"Elianna Mintz" - Top NASA Climatologist Protests Transnational Oil Pipeline

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/29-8

Published on Monday, August 29, 2011 by Talk Radio News Service

by Elianna Mintz

As President Obama’s deadline to approve or disapprove licensing of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline draws closer, NASA’s lead climatologist, Dr. James Hansen, addressed reporters at the National Press Club to explain the grave consequences of approving such a project.

James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, addresses a crowd of protesters at a White House climate change rally in October 2010. “We have a planetary emergency,” Hansen, an adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, told reporters Monday. (Credit: Chesapeake Climate) “We have a planetary emergency,” Hansen, an adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, told reporters Monday.

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"Glenn Greenwald" - The Decade's Biggest Scam

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/29-10

Published on Monday, August 29, 2011 by Salon.com

by Glenn Greenwald

The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles.  All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:

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Bent Objects

Have a look at this terrific series of art pieces derived from various common objects.

And visit the artist's site here - http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/

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Why progressives should gladly vote for Ron Paul over any Democratic candidate including Obama

Ron Paul has proposed many unacceptable positions, such as criminalizing abortion, rejecting climate change as a global threat, withdrawing Government funding from social programs, refusal to tax the rich, support of unlimited corporate donations to election campaigns, and promoting prayer in the public schools. But my objections to these and other positions of Ron Paul pale into insignificance when weighed against his clear and unequivocal promise, if elected, not only to stop our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan IMMEDIATELY, but to bring home all American troops -- not only from Iraq and Afghanistan -- but also from Germany, Japan, Korea and the nearly 800 U.S. military bases maintained around the world.

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"Lauren Biron" - Summer's Almost Over, and Still No Solar Panels on Obama's White House Roof

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/28-1

Published on Sunday, August 28, 2011 by the McClatchy Newspapers

by Lauren Biron

WASHINGTON — In October, Energy Secretary Steven Chu pledged that solar panels and a solar water heater would be installed on the White House roof before the start of summer.

Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House roof in 1979. Now, many months after President Obama promised to reinstate solar panels on the white house, they are still no where to be seen. Now, summer is almost over, the 2012 election campaign is well under way, and there are still no solar panels on the White House roof.

Why? That's a mystery.

The Energy Department will say only that the project is mired in the "competitive procurement process." Spokeswoman Joelle Terry declined to go into details of the holdup. Questions about when that process might be completed also were rebuffed. So were queries about the projected cost of adding the panels and where the panels would be located.

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"Chris Hedges" - The Election March of the Trolls

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/29-0

Published on Monday, August 29, 2011 by TruthDig.com

by Chris Hedges

We have begun the election march of the trolls. They have crawled out of the sewers of public relations firms, polling organizations, the commercial media, the two corporate political parties and elected office to fill the airwaves with inanities and absurdities until the final inanity—the 2012 presidential election. Journalists, whose role has been reduced to purveyors of court gossip, whether on Fox or MSNBC, descend in swarms to report pseudo-events such as the Ames straw poll, where it costs $30 to cast a ballot. And then, almost immediately, they blithely inform us that the Iowa poll is meaningless now that Rick Perry has entered the race. The liberal trolls, as they do in every election cycle, are beating their little chests about the perfidiousness of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. It is a gesture performed not to effect change but to burnish their credentials as moralists. They know, as do we, that they will trot obediently into the voting booth in 2012 to do as they are told. And everywhere the pulse of the nation is being assiduously monitored through polls and focus groups, not because our opinions matter, but because our troll candidates understand that by parroting back to us our own viewpoints they can continue to spend their days lapping up corporate money with other trolls in the two houses of Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and television studios where they chat with troll celebrity journalists.

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"Christopher Mims" - Fracking sadface: U.S. has one-fifth the shale gas once projected

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-25-fracking-sadface-u.s.-has-one-fifth-the-shale-gas-once-projected

by Christopher Mims / 25 Aug 2011

"Oops," says the United States Geological Survey, "We used to think the shale on the East coast of the U.S., which gas companies are currently fracking into submission, had a metric buttload of natural gas. Turns out it only 0.2 metric buttloads." (I'm paraphrasing.)

Yesterday, the USGS's estimate of U.S. reserves of gas trapped in the Marcellus shale went from 410 trillion "technically recoverable" cubic feet of gas to 84 trillion in the span of a single report.

Because this week is Ragnarok and, basically, ghouls are in charge, the natural gas industry actually cheered this report, noting that it still represented significantly more reserves than the USGS estimated were in the shale in 2002. Back then, before fracking was widespread, it was estimated there were only 2 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable gas in the Marcellus.

Also important: none of these estimates reflect how much of this gas can profitably be extracted from the ground. Because that mostly depends on how desperate we become and how hard we decide to ignore the down sides of fracking.

straight to the source

• Geologists Sharply Cut Estimate of Shale Gas, New York Times

Sarah Laskow" - European farmers spend millions on knock-off pesticides

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-26-european-farmers-spend-millions-on-knock-off-pesticides

by Sarah Laskow / 26 Aug 2011

Buying a knock-off Louis Vuitton bag is one thing, but in Europe, farmers are buying knock-off pesticides. Counterfeit pesticides have become a multimillion industry over there, and if that sounds like bad news, it is: According to the Wall Street Journal, these knock-offs contain a solvent that the European Union banned because it's a huge problem for pregnant women.

The WSJ's article also makes the E.U.'s efforts to deal with the problem sound like a giant clusterf*ck. There are loopholes in counterfeiting laws that mean customs can't seize the fake pesticides. The company that's been ripped off has to deal with the goods and try to recoup costs from counterfeiters, who are obviously the sort of people who'll say, "Whoops, you found me! Here are the millions of euros I made selling nasty, dangerous goods under your name!" (Or, as the WSJ puts it: "[P]ractically this can prove complicated and even impossible, as many of these companies are beyond EU jurisdiction or completely bogus.")

This stuff makes it into the food supply, too. In 2006, Spanish farmers used the pesticides, grew a bunch of vegetables, and shipped them out to the rest of Europe before anyone noticed something was amiss. And in Eastern Europe, 50 percent of all pesticides are counterfeit, and some farmers buy them on purpose:

Farmers who responded to a questionnaire from the European Business Association in Kiev on behalf of The Wall Street Journal said that half had bought counterfeit pesticides in the past -- a fifth of them knowingly, because they are cheaper than the branded goods or because they didn't realize the risks. In 10%-20% of cases, farmers said they lost their entire crop because of the chemicals.

straight to the source

• Fake Pesticides Are a Growing Danger, Wall Street Journal

"Climate Central" - Climate change has made New Yorkers more vulnerable to Irene

http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-08-27-climate-change-has-made-new-yorkers-more-vulnerable-to-irene

by Climate Central / 27 Aug 2011

Hurricanes inflict some of their greatest damage by pushing walls of water onto land, in what are called storm surges. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that Hurricane Irene may generate peak surges of up to 10 feet high in places along the Mid-Atlantic coast. Tall wave action will compound the threat in exposed areas. And over the last century, mostly due to global warming, sea level has risen about a foot along much of the coast, placing even more people and homes at risk than would have otherwise been the case.

This map below shows lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and New Jersey. The blue area identifies the land zone within five vertical feet of the average high tide line, toward the upper end of the range of surge heights NOAA is predicting for the immediate area. Based on 2010 Census information and Climate Central's map analysis, almost a quarter million (233,000) people live in this zone for all of New York City. That's 28 percent (65,000 people) more than live within the four-foot zone -- the line we would be talking about if the sea hadn’t risen a foot over the last hundred years. About two-thirds of that rise appears to come from global warming.

This map is not intended to predict the flooding risk from Irene, which will come from complex combinations of surge, wind, and wave action. It merely illustrates land area less than five feet above the average high-tide line.

Click to see a larger version.

Climate Central is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is comprised of journalists and climate scientists dedicated to communicating accurate and compelling climate science information.

"Bruce E. Levine" - 3 Things That Must Happen for Us To Rise Up and Defeat the Corporatocracy

http://www.alternet.org/story/152158/3_things_that_must_happen_for_us_to_rise_up_and_defeat_the_corporatocracy/ 

By  Bruce E. Levine

Most Americans oppose rule by the corporatocracy but don't have the tools to fight back. Here are three things we need to create a real people's movement.

August 25, 2011

  

Transforming the United States into something closer to a democracy requires: 1) knowledge of how we are getting screwed; 2) pragmatic tactics, strategies, and solutions; and 3) the “energy to do battle.”

The majority of Americans oppose the corporatocracy (rule by giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator government officials); however, many of us have given up hope that this tyranny can be defeated. Among those of us who continue to be politically engaged, many focus on only one of the requirements—knowledge of how we are getting screwed. And this singular focus can result in helplessness. It is the two other requirements that can empower, energize, and activate Team Democracy— a team that is currently at the bottom of the standings in the American Political League.

1. Knowledge of How We are Getting Screwed

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