is a science advisory board member - which carries out contract research for the biotechnology giants Monsanto and Bayer. More troubling are the implications of Prof. Jones' suggestions for the conduct of robust science and the use of scientific information in informing policy and the effective regulation of GM crops.

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