Robert Reich - The American Middle Class Is Becoming Poor, and Mitt Romney Doesn’t Realize It

January’s increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story – the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.

Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy – hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary workers, retail and restaurant. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain working only because they’ve agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. Others are settling for jobs that pay less than the jobs they’ve lost. Entry-level manufacturing jobs are paying half what entry-level manufacturing jobs paid six years ago.

Other people are falling out of the middle class because they’ve lost their jobs, and many have also lost their homes. Almost one in three families with a mortgage is now underwater, holding their breath against imminent foreclosure.

Read More:

http://robertreich.org/post/17162027435

William Pfaff - Europe Decides Not to Play America’s Game

The annual Munich Security Conference is regularly the scene for the complaints of American official and semiofficial participants deploring Europe’s failure “to pull its weight” in defense, “free-riding” on American efforts, and failing to spend more money on trans-Atlantic arms purchases. Instead they spend money on their own-make arms and military aircraft, such as the French Rafale and EADS’ Eurofighter, which they sell to such overseas markets as India that might otherwise buy American.

Courtesy restrains the European participants from asking what the threat is, against which Europe is being defended by the United States. The complaint reasonable Americans usually make in this matter is that the U.S. is massively over-armed against any existing or plausible future threat to the United States itself.

Surely 11 nuclear carrier groups with accompanying support is not required to fight the remnants of al-Qaida, nor have they proven decisive against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/europe_decides_not_to_play_americas_game_20120207/

Monsanto, Agent Orange Creator, Returns To Vietnam

Multinational agricultural biotech corporation Monsanto, known as the creator of chemical weapon Agent Orange, is attempting to infiltrate Vietnam once again -- this time as GMO dealer.

Agent Orange, used for chemical warfare in the Vietnam War, is estimated to have killed 400,000, deformed 500,000 and sickened another 2 million. "Between 2.1 to 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly exposed to Agent Orange and other chemicals that have been linked to cancers, birth defects, and other chronic diseases during the war that ended in 1975, according to the Vietnam Red Cross," Thanh Nienn News writes.

30 years after the war, three generations have suffered from the effects of Agent Orange.

Now, as Monsanto seeks to reap profits in Vietnam once again, this time through agribusiness, many are speaking out against the corporation as well as the potential effects of the GM seeds and herbicides that Monsanto seeks to sell.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/07-5

More than hundred dolphins beached in Cape Cod baffle scientists

Animal rescuers are working to save more than a hundred common dolphins beached off Cape Cod, Mass., since January 12. Marine scientists have been unable to explain the recent pattern of dolphins being washed ashore.

The recent beachings have been described as the largest single-species stranding ever in that part of the U.S. According to Daily Mail, of 116 common dolphins that beached on Cape Cod since January 12, three died on Friday, bringing the total number of deaths to 84. CNN reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had reported that 81 dolphins died at Cape Cod in the series of strandings that began last month. According to ABC News, hundreds of volunteers are working to save the dolphins by releasing them into deep water. CNN says the animals are transported by trailer, after they have been tagged, to an outer Cape Cod coast where they are released. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has rescued 31 dolphins and attached satellite tags to them to track their movements. According to Brian Sharp, an IFAW official: “Right now we’re at around 66 percent. We release them off beaches where it gets deep quite quickly. From all these signs that we’ve seen from this event, the satellite tags look very good. We had a pregnant female dolphin that we were able to release. We began doing our health exam and sure enough we discovered that the dolphin was pregnant with probably a third trimester calf.” This season is usually the period in which strandings peak near Cape Cod but the number of strandings this year is far beyond the usual pattern over 12 years. There has been a spike in the number of strandings this year and marine experts have been left guessing the cause of the upsurge.

Read More:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/319045#ixzz1lkjgXAfY

Starhawk - 6 Ways to Empower Others

An empowering leader holds and serves a vision broad and deep enough to inspire others and allow them to take parts of it and make it their own. When Rob Hopkins founded the Transition Town movement, his vision was to take the insights of permaculture and ecological design and apply them on a local community level. That was a big vision, far too big for any one person to realize alone. Within it, there was room for many people to step up and realize their own creative ideas and pursue their interests—how to transform a vacant lot into a community garden, how to plant forest gardens in city parks, how to influence policy around water resources or investment in renewable energy. Rob’s original vision called many people into their own power and leadership.

An empowering leader helps the group develop a strategy—a plan for getting from here to there, with milestones and goals along the way.

An empowering leader rarely uses Command mode. Most of the time, she leads by example and persuasion. But when command is called for, an empowering leader will step forward and then step back into a more democratic mode once the need has passed.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/6-ways-empower-others-1328285619 

Robert Jensen - Prophetic Politics: Charting a Healthy Role for Religion in Public Life

Does God take sides in the elections? Is there a voters’ guide hiding in our holy books? Should we pray for electoral inspiration?

Secular people tend to answer an emphatic “NO” to those questions, as do most progressive religious folk. Because religious fundamentalists so often present an easy-to-caricature version of faith-based politics -- even to the point of implying that God would want us to vote for certain candidates -- it’s tempting to want to banish all talk of the divine from political life.

But a blanket claim that “religion and politics don’t mix” misunderstands the inevitable connection between the two. Whether secular or religious, our political judgments are always rooted in first principles -- claims about what it means to be human that can’t be reduced to evidence and logic. Should people act purely out of self-interest, or is solidarity with others just as important? Do we owe loyalty to a nation-state? Under what conditions, if any, is the taking of a human life justified? What is the appropriate relationship of human beings to the larger living world?

These basic moral/spiritual questions underlie everyone’s politics, and our answers are shaped by the philosophical and/or theological systems in which we find inspiration and insight. Since everyone’s political positions reflect their foundational commitments, it doesn’t seem fair to say that those grounded in a secular philosophy can draw on their traditions, but people whose political outlooks are rooted in religion have to mute themselves.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/prophetic-politics-charting-healthy-role-religion-public-life-1328365026

Tana Ganeva - 7 Privacy Threats the Constitution Can't Protect You Against

The week before last, the Roberts Supreme Court uncharacteristically handed down a decisionthat doesn't radically infringe on civil liberties. The justices unanimously ruled that police overshot their authority by planting a GPS device on suspected drug dealer Antoine Jones' car without a warrant, tracking his movements for over a month. For now, Americans can rest assured that police can't secretly tag them -- at least without a warrant.

At the same time, privacy advocates pointed out -- and some of the justices admitted -- that the court's majority opinion in US vs. Jones completely skirted more pressing privacy issues. The problem, the majority argued, was that police had trespassed on Jones' private property by planting a GPS device on his car. The majority opinion did not address whether or not it's okay for law enforcement to use a sophisticated surveillance technology to log someone's movements for a whole month without a warrant. 

In separate, concurring opinions Justices Alito and Sotomayor both warned of the multitude of surveillance technologies that do not require intrusion onto private property to trample privacy rights. Here's a (non-comprehensive) breakdown of existing or impending technologies that make our privacy protections wildly outdated. 

1. Everything you use, all the time.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153999/7_privacy_threats_the_constitution_can%27t_protect_you_against

Robert Hunziker - Third World Capitalism

How did this happen? America, the czar of capitalism, is becoming a third world country!

According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report 46.2 million Americans are poor. Of course, the naysaying dissenters claim poor families, as defined in the U.S., include households with adequate food most of the time, a home, a TV, a telephone, and likely a DVD and/or a PC, and a car. Not so bad after all! This is likely very true; however, consider the poverty threshold, as defined by the Census Bureau, for a family with two children in 2010 at $22,113; dissenting naysayers say: So what, over three billion people live on less than $2.50 per day. So, what’s up with this claim that 46.2 million people in America are poor? Are they really poor?

A typical family of four in America spends $664.20 per month on food, assuming they eat on a low-cost plan, according to the USDA statistics; a liberal plan is $1013.80/mo. This means the family has $1,178.55/mo. remaining for everything else like health insurance of $414/mo., which is the nationwide average monthly premium. Thus, the family of four has 764.55 remaining for items like car payments, and the average car payment in America is $475, but since these are the poor, let’s assume it is half this amount for an inferior car or $237.50/mo., and average car insurance according to a national index is $137.91/mo. and median monthly housing costs run about $700 for renters. Adding and subtracting all above= a negative $310.86 per month. Thus, the average family of four has to cut out $310.86/mo. from food, health insurance, transportation, or housing costs in order to break even. No wonder so many Americans do not have health insurance because if they eliminate health insurance, they have $103.14, or $3.44 per day, left over for washing clothes, dental, movies, shopping for clothing or shoes, books, magazines, gasoline, car repairs, emergency expenses and whatever else one desires. They really are poor!

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/02/03/THIRD-WORLD-CAPITALISM/

Food Herbicide Residues Set to Rise As Much As 150 Times

*Proposed new level already breached 100 times over

Monsanto has applied to increase the EU’s permitted Maximum Residue Level (MRL) for its best-selling herbicide glyphosate in lentils. Proposals before the EU would mean increasing the current legal residue level by 100-150 times. [1] The chemical is widely used on GM crops and elsewhere for weed control and to dry crops prior to harvest.

The current EU MRL for glyphosate in lentils is 0.1 mg/kg. The proposal aims to raise this level to 10 mg/kg, or even 15mg/kg. [1] Rather than being based exclusively on safety grounds, the proposed new MRL appears to be partly based on levels already likely to be found in lentils as a result of the weedkiller being used close to harvest.

The proposed new level was recently breached by a shipment of Canadian lentils for human consumption. The Czech Republic withdrew the cargo from the market when it discovered glyphosate residues exceeding both EU and Canadian MRLs (tested at 10.5 mg/kg [2], more than 100 times the EU MRL; the current Canadian MRL for lentils is 4 mg/kg [3]).

Read More:

http://www.gmfreeze.org/news-releases/180/

Chris Hedges - The Cancer in Occupy

The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power. They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe.

Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment. They confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution. The real enemies, they argue, are not the corporate capitalists, but their collaborators among the unions, workers’ movements, radical intellectuals, environmental activists and populist movements such as the Zapatistas. Any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, rather than physically destroy, becomes, in the eyes of Black Bloc anarchists, the enemy. Black Bloc anarchists spend most of their fury not on the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or globalism, but on those, such as the Zapatistas, who respond to the problem. It is a grotesque inversion of value systems.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/