Robert Kennedy Jr - Big Carbon's Sock Puppets Declare War on America and the Planet

Huffington Post,  11/25/11

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/cleantech-_b_1112793.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=112511&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

It's now become de rigueur among the radical right wing rhetoricians to characterize any government support of America's green energy sector as wasteful, fruitless, and scandalous. They greeted with glee the collapse of the government supported solar company, Solyndra, America's first major casualty in our race with China to dominate the "new energy" economy. With Solyndra dying on the battlefield -- its marketplace choking on inexpensive Chinese solar panels -- the right wing's response was to hoist the white flag and declare defeat in the war for global cleantech leadership. That brand of "Can't Do" cowardice is a boon to the carbon and nuclear power incumbents who fund so much of the right wing's activities -- but it's bad for America.

Leveraging the aberrant Solyndra bankruptcy, these groups have launched an orchestrated series of attacks against the renewables sector by trying to discredit other companies, even those that are driving America forward with innovative solutions that actually do compete on a global basis. For example, last month, Fox News ran a story insinuating that SunPower received a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch project because of its political connections Congressman George Miller. The story also suggested that SunPower was struggling financially and posed another risk to taxpayers -- a la Solyndra. The truth is that SunPower is one of America's strongest solar manufacturing companies and Mr. Miller had nothing to do with the company receiving a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch Project. To Fox News and other right wing media sources, the facts meant very little. Their intent is only to suggest wrong-doing in an attempt to undermine the Obama Administration and its clean energy goals.

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Eurekalert.org - UN overhaul required to govern planet's life support system: Experts

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/essp-uor112111.php
Earth System Science Partnership 

Needed to avert environmental disaster, reform of international organizations at scale rivalling post-WW II era

		IMAGE: This is the cover of one of five policy briefs issued today by the Earth System Science Partnership. Click here for more information.

Reducing the risk of potential global environmental disaster requires a "constitutional moment" comparable in scale and importance to the reform of international governance that followed World War II, say experts preparing the largest scientific conference leading up to next June's Rio+20 Earth Summit.

Stark increases in natural disasters, food and water security problems and biodiversity loss are just part of the evidence that humanity may be crossing planetary boundaries and approaching dangerous tipping points. An effective environmental governance system needs to be instituted soon, according to independent experts commissioned by organizers of the huge “Planet Under Pressure” conference in London March 26-29, 2012.

As policy-makers gather in Durban, South Africa, for the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Planet Under Pressure consortium today released the first five of nine policy briefs on key issues. The briefs deal with biodiversity and ecosystem services, food and water security, interconnected risks and solutions, and a topic common to all: reforming environmental governance from the local to the global level.

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Fukushima Daily - Namie machi, Fukushima is 33 times worse than Chernobyl

Fukushima Daily, on November 22nd, 2011 · 

http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/11/namie-machi-fukushima-is-33-times-worse-than-chernobyl/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FukushimaDiary+%28Fukushima+Diary%29

大きな地図で見る

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology published the soil contamination data of 60 km area from Fukushima plants.

The data was taken from 6/1/2011 ~ 11/22/2011.

Though it’s only about I-131, Cs-134, Cs-137 mainly,the result shows the worst contaminated area in Fukushima is 33 times worse than Chernobyl. It proves Fukushima is something nobody has ever gone through.

In Chernobyl, area contaminated worse than 1,480,000 bq/m2 was defined as the worst red zone, “immediate mandatory evacuating area.”

In Fukushima, Namiemachi, 22km north west to Fukushima plants is contaminated, which they measured 760,000 bq/kg (Cs-134 + Cs-137). It equals to 49,400,000 bq/m2.

Fukushima is “the next level” of Chernobyl apparently.

Mike Ignatowski - 5 Rules for Talking OWS With Your Conservative Relatives

By Mike Ignatowski, Tikkun

Posted on November 23, 2011, Printed on November 24, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153197/5_rules_for_talking_ows_with_your_conservative_relatives 

Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.

Many of us will be visiting with family over the coming holidays, starting this Thanksgiving. How can someone who supports the Occupy movement have a civil conversation with family members who may have a different view of things? How can you be prepared if someone else brings up the topic? I’d like to start the ideas flowing on this with a few thoughts here.

For such a discussion it’s vitally important to set realistic goals about what you want to accomplish. It’s probably impossible to change someone’s mind with a short conversation about facts if they have strong emotions about their beliefs. Don’t even try, this is not about winning debate points awarded by some imaginary judge. What is it about then? I’ll address that later.

Here’s some specific suggestions on what to do and what to avoid doing.

First, DO NOT bring up Obama, Republicans, Democrats, FOX news, or the Super-committee. These are hot button emotional issues that will distract from the issue. Refuse to take the bait if someone else brings them up.

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Paul Craig Roberts - The Roads To War And Economic Collapse

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Roads-To-War-And-Econo-by-paul-craig-roberts-111123-233.html

November 23, 2011 By paul craig roberts The day before the Thanksgiving holiday brought three extraordinary news items. One was the report on the Republican presidential campaign debate. One was the Russian President's statement about his country's response to Washington's missile bases surrounding his country. And one was the failure of a German government bond auction. Comments on Today's News November 23, 2011: The day before the Thanksgiving holiday brought three extraordinary news items. One was the report on the Republican presidential campaign debate. One was the Russian President's statement about his country's response to Washington's missile bases surrounding his country. And one was the failure of a German government bond auction. As the presstitute media will not inform us of what any of this means, let me try.

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Fiona Harvey - UN Chief Slams Rich Nations' Plans to Delay Climate Change Treaty

Published on Wednesday, November 23, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/23/un-chief-rich-nations-climate-change

Achim Steiner says reaching an agreement in 2020 instead of at next month's Durban conference would be 'very high risk'

by Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

The United Nations' environment chief has slammed plans by the world's richest nations to put off a global treaty on climate change to 2020, saying the proposals were "very high risk".

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN environment program, said postponing an agreement – which was meant to be signed in 2013 – to the end of this decade was a "political choice" rather than one based on science.

The Guardian revealed this week that most of the world's rich economies have quietly decided to shelve plans for a global agreement on climate change to take effect within the next few years, instead pushing for an agreement by the end of 2015 or 2016, and coming into effect until 2020. Scientists and economists have said this plan risks leading to catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

Steiner is the first senior UN official to speak out against the plans, which will be aired next week at the latest round of UN climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

He said: "Those countries that are currently talking about deferring an agreement [to come into force] in 2020 are essentially saying we are taking you from high risk to very high risk in terms of the effects of global warming. This is a choice – a political choice. Our role, working with the scientific community, is to bring to the attention of the global public that this is the risk that policymakers and governments will expose us to."

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David Loy - Buddhist Reflections on Occupy Wall Street

David R. Loy

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/buddhist-reflections-on-occupy-wall-street-by-david-loy

In a Buddhist blog about Occupy Wall Street, Michael Stone quotes the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who spoke to the New York Occupiers at Zuccotti Park on October 9:

They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cat reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey, look down!

As Slavoj and Michael emphasize, we are beginning to awaken from that dream. That’s an interesting way to put it, because the Buddha also woke up from a dream: the Buddha means “the awakened one.” What dream did he wake up from? Is it related to the nightmare we are awakening from now?

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Greg Palast - Goldfinger eats Congo

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Goldfinger-eats-Congo-by-Greg-Palast-111123-358.html 

November 23, 2011

By Greg Palast

If God doesn't give a rat's ass about The Vulture, and what he does for a living, and what he's done for Africa, why should I? The thought struck me while sitting here, coffee getting cold, in my old Toyota, trying to look invisible, staked out in front of 300 Dekalb Avenue.  It's just after dawn here in Brooklyn, New York, and I'm hoping that Peter Grossman, a Wall Street star, will pop out of his posh brownstone for a jog or a cup of joe.  Then I can jump him.  He's on the look-out for me because I'd already jumped his crony, Goldfinger, the man who's making Grossman stunningly rich. Grossman's riches, nearly $100 million for his firm, FG Management, come from the Congo.  I was just there in Congo, two days before this stake-out, at a cholera quarantine center in the capital, Kinshasa. Besides lots of cholera, Congo has lots of cobalt.  Grossman has, through a crazy legal loophole in British law, waylaid a payment of $80 million to the African government for a shipment of cobalt from a government-owned mine. Grossman is a "vulture," the name Wall Street gives, with an affectionate smile, to those who somehow can get their hands on old, forgotten debts of desperately poor nations----Congo, Zambia, Peru, and Liberia are cases I've investigated----which they pick up for pennies on the dollar of face value.

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Robert Scheer - Thanks for What?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/thanks_for_what_20111124/

Posted on Nov 24, 2011

By Robert Scheer

I love Thanksgiving for its illusion of abundance. It brings back early childhood memories of the one day each year during the Depression when the food on my family’s table was not the leftover produce that my Uncle Leon could no longer sell at his stall, or the nearly spoiled organ meats that our local butcher offered at a steep discount. 

But Thanksgiving day was quite the opposite, and while I obviously can’t recall what was served in 1936, the year I was born, the holiday was soon seared into my childhood memory as the day when the good times looked upon us in the form of charity gift baskets from philanthropists of various religious and political orders, much like the needy will be served today in volunteer kitchens across America and just as soon will be forgotten.

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Mike Whitney - The Eurozone Past the Point of No Return

NOVEMBER 23, 2011

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2011/11/23/PAST-THE-POINT-OF-NO-RETURN/

by MIKE WHITNEY

“Eurozone banks’ demand for European Central Bank funding surged to a two-year high on Tuesday, as fast spreading sovereign debt worries left lending markets virtually frozen and  the ECB the only available funding option for many institutions.”

– Reuters, Nov 22, Frankfurt

The European Central Bank continued to buy Italian bonds on Tuesday in an effort to calm markets and slow the flight of capital from Europe. Yields on Italian and Spanish debt continued to rise increasing the cost of borrowing for the debt-stricken states. At the same time, the cost of borrowing euros in the interbank market  remained at elevated levels while credit market stress gauges (Libor) reached their highest point since July 2010. What started out as a brushfire on the perimeter (Greece) has now turned into a raging inferno that threatens to consume the eurozone. Here’s an excerpt from Roubini Global Economics Newsletter:

“Italian debt dynamics have become unsustainable in light of much-weaker-than-expected growth prospects and elevated borrowing costs. Following a sharp loss in market confidence and a buyers’ strike, we expect Italy will be forced to restructure its sovereign debt.

The environment of heightened political uncertainty in Italy has rendered it incapable of tackling the current challenges….

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