Robert Scheer: Be Consistent—Invade Saudi Arabia

It’s the black gold that drives nations mad and inevitably raises the question of whether America and the former European colonial powers give a damn about human rights as the basis for military intervention. If Libya didn’t have more oil than any other nation in Africa would the West be unleashing high-tech military mayhem to contain what is essentially a tribal-based civil war? Once again an American president summons the passions of a human rights crusade against a reprehensible ruler whose crimes, while considerable, are not significantly different from those of dictators the U.S routinely protects

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3/4ths of Senate GOP Doesn't Believe in Science -- When Did Republicans Go Completely Off the Deep End?

You’ve got to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 for a precedent to the anti-science mania that is currently sweeping the GOP. Then, the issue was teaching Darwin’s work on evolution in the schools. Today, the issue is global warming. Then, as now, large numbers of politicians tapped into the stratum of popular culture that simply rejects science as the basis for public or personal decisions. The chief prosecutor of high school teacher John Scopes, William Jennings Bryan, gloated that literal interpretation of the Bible trumped scientific knowledge. This resonated with large masses of ordinary folks, the ones H. L. Mencken and the liberal press were calling “yokels” and “morons.”

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How the FDA Turned a $10 Treatment into a $30,000-Per-Pregnancy Pharmaceutical Money-Maker

When a new FDA drug-and-money scandal has doctors, US senators, and even the March of Dimes in an uproar, you know it’s bad.

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Is China Backing Indian Insurgents?

The arrest in January of a Chinese spy who allegedly met insurgents in the northeast of the country may suggest an effort to destabilize India.

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Tom Engelhardt: Irradiated Zone -- Don’t Go There!

“Seldom more than thrice annually did any layman or stranger travel the old road that passed the abbey, in spite of the oasis which permitted that abbey’s existence and which would have made the monastery a natural inn for wayfarers if the road were not a road from nowhere, leading nowhere, in terms of the modes of travel in those times. Perhaps, in earlier ages, the road had been a portion of the shortest route from the Great Salt Lake to Old El Paso; south of the abbey it intersected a similar strip of broken stone that stretched east- and westward. The crossing was worn by time, but not by Man, of late.”

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World Water Day Report: African Cities Outgrow Their Water Supplies

Africa's cities are growing at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world, stressing drinking water supplies and sanitation services, says a new UN report released to mark World Water Day 2011.

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David Korten: Our Growth Economy -- A System Designed to Crash

The unrealistic expectation that money should grow effortlessly in perpetuity [see my last blog] is more than an issue of unrealizable expectations. It combines with a Wall Street controlled debt-based money system to create an imperative for the economy to grow the profits of bankers, and thereby the richest among us, to keep the financial system, and thereby the economy, from collapsing

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First North Pole Ozone Hole Forming?

Spawned by strangely cold temperatures, "beautiful" clouds helped strip the Arctic atmosphere of most of its protective ozone this winter, new research shows. The resulting zone of low-ozone air could drift as far south as New York, according to experts who warn of increased skin-cancer risk.

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True Obama debt bigger than planet's entire GDP

As the Obama administration prepares to finance a Fiscal Year 2011 budget deficit expected to top $1.6 trillion, the American public is largely unaware that the true negative net worth of the federal government reached $76.3 trillion last year.

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"Ankita Mattoo" - Sri Sri advocates organic farming in HP

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Sri-Sri-advocates-organic-farming-in-HP/articleshow/7759523.cms

Ankita Mattoo, TNN | Mar 22, 2011

SOLAN: Spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar advocated the use of organic farming in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh, where, he said, farm practices were still saved from the menace of pesticides.

The founder of Art of Living Foundation sent out a strong message to use spirituality to remove the growing lack of trust among people and also root out social evils.

"Dhayan and pranayam can be effective tools to bring us closer to each other," he said. He also made an appeal, particularly to doctors, to take a pledge to put an end to female foeticide and effectively contribute to empowerment of women. Citing the example of southern states where alcohol is not served at weddings, Sri Sri said this needs to be propagated in Himachal as well where drinking is common at such occasions.

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