Storm Warnings: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change ANNOTATED NEWS, ENVIRONMENTAL STRUGGLES, SAVING THE PLANET 2 Responses » Jun 302011 June 28, 2011 More violent and frequent storms, once merely a prediction of climate models, are now a matter of observation. Part 1 of a three-part series By John Carey DROWNING: The Souris River overflowed levees in Minot, N.D., as seen here on June 23. Image: Patrick Moes/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers In North Dakota the waters kept rising. Swollen by more than a month of record rains in Saskatchewan, the Souris River topped its all time record high, set back in 1881. The floodwaters poured into Minot, North Dakota’s fourth-largest city, and spread across thousands of acres of farms and forests. More than 12,000 people were forced to evacuate. Many lost their homes to the floodwaters. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS Comments Off Jun 302011 Documents obtained by Greenpeace show prominent opponent of climate change was funded by ExxonMobil, among others John Vidal, environment editor It is now revealed the man sold himself to the petroleum industry lobby. Willie Soon received over $1m from oil companies including ExxonMobil, documents reveal. Photograph: Donna Williams/AP One of the world’s most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies. Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Freedom Rider: Gay Is Not the New Black ANNOTATED NEWS, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE Comments Off Jun 302011 By BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley Gays showing their satisfaction with New York's new marriage law. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is touted as a progressive favorite for passing a gay marriage bill, while his record on civil liberties and bread and butter issues is more like a Republican. The super-rich men that rule the political game in New York appear to find gay rights non-threatening, but insist that their favored politicians hold the line on Black and Latino concerns. “Gay rights have now usurped the progressive agenda to such an extent that the inaction on rent protections and police state malfeasance will be seen as irrelevant.” Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Obama’s War on Whistleblowers ANNOTATED NEWS, GOVERNMENT CRIMES Comments Off Jun 302011 Prosecutions Up, Transparency Down By LINDA GREENE Teresa Chambers is the luckiest whistleblower in the United States. She lost her job as the first woman chief of the U.S. Park Police after she told the media in 2004 that the department was below the number required to perform the job adequately. She sued, and in January 2011 won her case. But her victory is a rarity in the 21st century as President Barack Obama, who as an Illinois senator was instrumental in passing legislation to protect government whistleblowers, has effectively criminalized public servants who risk their jobs to speak out and expose waste, corruption and unethical behavior among their colleagues. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Obama backs trillions in “painful spending cuts” ANNOTATED NEWS, HEADLINERS, Obama, Olympian-class scumbags Comments Off Jun 302011 By Patrick Martin, WSWS.ORG 30 June 2011 BO: Easily one of the most accomplished demagogs in modern history. At a press conference Wednesday, US President Barack Obama reiterated his determination to impose trillions of dollars of spending cuts on the elderly, the sick, school children and college students. He appealed to congressional Republicans to agree to a handful of minor tax increases on the wealthy to provide the fig leaf of what he called a “balanced” program of deficit reduction. In his opening statement and on several occasions during the 70-minute appearance before media representatives, Obama embraced deficit reduction as the central priority of his administration. He described budget-cutting in the same terms as the Republicans, calling it, “part of an overall package for job growth over the long term. It’s not the only part of it, but it’s an important part of it.” Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Is Human Nature Flawed? ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE Comments Off Jun 302011 June 29, 2011 By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall See also related article: Human Nature—How the media whitewash the face of capitalism Chimps grooming each other. What would Ayn Rand think? This is the first of two articles exploring the age-old Human Nature debate and the question of whether human beings are capable of achieving true participatory and economic democracy. The failure of the world’s great economic powers to solve the global debt crisis, coupled with growing political instability in the Arab world and Latin America’s leftward turn, produce daily evidence that global capitalism is on its last legs. Growing global instability is producing intense debate among everyone to the left of Joe Lieberman over the nature of the political/economic system that will likely replace capitalism. Those on the far left see the demise of capitalism as a golden opportunity to end class society and institute a true socialist economy and self-governing democracy. More moderate “liberals,” on the other hand, agree with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser and author of The Grand Chessboard, that western democracy needs to be more totalitarian. Brzezinski argues that existing democratic processes tend to be too cumbersome to make hard decisions about dwindling energy, water, food and other essential resources. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Greek austerity package: Social counterrevolution in Europe ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS, CLASS STRUGGLE 1 Response » Jun 302011 Peter Schwarz, WSWS>ORG | 30 June 2011 Even the conservative Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini concluded: “We are no longer dealing with a democracy… An entire country has turned into a province of an economic rather than political empire, which, in turn, is held ransom to several investment firms and rating agencies with monstrous power and greedy aspirations.” An injured man in Syntagma Square. Amnesty International has condemned the use of "excessive force" by Greek security forces in suppressing protests against EU-IMF-imposed austerity. In a statement issued Wednesday (29 June) night, the human rights group described how their supporters had catalogued a series of abuses against the largely peaceful demonstrators in Athens' central Syntagma Square in front of the national parliament. (Photo: Thanassis Stavrakis) With the votes of the social democratic PASOK party, the Greek Parliament approved a new package of austerity measures on Wednesday. The vote marks a political watershed for the whole of Europe. No serious economist doubts that the austerity measures will reverse the living standards of broad social layers by decades. The first austerity package adopted last year already contained massive cuts to public service salaries, pensions and other benefits. At the same time, it increased consumption taxes, thereby triggering a deep recession and a sharp increase in unemployment. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Greek people plead for American solidarity in their struggle [VIDEOS] ANNOTATED NEWS, EU.Greece, VIDEOS Comments Off Jun 302011 Greek protester talking to Democracy Now! in Athens. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE IN GREECE AGAINST the “austerity” measures the government wishes to impose to satisfy foreign creditors. The battle is apparently the same everywhere, with the superrich on one side, trying to roll back popular gains and extract even more money and concessions from the working class, and the masses beginning to resist, but still largely disorganized and leaderless since real left vanguard parties have been destroyed by the power and intrigues of world capitalism in the postwar decades. In this report filed by Democracy Now! young demonstrators clearly lay out their rationales for resistance. The world has now reached an impasse that cannot be resolved by applying the usual “cures” permitted by the capitalist playbook. Comfortable and remote from the reality stifling the masses and robbing them of their future, the rich and their minions have simply gone too far. A time of long overdue reckoning may be nearing. —PG Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
The Greek Crisis: Mark Weisbrot explains [VIDEO] ANNOTATED NEWS, IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE, VIDEOS Comments Off Jun 302011 Mark Weisbrot ECONOMIST MARK WEISBROT explains in this interview with Amy Goodman the true meaning of the Greek crisis and what the foreign powers want (actually what their rich elites want). Meanwhile, the Greek people, as did the Spanish and French people in recent months, continue to give the American people examples on how to resist and fight back against the maneuvers of the international plutocracy and its hypocritical minions. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Obama’s “Decent Interval” on Bush’s Wars ANNOTATED NEWS, GOVERNMENT CRIMES, US Foreign Policy Comments Off Jun 292011 The United States continues toward slow-motion defeats in George W. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Barack Obama seeking, in essence, a “decent interval” so the losses aren’t pinned on him and the Democrats. But Lawrence Davidson asks what it will take for Americans to finally begin a full reassessment of failed foreign strategies. By Lawrence Davidson In December 2009, President Barack Obama committed the U.S. to an “Afghan surge,” allocating an additional 30,000 soldiers for a projected 18 months in order to accomplish specific “narrowly defined” goals, chief among these the “disrupting, dismantling and defeating [of] al-Qaeda and its extremist allies.” Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
