"Kevin O’Connor"- Bill McKibben Jailed After White House Tar Sands Pipeline Protest

by Kevin O’Connor

Vermont environmental author and activist Bill McKibben went to Washington, D.C., in hopes of getting attention by getting arrested. This weekend he got that and more: a surprise two-night stay in jail.

McKibben and 64 other protesters kicked off a two-week sit-in at White House on Saturday to oppose a $7 billion, 1,700-mile oil pipeline planned to cross the nation’s Great Plains.

U.S. Park Police had warned demonstrators that each would be arrested and quickly released with a $100 fine for trespassing. But after authorities learned that more than 2,000 people from all 50 states plan to join the protest sometime between now until Sept. 3, they jailed McKibben and his peers until a court hearing Monday — all in hopes of deterring future participants.

The police action, however, didn’t appear to stop pipeline opponents. McKibben used his one phone call from jail to tell fellow protest organizers that despite heat in the nation’s capital, all arrested were in good spirits and urged their peers to continue on.

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"Bruce Levine"- Confronting the Military-Industrial-Complex, The MIC at 50

By Bruce E Levine

Global Research, August 21, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26104

The majority of Americans oppose the U.S. government’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and believe that defense spending is the area that must be cut to reduce the federal deficit. However, many of us feel powerless to stop the ever-increasing bombings, invasions, and occupations of nations which pose no threat to us. Most of us have acquiesced to the “military-industrial complex” (a term coined by Dwight Eisenhower, who devoted his farewell address in 1961 to its “grave implications”). Having worked with abused people for more than 25 years, it does not surprise me to see that when we as individuals or as a society eat crap for too long, we become psychologically too weak to take action.

Democracy means that if the majority of us want to stop senseless wars and wasteful military spending, then this should be stopped. Are we in the majority? How can we take action?

A March 2011 ABC News/Washington Post poll asked Americans, “All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting, or not?”; 31 percent said “worth fighting” and 64 percent said “not worth fighting.” When a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll in December 2010, asked, “Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?” only 35 percent of Americans favored the war, while 63 percent opposed it. A 2010 CBS poll reported that 6 of 10 Americans viewed the Iraq war as “a mistake.” And when Americans were asked in a CBS New /New York Times survey in January 2011 which of three programs—the military, Medicare, or Social Security—to cut so as to deal with the deficit, fully 55 percent chose the military, while only 21 percent chose Medicare and 13 percent chose Social Security.

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"Malcolm Harris"- The Get Lost Generation

by Malcolm Harris

Ask a headline writer at any paper of record and they’ll tell you that today’s young people are “The Lost Generation.” They tend to use this label as if Hemingway and Fitzgerald hadn’t stumbled their way through half the bars in Paris under the same flag. Unfortunately, the youths of today aren’t lost in a morass of sex, art, booze, and politics (not necessarily in that order), but rather can’t find a path through the haze of economic insecurity and impending ecological catastrophe. The current use of the term draws less from those charmed ex-pats than from “The Lost Decade”, the name given to Japan’s period of economic stagnation during the 90′s. But the two uses point towards different aspects of sociohistorical lostness: one is about a generation not knowing what to do with its capacity within society, the other about a society that doesn’t know what to do with its capacity for generation, a world that seems to have already made too much of everything. It is unclear in which way my generation is lost, whether it refers to the seemingly misdirected lives of 20-somethings or our potential that may go unrealized due to the employment crisis and over-production - unless we open new paths. Having read the essays that follow, I think it’s a bit of both.

Of course the absent jobs that could make us “productive” members of society go a long way toward answering the question of direction. Young people are semi-autonomous when it comes to our life choices, but we are subject as a population to economic and environmental conditions; one could say we are lost because we have been lost. Even so, we don’t seem to be going anywhere. The new phase of “emerging adulthood” described in the now infamous New York Times Magazine article on 20-somethings involves a return to the parents’ home, (as in Lauren Westerfield’s “Flexible Lives, Flexible Relationships.”) Nothing could be more found. There is also some irony in calling the most connected generation in the history of mankind “lost.” The phone in my pocket can not only tell me where I am, but where I might want to go next and how to get there. There are ways in which we could not get lost if we tried.

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"Ken Thomas"- US Liberals Complain About Obama

by: Ken Thomas

WASHINGTON  — Liberals argue that he gave in on the great debate over the debt ceiling. Unions are upset over his handling of unemployment and labor issues. Hispanics brought the immigration debate directly to his campaign doorstep.

President Barack Obama's summer of discontent has been marked by rumblings within his Democratic party political base over his willingness to fight congressional Republicans and his approach to fixing the economy.

Liberals disappointed with Obama for compromising with the Republicans during the debt-ceiling showdown now are calling on him to hold firm against Republicans this autumn. They want him to push a bold jobs agenda while drawing a strong line on taxes and protecting social benefit programs for the elderly.

In recent weeks, the gripes have become so loud that the president himself acknowledged them during his Midwest bus tour this week.

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"Robert Parry"- The Dangerous Reagan Cult

By Robert Parry

In the debt-ceiling debate, both Republicans and Democrats wanted Ronald Reagan on their side. Republicans embraced the 40th president's disdain for government and fondness for tax cuts, while Democrats noted that "even Reagan" raised the debt limit many times and accepted some tax increases.

But Reagan -- possibly more than any political leader -- deserves the blame for the economic/political mess that the United States now finds itself in. He was the patriarch for virtually every major miscalculation that the country has made over the past three decades.

It was Reagan who slashed taxes on the rich to roughly their current level; he opened the flood gates on deficit spending; he accelerated the decline of the middle class by busting unions and slashing support for local communities; he disparaged the value of government regulations; he squandered money on the Pentagon; he pushed more militaristic strategies abroad; and he rejected any thoughtful criticism of past U.S. foreign policies.

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"Jennifer Matesa and Jed Bickman" - A Radical New Definition of Addiction Creates a Big Storm

By Jennifer Matesa and Jed Bickman, The Fix

Posted on August 18, 2011, Printed on August 20, 2011
http://www.thefix.com/content/addiction-gets-medical-makeover8004

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If you think addiction is all about booze, drugs, sex, gambling, food and other irresistible vices, think again. And if you believe that a person has a choice whether or not to indulge in an addictive behavior, get over it. The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) blew the whistle on these deeply held notions with its official release of a new document defining addiction as a chronic neurological disorder involving many brain functions, most notably a devastating imbalance in the so-called reward circuitry. This fundamental impairment in the experience of pleasure literally compels the addict to chase the chemical highs produced by substances like drugs and alcohol and obsessive behaviors like sex, food and gambling.

The definition, a result of a four-year process involving more than 80 leading experts in addiction and neurology, emphasizes that addiction is a primary illness—in other words, it’s not caused by mental health issues such as mood or personality disorders, putting to rest the popular notion that addictive behaviors are a form of "self-medication" to, say, ease the pain of depression or anxiety.

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A review of waste management practices and their impact on human health

This work reviews (i) the most recent information on waste arisings and waste disposal options in the world, in the European Union (EU), in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OEDC) countries, and in some developing countries (notably China) and (ii) the potential direct and indirect impact of waste management activities on health. Though the main focus is primarily on municipal solid waste (MSW), exposure to bioaerosols from composting facilities and to pathogens from sewage treat- ment plants are considered. The reported effects of radioactive waste are also briefly reviewed. Hundreds of epidemiological studies reported on the incidence of a wide range of possible illnesses on employees of waste facilities and on the resident population. The main conclusion of the overall assessment of the lit- erature is that the evidence of adverse health outcomes for the general population living near landfill sites, incinerators, composting facilities and nuclear installations is usually insufficient and inconclusive. There is convincing evidence of a high risk of gastrointestinal problems associated with pathogens orig- inating at sewage treatment plants. In order to improve the quality and usefulness of epidemiological studies applied to populations residing in areas where waste management facilities are located or planned, preference should be given to prospective cohort studies of sufficient statistical power, with access to direct human exposure measurements, and supported by data on health effect biomarkers and susceptibility biomarkers.

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$8.4 TRILLION HIDDEN PROFIT FOR THE FEDERAL RESERVE

An email was sent to me recently containing the following information. Quite illuminating! - Gary The public is aware that deficit spending is the government's ability to spend money that it does not have. The image projected is the government borrows from the public, or the Federal Reserve, and the money that can be spent is above and beyond the funds collected in the form of taxes and fees. It the borrowed amount came from the public as touted, there would be no inflation. The transfer of money would be the same as if taxes or fees had been collected, but the government would additionally be giving a certificate (maybe) and a promise to pay interest on the loan. There is no way that such an imagined borrowing from the public can cause inflation.

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Exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation from medical imaging procedures.

Exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation from medical imaging procedures.pdf 

Radiation in the workplace - A review of studies of the risks of occupational exposure to ionising radiation

Radiation in the workplace - A review of studies of the risks of occupational exposure to ionising radiation.pdf