Gareth Porter - Ex-Inspector Rejects IAEA Iran Bomb Test Chamber Claim

By Gareth Porter

Global Research, November 20, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27770

A former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repudiated its major new claim that Iran built an explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion. The IAEA claim that a foreign scientist - identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko - had been involved in building the alleged containment chamber has now been denied firmly by Danilenko himself in an interview with Radio Free Europe published Friday.  The latest report by the IAEA cited "information provided by Member States" that Iran had constructed "a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments" - meaning simulated explosions of nuclear weapons - in its Parchin military complex in 2000.  The report said it had "confirmed" that a "large cylindrical object" housed at the same complex had been "designed to contain the detonation of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives". That amount of explosives, it said, would be "appropriate" for testing a detonation system to trigger a nuclear weapon.

Click to read more ...

Camila Ruz - Amphibians facing 'terrifying' rate of extinction

Researchers say tropical regions of richest diversity are most at risk of losing frogs, toads, newts and salamanders

Camila Ruz

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 November 2011 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/16/amphibians-terrifying-extinction-threat

If the current rapid extermination of animals, plants and other species really is the "sixth mass extinction", then it is the amphibian branch of the tree of life that is undergoing the most drastic pruning.

In research described as "terrifying" by an independent expert, scientists predict the future for frogs, toads, newts and salamanders is even more bleak than conservationists had realised.

Around half of amphibian species are in decline, while a third are already threatened with extinction. But scientists now predict that areas with the highest diversity of amphibian species will be under the most intense threat in the future.

And they warn that a three-pronged threat could also cause populations to decline faster than previously thought.

Like many creatures, amphibians have been hit hard by climate change and habitat loss. But they have also been decimated by the spread of the deadly fungal disease chytridiomycosis.

One in three of the world's amphibians are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of endangered species. These include the Malagasy rainbow frog that lives in the rocky forests of Madagascar. It has the ability to inflate itself when under attack and can climb vertical rock faces. Found in an area smaller than 100 square kilometres, it is a prime target for the pet trade.

Click to read more ...

Jill Richardson - 5 Ridiculous Myths People Use to Trash Local Food -- And Why They're Wrong

By Jill Richardson, AlterNet

Posted on November 18, 2011, Printed on November 20, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153121/5_ridiculous_myths_people_use_to_trash_local_food_--_and_why_they%27re_wrong 

It's become predictable. At nearly regular intervals, someone, somewhere, will decide it's time to write another article "debunking" the local food movement. The latest installment is by Steve Sexton, posted on the Freakonomics blog (which also treated us to a previous post called "Do We Really Need a Few Billion Locavores?") And we must not forget the leading anti-locavore, James McWilliams, who gave us "The Locavore Myth" and many other, similar articles.

The arguments are stale, shallow and often incorrect. But if you enjoy the flavor of organic heirloom tomatoes, fresh picked from the farm, here's how to read these articles without filling with guilt that your love of local food is doing the planet in and starving people in the Global South.

Myth #1: People who eat local eat the same diet as those who don't.

Click to read more ...

Ellen Brown - SUPER COMMITTEE DEADLOCK: HEADS THEY WIN, TAILS WE LOSE

Ellen Brown

November 17, 2011
www.webofdebt.com/articles/super.php

It is no great surprise that with only days to go, the congressional “super committee,” given the herculean task of carving an additional $1.2 trillion out of the federal budget, has failed to reach agreement.  Why should six Republicans and six Democrats with diametrically opposed views agree in a few weeks, when Congress couldn’t shake hands on it after months of wrangling, despite the guillotine blade of a federal default hanging over their heads?      

Whether the super committee reaches agreement or not, however, the deficit hawks win.  If they agree, either $1.2 trillion gets cut from the budget or taxes go up by that amount; and the committee co-chair has categorically stated taxes are not going up, so that means the budget will be cut.  If agreement is not reached, $1.2 trillion in cuts automatically kick in, split evenly between domestic and military spending.  Either way, the economy will wind up with $1.2 trillion less in the way purchasing power.  The result will be to reduce demand, kill jobs, and put more people on the streets.

For the deficit hawks, however, it all seems to be going according to plan.  The super committee is characterized as an emergency measure that was rushed through to avoid an arbitrarily imposed August deadline for freezing the debt ceiling, but it has actually been in the works for years.  In 2009, it was called the “Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action”.  That plan died when its Senate sponsors, Judd Gregg and Kent Conrad, failed to secure 60 votes for passage in the Senate.  The Gregg-Conrad bill was criticized as railroading through legislation that would unconstitutionally slash domestic services without congressional debate, but its task force would actually have been LESS autocratic than the super committee, which has sweeping powers and needs only a simple majority among its 12 members to prevail.

Click to read more ...

Robert Reich - Stop the Austerity Train Wreck!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Stop-the-Austerity-Train-W-by-Robert-Reich-111118-956.html

November 18, 2011 By Robert Reich The biggest question right now on Planet Washington is whether the congressional supercommittee will reach an agreement. That's the wrong question. Agreement or not, Washington is on the road to making budget cuts that will slow the economy, increase unemployment, and impose additional hardship on millions of Americans. The real question is how to stop this austerity train wreck. The biggest question right now on Planet Washington is whether the congressional supercommittee will reach an agreement. That's the wrong question. Agreement or not, Washington is on the road to making budget cuts that will slow the economy, increase unemployment, and impose additional hardship on millions of Americans.   The real question is how to stop this austerity train wreck, and substitute the following: FIRST : no cuts before jobs are back -- until unemployment is down to 5 percent. Until then, the economy needs a boost, not a cut. Consumers -- whose spending is 70 percent of the economy -- don't have the money to boost the economy on their own. Their pay is dropping and they're losing jobs.    SECOND : Make the boost big enough. 14 million Americans are out of work, and 10 million are working part time who need full-time jobs. The President's proposed jobs program is a start but it's tiny relative to what needs to be done. It would create fewer than 2 million jobs. We need a big jobs program -- rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure, and including a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps. THIRD: To pay for this, raise taxes on the super-rich. It's only fair. Never before has so much income and wealth been concentrated at the very top, and taxes on the top so low. Go back to the 70 percent marginal tax we had before 1980. And include more tax brackets at the top. It doesn't make sense that any income over $375,000 is taxed at the same 35 percent, even if it's a billion dollars. And tax all sources of income at the same rate, including capital gains.   FOURTH: Cut the budget where the real bloat is. Military spending and corporate welfare. End weapons systems that don't work and stop wars we shouldn't be fighting to begin with, and we save over $300 billion a year. Cut corporate welfare -- subsidies and special tax breaks going to big agribusiness, big oil, big pharma, and big insurance -- and we save another $100 billion. Do you hear me, Washington? Do these four things and restore jobs and prosperity. Fail to do these, and you'll make things much, much worse.

Lynn Parramore - Back to the Future? Generation X and Occupy Wall Street

By Lynn Parramore, AlterNet

Posted on November 16, 2011, Printed on November 20, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153100/back_to_the_future_generation_x_and_occupy_wall_street 

The following is an excerpt from AlterNet's forthcoming book, The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement is Changing America, which tells the gripping story of the emergence, expansion and influence of a phenomenon poised to transform our ideological landscape and unleash our potential to reinvent our society. 

The year was 1974. My family was gathered around the shrine of the living room television. I was four years old, aware only that something momentous must be happening to draw such rapt attention. A jowly, vaguely menacing-looking man with dark hair was reading a speech.

"What is it, Daddy?"

"The president is getting kicked out on his butt."

My introduction to the world of politics was learning that the leader of my country was a no-good crook. Welcome to Generation X.

People wonder why those born between 1965 and 1980 tend to be nihilistic and wary of commitment. Why many of us keep an ironic distance between ourselves and just about everything. That's because so many aspects of the culture we inherited were a form of lie told to us daily. And unlike previous generations, we never really got a hero. No FDR. No Camelot. Just one jerk after another trying to sell us snakeoil with a smile. The only president who even made an attempt to do things honestly, Jimmy Carter, was branded a fool.

Click to read more ...

Dean Baker - Will the Euro be Destroyed?

NOVEMBER 18-20, 2011

An Ideological Tragedy

by DEAN BAKER

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/18/will-the-euro-be-destroyed/

We could be living through the last days of the euro. That is not a happy thought. While there were many negative aspects to the rules governing the European Central Bank and the eurozone economies, no one can want to see the economic chaos that will almost certainly follow the collapse of the euro.

There will likely be a wave of bank collapses as banks are forced to write down much of the debt they hold in Italy, Ireland and other heavily indebted countries. This would bring about another Lehman-type situation where finance freezes up. Banks would stop lending to each other and even healthy businesses would find it difficult to obtain credit.

That is the story of a severe double-dip in the eurozone, with the spillover effect almost certainly pushing the United States and most of the rest of the world into recession.  It could easily be over a decade until these economies recover from the damage.

Click to read more ...

Elizabeth Whitman - U.S. Bottled Water Companies Target Minorities, But So Do Soda Firms

Elizabeth Whitman 

IPS New, November 19, 2011

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105903

NEW YORK, Nov 19 (IPS) - Water is the lifeblood of this planet, whose inhabitants are watching its accelerated spiral into crisis mode even as they struggle to address the issues and lifestyles that are stretching the earth's resources thin.

Outwardly, the global water crisis appears straightforward - people simply consume too much water. A key factor in this spiral is the fact that water has been morphing from a natural resource into a marketable - and costly - product, experts and reports have shown. 

Exploring different aspects of the global water crisis, from privatisation of water to corporations marketing to minorities, reveals that water - as a human right, as a product, as a natural resource - is firmly entangled with a host of issues in areas, including public health. 

By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in areas with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world's population - projected to reach eight billion by then - will be under stress conditions. Some 1.4 billion currently lack access to safe water. 

Click to read more ...

Travis Waldron - Former JPMorgan Banker: Exploiting Consumers Is ‘The Purpose Of The Banking Organization’

By Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress

Posted on November 18, 2011, Printed on November 19, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153129/former_jpmorgan_banker%3A_exploiting_consumers_is_%E2%80%98the_purpose_of_the_banking_organization%E2%80%99

 Wall Street banks, largely spared from the economic ruin felt by millions of Americans since the financial crisis of 2008, have returned to profitability, generating higher profits in the two-and-a-half years since the crisis than they did in nearly eight years preceding it. But that hasn’t stopped them from seeking new ways to generate revenue — like Bank of America’s proposed $5-a-month debit card fee or the millions banks have made from charging consumers to receive unemployment benefits or food stamps.

If all this makes Americans feel like Wall Street banks only view them as money-making tools, well, that’s because the banks apparently do. According to David Mooney, a former JPMorgan Chase employee, Wall Street banks see consumers as an “income stream” to exploit for profit-making purposes, Reuters reports:

Click to read more ...

BBC News - IMF says Chinese banks face risks, urges quick action

BBC News

15 November 2011

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15732276?print=true

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that China's financial system "faces a steady build up in vulnerabilities".

In a review, publicly released on Tuesday, the IMF said that banks were robust enough to withstand isolated shocks.

But not, it said, combined exposure to credit, property and currency risks.

The IMF has urged reforms, including allowing banks to rely more on market mechanisms such as interest rates.

"China's banks and financial sector are healthy, but there are vulnerabilities that should be addressed by the authorities," said Jonathan Fiechter, the head of the IMF team that conducted the review.

The IMF has recommended the Chinese government play less of a role in the banking system, and allow lending decisions to be based on commercial goals.

The current system has encouraged over-investment and fuelled asset bubbles, said the IMF.

"While the existing structure fosters high savings and high levels of liquidity, it also creates the risk of capital misallocation and formation of bubbles, especially in real estate," said Mr Fiechter.

The review said that this has lead to "low investment efficiency".

Click to read more ...