Josh Golin & Susan Linn - Save the Lorax: Shun the New Film

Universal Studio’s animated film The Lorax opened in theaters this past week and environmentalists and people who care about children are already outraged—with good reason. For more than forty years, the Dr. Seuss classic has been a clarion call for reducing consumption and promoting conservation. But the book’s eloquent environmental message is being crushed by the film’s slew of corporate cross-promotions. 

The Lorax, who once spoke for the trees, now speaks for corporations. While he once warned how rampant greed and consumerism destroyed the Truffula Trees, he now sells Truffula Chip Pancakes at IHOP. The Lorax, who taught a powerful lesson about the fragility of ecosystems by describing the fate of the Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans, and Humming-Fish after their forest was destroyed,  now welcomes consumers-in-training at Target, Pottery Barn Kids, and Whole Foods. His image is emblazoned on Seventh Generation diapers and packages of YoKids Yogurt. He’s marketing HP in classrooms. And he’s promoting Target, Comcast Xfinity, and more through online Lorax advergames and sweepstakes.  

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/01-12

One soldier, one year: $850,000 and rising

Keeping one American service member in Afghanistan costs between $850,000 and $1.4 million a year, depending on who you ask. But one matter is clear, that cost is going up.

During a budget hearing today on Capitol Hill, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, asked Department of Defense leaders, "What is the cost per soldier, to maintain a soldier for a year in Afghanistan?" Under Secretary Robert Hale, the Pentagon comptroller, responded "Right now about $850,000 per soldier."

Conrad seemed shocked at the number.

"That kind of takes my breath away, when you tell me it's $850,000," Conrad said

A Pentagon spokesman later said a more accurate figure is $815,000 a year.

Read More:

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/28/one-soldier-one-year-850000-and-rising/

Current Rate of Ocean Acidification Worst in 300 Million Years

Science has published a troubling but not entirely surprising article on the fact that the oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate in 300 million years. Actually, it could be the fastest rate over an even longer time period, but we can only go back with any degree of accuracy for 300 million years.

We first wrote about this issue in early 2007, and this section, which quoted Stormy from Angry Bear, will help bring readers up to speed:

….there are side effects to our love affair with CO2 that are not often mentioned. In fact, whether the earth cools or warms is absolutely irrelevant to these effects. I repeat: Absolutely irrelevant.

One of the most startling effects is the acidification of the oceans. Since 1750, the oceans have become increasingly acidic. In the oceans, CO2 forms carbonic acid, a serious threat to the base of the food chain, especially on shellfish of all sizes. Carbonic acid dissolves calcium carbonate, an essential component of any life form with an exoskeleton. In short, all life forms with an exoskeleton are threatened: shell fish, an important part of the food chain for many fish; coral reefs, the habitat of many species of fish….

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/current-rate-of-ocean-acidification-worst-in-300-million-years.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

David Rosen - You Are Being Tracked Online: Here Are 5 Ways to Protect Your Privacy

If you listen carefully when you turn on your smartphone or tablet computer or go online using your computer, you’ll hear a deep sucking sound. That's the sound of all your personal data being gobbled up by a growing array of digital service providers.

On Feb. 23, the White House issued a long-awaited report outlining a framework for personal cyber privacy, “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Global Innovation in the Global Digital Economy.” Billing itself a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights," the report stresses the need for transparency, security, accuracy and a reasonable limits to what is collected.

Unfortunately, this “white paper” is in keeping with the Obama administration’s overall policy of compromise so that both policy and principle meet the vested interests of those with power. As with the banking and financial service regulation or oversight over healthcare providers, insurance companies and big pharma companies, the interests of the digital data collectors and the advertising industry will be furthered while the privacy rights of ordinary digital user will be sacrificed.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154419/you_are_being_tracked_online%3A_here_are_5_ways_to_protect_your_privacy

Robert Scheer - The Ayatollah Is Right About One Thing: Nuclear Weapons Are Sinful

Given my own deep prejudice toward religious zealotry, it has not been difficult for me to accept the conventional American view that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme theocratic ruler of Iran, is a dangerous madman never to be trusted with a nuclear weapon. How then to explain his recent seemingly logical and humane religious proclamations on the immorality of nuclear weapons? His statement challenges the acceptance of nuclear war-fighting as an option by every U.S. president since Harry Truman, who, in 1945, ordered the deaths of 185,000 mostly innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“We do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons—quite the opposite,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Tuesday in summarizing the ayatollah’s views. Salehi added, “The production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin.”

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_ayatollah_is_right_about_one_thing_nuclear_weapons_are_sinful_20120229/

More Americans believe in climate change: poll

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that climate change is real — the highest level in two years — as the public trusted its own observations of rising temperatures, a poll said Tuesday.

The growing acceptance of global warming comes despite fierce political division over the issue in the world’s largest economy, with proposals to mandate cuts on carbon emissions failing in Congress.

Sixty-two percent of Americans agree that there is solid evidence that the Earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past four decades, according to the survey by the University of Michigan’s Gerald Ford School of Public Policy and the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.

Twenty-six percent said they did not believe there was evidence of global warming, while the remaining 12 percent said they were unsure, the poll said.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/28/more-americans-believe-in-climate-change-poll/

Daniel Alpert - Tinkerbell Economics – The Confidence Fairy, Pixie Dust and a Sleeping Dragon

While we may be hours away from a partial (and certainly a stopgap) agreement in the talks among the Greek government, the troika and private sector creditors, it is doubtful that a deal will emerge in a fully constructed fashion that will survive its application in the real economy.

It is likely that the only common view amongst participants in the various talks is a desire to try to avoid a disorderly default.  Beyond that there is a severe disconnect fostered by parallel realities that seem unable to intersect. Accordingly, a deal that can hold up both in the streets of Greece and in the markets is both illusive and unlikely.  Here’s why I think so.

Recently I have had opportunities to meet with and question senior members of the economics establishment within the German government and the broader German intelligentsia.  Our meetings were held under Chatham House rules so I can’t name names, but – after several meetings with policy delegations from Germany over the past 60 days – I am prepared to sum up what appears to be the pretty-universally-held German policy position as follows (my apologies if the below evidences some degree of frustration – but these encounters leave me quite chagrined):

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http://www.economonitor.com/danalperts2cents/2012/02/06/tinkerbell-economics-the-confidence-fairy-pixie-dust-and-a-sleeping-dragon/

Simon Johnson - Making the United States More Like Greece

One of the big problems in Greece over the past decade or so is that the government was not honest with its data.  Various people assisted in the matter – including Goldman Sachs with respect to some debt issues – but ultimately this was a political decision at the highest level.  The people running the country decided to conceal the true nature of their budget and their debt.  This deception ended up costing the country dearly – completely undermining its credibility under pressure and making it much harder to turn the fiscal and economic situation around.

House Republicans are now proposing something similar for the United States.

Because this concerns deficits and debt, the details may seem arcane – and that is how similar details escaped attention by almost everyone in Greece.  Fortunately, in the United States we have an excellent guide – an article in Tax Notes by John Buckley.  (“Dynamic Scoring: Will S&P Have Company?,” February 28, 2012; at the moment this is available only behind their paywall but in the public interest I would strongly encourage Tax Notes to make this piece freely available – as they have in the past for other important articles.)

Read More:

http://baselinescenario.com/2012/03/02/making-the-united-states-more-like-greece/

Henry Giroux - The Scorched-Earth Politics of America's Four Fundamentalisms

Introduction

Americans seem confident in the mythical notion that the United States is a free nation dedicated to reproducing the principles of equality, justice and democracy. What has been ignored in this delusional view is the growing rise of an expanded national security state since 2001 and an attack on individual rights that suggests that the United States has more in common with authoritarian regimes like China and Iran "than anyone may like to admit."(1) I want to address this seemingly untenable notion that the United States has become a breeding ground for authoritarianism by focusing on four fundamentalisms: market fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism, educational fundamentalism and military fundamentalism. This is far from a exhaustive list, but it does raise serious questions about how the claim to democracy in the United States has been severely damaged, if not made impossible.

The broader contours of the attack on democratic freedoms have become obvious in recent years. While the Bush administration engaged in torture, shamelessly violated civil liberties and put a host of Christian extremists in high-ranking governmental positions, the Obama administration has not only continued many of these policies, but has further institutionalized them. As Glenn Greenwald has reminded us, Obama has continued the Bush-Cheney terrorism and civil liberties policies, further undermining constitutional rights by promoting indefinite detention, weakening the rights of habeas corpus for prisoners in Afghanistan, extending government power through the state secrets privilege, asserting the right to target American citizens for assassination and waging war on whistle blowers.(2) More specifically, there are the ongoing revelations about the Obama administration's decision under the National Defense Authorization Act to allow American citizens to be held indefinitely without charge or trial; the government's increased role in using special operations forces and drones in targeted assassinations; the emergence and use of sophisticated surveillance technologies to spy on protesters; the invocation of the state secrecy practices; the suspension of civil liberties that allow various government agencies to spy on Americans without first obtaining warrants; and the stories about widespread abuse and torture by the US military in Afghanistan, not to mention the popular support for torture among the American public.(3) It gets worse. As the war on terror degenerated in a war on democracy, a host of legal illegalities have been established that put the rule of law if not the very principle of Western jurisprudence into a chokehold. How such assaults on the rule of law, justice and democracy could take place without massive resistance represents one of the most reprehensible moments in American history. Most Americans caught in the grip of simply trying to survive or paralyzed in a relentless culture of fear ignored the assaults on democracy unleashed by a burgeoning national security state. The assaults loom large and are evident in the passage of the Use of Military Force Act, the passage of the Patriot Act, the 2002 Homeland Security Act, the Military Commission Act of 2006 and the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Jim Garrison rightly raises the question about whether these acts inspired by 9/11 and the war on terror are worth sacrificing the Republic. He writes:

Read More:

http://www.truth-out.org/scorched-earth-politics-americas-four-fundamentalisms/1330979344

The Aliens Are Coming: New Study Shows Invasive Seeds Threatening Antarctic

Climate change isn't the only thing affecting the pristine Antarctic ecosystem. Tourists and scientists are inadvertently bringing invasive plants seeds with them to the Antarctic, and the plants are likely to spread as the climate warms, a new study says.

The study (pdf), published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that the environment of the Antarctic will likely be degraded by the the establishment of nonindigenous species.

The study states:

Terrestrial Antarctica remains one of the most pristine environments on Earth. However, much concern now exists that the combination of accelerating climate change and the rapidly growing scope and extent of scientific and tourist activities will lead to substantial environmental degradation. One of the primary drivers of this change is thought to be the increasing prospect of the establishment of terrestrial, invasive, nonindigenous species. [...]

[I]t is clear that several areas of Antarctica are at considerable risk from the establishment of nonindigenous species and that the highest risk sites are those along the Western Antarctic Peninsula.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/06-6