Snow-storms & Cold Weather DO NOT Disprove Global Warming
Climate-science skeptics have been gleeful in their assault on climate change theory, the hard research and tens of thousands of scientists behind it and the very concept of human responsibility to the environment, because there has been snowfall. In a stunning display of ignorance, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) openly claimed the record snows that hit Washington, DC, were evidence there was in fact no climate change, that the whole idea is just a myth.
International Response to Congo War: How to Stop the Genocide
The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 6.9 million people in 12 years. No war has cost more innocent lives since World War II, and the level of extreme violence, brutality against women, and even the enslavement of families and villages, appears to be escalating. The world’s attention has yet to fully focus on the plight of the Congolese civilians living in a state of perpetual extreme crisis day after day.
Esperanza Spalding, a rising star in the jazz world, and an increasingly recognizable face at high-profile cultural gatherings, performs “Tell Him” at last year’s White House Poetry Jam, in this video. The song is a moody, jazzy blend of love and meditation, an apt message for a weekend on which we celebrate both the virtues [...]
Cheney’s Terror/Torture Reasoning is Threat to National Security
There were three individuals convicted by the Bush-Cheney administration in military courts, and two of them are currently free and walking the street. There have been hundreds of individuals convicted on terrorism charges in civilian criminal courts, over the last three administrations, the current one included, and every one of those convictions has been upheld, and every one of those terrorists is behind bars today.
Newsmax Hocking Financial Services: Is it Manipulating News for Profit?
Newsmax, the ultra-right-wing political propaganda outfit that calls itself a news service, is once again using its news pages to push financial get-rich-quick schemes on its customers. While railing against any politician who happens to be a Democrat and who is struggling to fix the problems 30 years of Republican de-regulation of wrought on the American economy as anti-American, Newsmax has routinely sought to push its readers into risky foreign currency trading schemes. Now, it’s pitching financial services directly.
7 Million Dead, DR Congo Killing Continues; Int’l Response Lacking
The civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC / DR Congo) has claimed an estimated 6.9 million lives since 1998. The International Rescue Committee has estimated, through a peer-reviewed study, that an average of 45,000 people are dying every month as a result of the ongoing conflict in the eastern DRC. This makes the Congo war by far the deadliest war since World War II, though there is shockingly little energy in the international community to act to stop it.
Blue Cross Announces Massive Rate-hike, Amid Record Profits
Blue Cross has reportedly announced plans for a massive 39% rate-hike on hundreds of thousands of customers, despite earning record profits of $4.7 billion in 2009. The announcement has spurred outrage among healthcare rights activists and public interest groups and raised the ire of the president and the Congress of the United States. The progressive pressure group MoveOn.org has launched a campaign to demand an immediate reversal of the Blue Cross rate-hike.
Miklaszewski Says Military Commissions “More reliable” in Terms of Outcome
NBC’s chief Pentagon corresondent Jim Miklaszewski told MSNBC this morning that in his opinion military trials are “more reliable” in terms of the outcomes they produce. The comment was perhaps an unwelcome introduction of Constitutional questions into the debate over whether to try accused 9/11 terrorist conspirators in a civilian criminal court or before a military tribunal.
Pseudo-conservative Propagandists Are Trying to Ruin America
Let down your guard for five seconds, and you will likely find some emanation of the pseudo-conservative hostility market explaining that Pres. Obama is deliberately plotting the destruction of the United States of America, that his administration is lazy and incompetent, and that terrorists are about to seize control of the homeland. Those propagandists, who expect you will not notice their absurd claims are in fact lies, are the ones who are, very deliberately, trying to ruin America.
Sen. Richard Shelby Blocks 70 Nominees, Demands Billions in Earmarks
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has been revealed to be placing a “blanket hold” on 70 of Pres. Obama’s nominees, while demanding an estimated $40 billion in earmarks for his state. The revelation, published yesterday in CongressDaily, is being called one of the most flagrant examples of political corruption in recent memory. According to CongressDaily’s reporting, “While holds are frequent, Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal.”
There is talk in the House of Representatives that a “reconciliation patch” could allow the US Senate to pass a small amendment to the Senate healthcare bill, in connection with a budget reconciliation measure, could allow the Senate to provide the House with an overall bill that could pass the House of Representatives. If the Senate is able to make those necessary adjustments, there could be a comprehensive healthcare reform package passed and signed into law in the coming weeks.
I’ve said this before, but I’m a big believer not just in the value of a loyal opposition, but in its necessity. Having differences of opinion, having a real debate about matters of domestic policy and national security — and that’s not something that’s only good for our country, it’s absolutely essential. It’s only through the process of disagreement and debate that bad ideas get tossed out and good ideas get refined and made better. And that kind of vigorous back and forth — that imperfect but well-founded process, messy as it often is — is at the heart of our democracy. That’s what makes us the greatest nation in the world.
Howard Zinn, author of the monumental work, A People’s History of the United States, revolutionized the field of historical research the world over, establishing the principle that true historical narrative must include a genuine reporting of indigenous experience and a more multifaceted factual accounting of events, including the impact of efforts to establish a new civilization on traditional cultures. Zinn died last week of heart failure, aged 87.
Pres. Barack Obama yesterday attended a first-of-its-kind question and answer session, as part of a Republican Congressional caucus conference in Baltimore. The president took some aggressive questions, classed by media analysts as “grandstanding”, from some Republicans who pushed the party line on the refusal of Democrats to deal with them. Obama adroitly and with a [...]
The Democratic party’s biggest communicational deficit is not about the virtues of its policies, but the nature of its founding ideal: “democrat” means one who favors government of, by, and for the people. The absurd and puerile experiment in linguistic brainwashing in which the Republican party is now uniformly engaged —calling the Democratic party (the party of the Democrats) the “Democrat party” in hopes of making the word sound alien and remote— is nothing more than an attempt to rob ordinary Americans of their access to a government that answers to them: Democrats need to be out there saying so every day.
Obama State of the Union Address (video + transcript)
Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths and pointing fingers. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation. But I also know this: If people had made that decision 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are here is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain; to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and their grandchildren.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito last night revealed how deeply unfit he is to serve on the nation’s highest court. When Pres. Obama made the entirely factual statements that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC reversed a century of precedent on campaign finance regulation and would allow foreign corporations to spend money to influence US elections, Alito was seen shaking his head, grimmacing and mouthing something like “simply not true”. While it’s well documented how widely Obama —a Constitutional law scholar— and Alito differ on legal philosophy, Alito crossed a line with his reaction.
A recent NBC/WSJ poll shows rising frustration among voters with the failure to move major reforms through Congress. But while the media have repeatedly pushed the notion that Pres. Obama may be losing favor, the NBC/WSJ poll shows 48% of people say Republicans in Congress are to blame for the nation’s unsolved problems, for their relentless obstruction of Democratic proposals, while 41% blame the Democrats in Congress, and only 27% blame Pres. Obama.
‘You Don’t Quit; I Don’t Quit’: Obama State of the Union Pushes Job Creation
Pres. Barack Obama’s first official State of the Union address was an impassioned call to action, and something of a civics lesson. He reprimanded both parties in Congress, admonishing Democrats not to “run for the hills” and reminding Republicans that if they claim a leadership role by obstructing legislation, then they have an obligation to the public to participate in the process. The address artfully positioned Obama’s agenda astride the political center, leaving the Republicans little room in the center from which to attack his policies.
Apple Unveils iPad Tablet, Laptop-like Touchscreen to Sell for $499
Apple’s new tablet computer has finally been unveiled, after years of speculation. The iPad will function as a genuine cross-over between the realm of the iPhone and the laptop computer, in a format smaller than a laptop screen, similar to a netbook, and designed to optimize the experience of reading online or working with files and e-publications. It will be able to run over 140,000 of the apps already made for iPhone and iPod Touch, with a whole new class of iPad-optimized apps to come. Perhaps most important of all, it will retail for a starting price of only $499.
El ciber-diálogo de Gender Links, para el jueves, 4 de marzo 2010, efectuó una conversación robusta sobre cómo mejorar el ambiente mediático de la Copa Mundial del 2010 respecto a los derechos de la mujer. Los, partícipes, en Nueva York y en Sudáfrica, se entrevistaron, cambiando ideas y comparando ambientes socio-culturales según favorezcan o no la entrada de las mujeres y las niñas en el ámbito del fútbol. Un ejemplo clave fue el caso de Estados Unidos, donde las niñas muchas veces tienen acceso a programas de deporte de la comunidad o a através de la escuela y donde las figuras más conocidas del fútbol internacional son mujeres como Mia Hamm.
Estados Unidos también carece del llamado ‘hooliganism’ y el espíritu machista que afecta al entorno aficionado futbolista en tantos otros países del mundo. Esta realidad contrasta con la situación de Sudáfrica, donde la expectativa es que la Copa Mundial traerá un flujo importante de aficionados mayoritariamente masculinos, muchos de ellos con la intención de divertirse en un ambiente precisamente masculino y aprovechar la ocasión para solicitar a prostitutas.
Se preguntó si en Estados Unidos, o bien, en América Latina en general, ha habido un aumento de promoción de viajes con el anzuelo de un viaje de ’soccer y sexo’. Es un tema difícil, que realmente necesita un estudio mediático-comercial de seria profundidad, porque estas promociones no han sido ni alta ni extensamente visibles, aunque es posible que se hayan promocionado de manera cuidadosamente oculta. Respecto al problema del posible tráfico de mujeres a Sudáfrica, se habló de la necesidad de evaluar las motivaciones de los traficantes y cómo se podría combatir el tráfico de mujeres en los lugares fuentes de mujeres traficadas.
Even as Haiti grapples with the deep and lasting devastation of the earthquake that left tens of millions dead, millions homeless and destroyed vital infrastructure needed to maintain routine food distribution and medical care, hundreds of thousands of people are now vulnerable to catastrophic flooding expected to hit the low-lying camps where they are struggling to maintain makeshift tent cities. As many as one million people need to be relocated and/or given viable shelter, to avoid the rapid spread of infectious disease.
Haiti suffers 98% deforestation, due to unchecked logging across the nation, which leaves its hillsides and river banks dangerously unstable and prone to slippage and flooding. Drainage canals in the capital Port au Prince and outlying areas, have been clogged with debris since the earthquake, and will likely not to the full work of clearing the floodwaters. Pervasive flooding would threaten the lives of tens or even hundreds of thousands of displaced people unable to seek shelter more substantial than a tent.
With flooding, otherwise habitable land can become a breeding ground for infection and the close proximity of large numbers of displaced people can cause the risk of epidemic to run literally off the charts. Young children, pregnant women and the elderly and infirm can quickly find themselves immuno-compromised due to lack of food and safe drinking water, further exacerbating the threat. Oxfam, the Red Cross, Yele Haiti and other aid organizations, are racing to build the temporary infrastructure to protect against the rains.
On the second morning of the 54th Commission on the Status of Women, Gender Links and the African Woman and Child Feature Service —through the Gender and Media Diversity Centre— hosted a roundtable dialogue involving Marren Akatsa-Bukachi of the Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), Francisco Cos-Montiel of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Revai Makanje of Hivos, Norah Matovu-Winyi of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network, and Jennifer Lewis of Gender Links as facilitator, with Mwendabai Yeta Mkhize and myself providing event support and reporting.
The discussion opened with comments on statistical analysis of proress toward the goal of achieving 50/50 parity. With a 7% improvement since Beijing, the discussion moved quickly toward the question of how to accelerate the rise of women in decision-making and leadership roles.
With not enough parliamentary-level attention focused on women’s issues or the specific virtues of achieving parity in representation, local government emerged as a potential area of strategic focus, in relation to promoting women’s access to positions of leadership and decision-making. Quotas were raised as a potential policy lever by which to promote parity. Revai Mekanje suggested working to adopt a “more catalystic” approach to fostering support networks and the cultural underpinnings for women to take leadership positions and influence policy.
“From Social Media to Social Action” was the subject of one of the morning sessions on Day 1 of the 12-day 54th annual Commission on the Status of Women, at the UN headquarters in New York. A panel of pioneering and accomplished women, from diverse fields of research, activism, and enterprise, offered a far-reaching exploration of the ways in which new media can help to effect change and improve the situation of women, around the world. Outreach, social networking, and informational access, were integral to the morning session’s discussion.
As social networking technologies have evolved, they have become not just user-friendly in the extreme, but have created a global forum through which individuals and communities, organizations and governments, can work to build connectivity among people, and share information in a way that promotes opportunity, liberty and stability for women in even remote corners of the world. Social networking tools decentralize the flow of information, allowing for a more flexible, dynamic application of global communications platforms, handing the control of access and information to the people who seek or require it.
The central thrust of the event was cogently distilled in Gloria Feldt’s call for women to “employ every medium”, take advantage of any communicative vehicle, using all the tools available, to achieve the most comprehensive and dynamic delivery of the message. But the discussion drew from a diverse range of experience and focus, bridging the distance between the strictly technological approach to social media, questions of Jungian psychoanalysis and cultural consciousness, and the community fabric as it is affected by banking and lending practices.
The International Museum of Women, an online art gallery, which aims to foster dialogue and promote new educational directions for women and in relation to issues of women’s rights and opportunity, is hosting an exhibit called ‘Ecomomica‘, which explores the role women play in the evolving global economy.
The exhibit explores whether the global economic crisis has in fact created opportunities for women, the question of whether food is a basic human right and how scarcity affects women and what women do to counter it, whether women might be “paying for China’s economic prosperity with their bodies”, the dynamics of leadership and power, and how women may be changing the Arab and Islamic world.
The exhibit’s themes also touch on women’s access to capital, through traditional banking and more innovative micro-lending programs, the practice of linking credit to education and healthcare, which helps to create personal security and future opportunity, and the effect of debt inherited by women from family or deceased husbands and how banking failures in the west have affected communities.
The media are exploding with reports that explicitly declare that “the public opposes the current healthcare reform bills” passed by both houses of Congress. In fact, this is patently false, and any of the major polls on the subject bear this out, if one devotes the time necessary to understand the numbers. It is inaccurate to say “the public opposes”, because there is not one uniform majority of Americans opposing a specific set of initiatives in the pending reforms.
Lazy polling is a dangerous standard that sees pollsters simply ask direct questions that might work for an individual respondent, but cannot produce an accurate or useful number across an entire population. Instead of finding out why individual respondents oppose a proposed reform; pollsters simply ask: support or oppose? Maybe they add indifferent to the list of options, or go with a 5-point scale of strongly support, support, indifferent, oppose, strongly oppose.
The result is an infantile analysis of public opinion. When 60% of respondents choose oppose or strongly oppose, pollsters say “We have proof that a majority oppose ‘the president’s plan’”; they simply ignore the problem that of those 60, 15 may oppose the very idea of reform, 15 may oppose the president personally, 15 may be opposed to Democratic concessions to Republicans who nevertheless refused to support the legislation, and another 15 may be opposed because they want single-payer.
Republican House minority whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) said today on Meet the Press that Republicans want healthcare reform, but they favor a “common-sense, modest, incremental approach”. The statement is sly and problematic: Cantor wants to imply that incremental is responsible, playing on the emotional fetish that brings many to conservative politics, but he is simply fudging the facts and reframing an historically irresponsible approach in order to attack the president. Incremental fixes to the pervasive healthcare crisis have so far failed to reverse the trend toward ever-higher costs and ever-less-competent insurers.
Faced with the criticism that Republican proposals would cover 3 million people at most —of a pool of uninsured estimated between 30 million and 52 million, depending how one counts the “eligible uninsured”—, Cantor did not take issue with the figures, but explained that this incremental plan would first and foremost bring down healthcare costs. The Republican plan contains no provision designed to alter the market dynamics that allow costs to continue escalating and, without guaranteeing that people cannot be dropped or denied coverage due to illness or pre-existing conditions, will not prevent the uninsurance crisis from exploding out of control.
Cantor’s “common-sense, modest, incremental approach” is a thinly veiled campaign of sabotage, very deliberately designed to ensure that the most abusive and unsustainable elements of the healthcare crisis need not face the pressure of serious reform. The fact is, every responsible economic analyst understands that serious, effective healthcare reform must be comprehensive, if it is to solve the problems of tens of millions of uninsured, pervasive arbitrary denial of treatment, and the pricing crisis, which is leading to record numbers of bankruptcies and putting the integrity of the healthcare system in danger.
A massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake has hit central Chile, the epicenter estimated about 200 miles southwest of the capital Santiago, roughly 70 miles from the city of Concepción, the nation’s second most populous city. The tremor lasted about 90 seconds and caused serious damage to roads and bridges. 122 people are confirmed dead, according to Chilean authorities, and a tsunami warning has been issued for the entire Pacific Ocean basin (including Hawai’i, Japan and the Philippines).
Chilean expatriates are reporting significant difficulties on contacting some friends and relatives in the affected region, and power and communications have been knocked out across an as yet undetermined area. The Chilean Red Cross is already preparing rescue and relief services, should they be needed, though Chile is a nation with much experience in dealing with massive, tragic earthquakes, and officials have been careful to say Santiago and Concepción have been built to withstand such events.
Santiago’s main airport has been closed for at least 72 hours, while damage is assessed and repairs made to the runway and vital facilities, and as a precaution against aftershocks causing problems for planes landing or taking off. At least two aftershocks measuring magnitude 6.0 or greater, as well as many smaller ones, have been recorded by the US Geological Survey. At least two of the nation’s major copper mines —copper is a leading export commodity, as Chile exports more than 1/3 of the world’s copper— have also halted operations.
The Republican party’s Congressional leadership is participating in a bipartisan healthcare reform summit moderated by Pres. Barack Obama, at Blair House near the White House. The “square-table” discussion includes the leading budgetary and health policy partisans from the House and Senate, as well as Pres. Obama, Vice Pres. Biden and Sec. of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. The president invited Republicans to “show me what you got”, and to lay out constructive alternative ideas for healthcare reform, in the interest of building consensus.
Much of the discussion so far has focused on the complaints of Republican opponents who are skeptical of the virtues of the Democratic healthcare reform bills already passed by both houses of Congress. Pres. Obama and Democratic leaders working on the specifics of how to achieve comprehensive health insurance reform have spent the day taking turns answering those Republican complaints with information and an invitation to continue working together and sharing ideas.
When Rep. John Boehner suggested the existing healthcare reform bill is “a dangerous experiment”, Pres. Obama chastised him for politicking. He noted that there is a vast range of issue on which Democrats and Republicans fundamentally agree, and that focusing on differences in such radical terms is more destructive than constructive. He also reminded his critics that the healthcare bill is not 2,700 pages because they wanted it to be complex, but because the issue itself is actually that complex, and failure to address that complexity has already proven to fail.
‘Psychic numbing‘ is a relatively new term, assigned to the phenomenon which shows people tend to feel less urgent compassion, and tend to give less, when the suffering in question is shown to be more systemic and more pervasive, or affecting larger numbers of people. Some psychologists believe it is linked to our intuitive sense that if one suffers alone, the suffering is worse, but if one is accompanied, there might be some security in numbers, not just emotionally, but practically.
The individual does not actually suffer less, but somehow, human beings —across cultures, ages groups and regions— appear to have an almost inborn tendency to convince themselves that the one who suffers with others is somehow safer. This is, of course, rarely true. While yes, a young boy might survive because his older sister goes without food, two young children in a population beset with pervasive, persistent scarcity or political disorder, may be at significantly heightened risk of violence, or even enslavement.
Others suggest the phenomenon of psychic numbing is more to do with some sort of instinctual calculation of the worth of one’s efforts. If one seeks to help one lone child, one’s actions seem able; if one seeks to send a small amount to help millions, one’s actions may seem less able, less capable of ‘making a difference’.
The other week, men and women across California opened up their mailboxes to find a letter from Anthem Blue Cross. The news inside was jaw-dropping. Anthem was alerting almost a million of its customers that it would be raising premiums by an average of 25 percent, with about a quarter of folks likely to see their rates go up by anywhere from 35 to 39 percent.
Now, after their announcement stirred public outcry, Anthem agreed to delay their rate hike until May 1st while the situation is reviewed by the state of California. But it’s not just Californians who are being hit by rate hikes. In Kansas, one insurance company raised premiums by 10 to 20 percent only after asking to raise them by 20 to 30 percent. Last year, Michigan Blue Cross Blue Shield raised rates by 22 percent after asking to raise them by up to 56 percent. And in Maine, Anthem is asking to raise rates for some folks by about 23 percent.
What does NASA satellite data tell us? “Unlike the surface-based temperatures, global temperature measurements of the Earth’s lower atmosphere obtained from satellites reveal no definitive warming trend over the past two decades. The slight trend that is in the data actually appears to be downward. The largest fluctuations in the satellite temperature data are not from any man-made activity, but from natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions from Mt. Pinatubo, and from El Niño. So the programs which model global warming in a computer say the temperature of the Earth’s lower atmosphere should be going up markedly, but actual measurements of the temperature of the lower atmosphere reveal no such pronounced activity. “
This report from October 1997 was cited in the same comment as proof that in fact global warming is a myth. The report does not say that. In fact, it specifically deals with questions about the accuracy of the very technology the commenter cites as proving the claim that a cooling trend exists while a warming trend does not. It’s important to remember that, first of all, the information is 13 years old, and the purpose of the linked report was to explore whether or not satellite data could be used to track atmospheric temperature fluctuations, at the time, not an entirely proven science.
Cynicism often lends itself to the construction of intellectually convenient, overly facile descriptions of future events, which —bolstered by the impassioned worries and self-promotion of the cynic, the anti-prophet— quickly assume an air of prophetic certainty. Buoyed by the psychological satisfaction of carrying prophetic certainty within, the cynic then commits more and more fully to the proclamation of unshakeable doctrines about the future, based on bad-faith arguments and a passion for the despairing global outlook.
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