July 14, 2013

Farm Subsidy (cartoon)

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/farm_subsidy_20130714/

July 13, 2013

Keiser Report: Facing New Peasant Revolt

Published on Jul 11, 2013

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the puffery behind politics and finance that has spawned a generation unable to see or understand the world around them, a world in which the chief economist of a major bank is warning we are on the eve of a new Peasants' Revolt. In the second half, Max talks to Professor Yanis Varoufakis about the latest in the Greek bailout saga, the collapsing German export market and what the future holds for Italy.

July 13, 2013

Chris Hedges: Inverted Totalitarianism

July 13, 2013

Rising Temps, Shrinking Snowpack Fuel Western Wildfires

Climate Central -- Wildfire trends in the West are clear: there are more large fires burning now than at any time in the past 40 years and the total area burned each year has also increased. To explore these trends, Climate Central has developed this interactive tool to illustrate how warming temperatures and changing spring snowpack influences fires each year.


[font size="1"]Western U.S. wildfires have increased dramatically since 1970. Years with warmer spring and summer temperatures and reduced spring snowpack tend to have the most fires.In the coming decades, more warming and shrinking snowpack in the West is expected to cause even more big fires. Source: Climate Central[/font]

In our 2012 report, Western Wildfires, we analyzed federal wildfire data stretching back to the 1970s to see how fires have changed in the American West. In some states, like Arizona and Idaho, the number of large fires burning each year has tripled or even quadrupled. And in other states, including California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wyoming, the number of large fires has doubled.

Over the same span, average spring and summer temperatures across 11 Western states have increased by more than 1.5°F, contributing to the higher fire risks. Spring temperatures in Arizona have warmed faster than any other state in the U.S., rising nearly 1°F per decade since 1970, which has likely played a key role in Arizona’s rapid increase in fires over the past two decades.

In addition, years with abnormally warm spring and summer temperatures tend to be years with more and bigger fires. For example, 2012 was the hottest spring and summer on record for Colorado, and the state also saw its second-highest number of large fires. ..............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-12/rising-temps-shrinking-snowpack-fuel-western-wildfires.html

July 13, 2013

To Urbanize or Not To Urbanize? Virginia Residents Divided Over Metro Expansion

[font size="1"]Escalator leading down to the Huntington Metro Station (BurntPixel/flickr)[/font]


At the Huntington Metro station in Fairfax County, opinions are strong about the future of the Route One corridor. Should it remain a string of suburban strip malls and big-box stores connected by a bus-rapid transit line? Or should it become a high-density corridor similar to Rosslyn or Ballston?

John Smith says he would like to see the Metro expand south, although he understands how some people might be uncomfortable with the kind of density that would require.

"I guess city growth is just catching up with them, and they are moving further out," he says. "It is kind of unfair if that is the reason they bought right there a couple of blocks off of Route One."

Last month, the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation began a long-awaited analysis of multimodal alternatives along Route One from Alexandria to Quantico. Some are hoping that the study will recommend the Yellow Line is expanded through Fort Belvoir into Lorton. But Virginia Hills resident Jayna Reeder thinks that would ruin her neighborhood. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/transportation-nation/2013/jul/10/fairfax-residents-divided-over-yellow-line-expansion/

July 13, 2013

What to do when you're driving a bus through the Lincoln Tunnel and traffic is slow........

This bus driver was reaching for more than just change, police say.

Piloting a bus with passengers through the Lincoln Tunnel — the busiest tunnel in America — an NJ Transit bus driver decided that would be a good time to pleasure himself, authorities said.

The driver, 41-year-old George L. Simpson Jr. of Newark, has been removed from service by his employer and was charged today in Weehawken Township Municipal Court with causing or risking widespread injury or damage.

He also faces charges of lewdness and reckless driving, officials said.

A commuter videotaped the act, police said. ............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/07/nj_man_accused_of_lewd_act_while_driving_bus_in_lincoln_tunnel.html

July 13, 2013

Bill Moyers: The Weapons of Mass Distraction

https://vimeo.com/70162196


Marty Kaplan on the Weapons of Mass Distraction
July 12, 2013


Across the world — Greece, Spain, Brazil, Egypt — citizens are turning angrily to their governments to demand economic fair play and equality. But here in America, with few exceptions, the streets and airwaves remain relatively silent. In a country as rich and powerful as America, why is there so little outcry about the ever-increasing, deliberate divide between the very wealthy and everyone else?

Media scholar Marty Kaplan points to a number of forces keeping these issues and affected citizens in the dark — especially our well-fed appetite for media distraction.

“We have unemployment and hunger and crumbling infrastructure and a tax system out of whack and a corrupt political system — why are we not taking to the streets?” Kaplan asks Bill. “I suspect among your viewers, there are people who are outraged and want to be at the barricades. The problem is that we have been taught to be helpless and jaded rather than to feel that we are empowered and can make a difference.”

An award-winning columnist and head of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, Kaplan also talks about the appropriate role of journalists as advocates for truth.


http://billmoyers.com/segment/marty-kaplan-on-the-weapons-of-mass-distraction/

July 13, 2013

Gandhi saw nonviolence as an active and powerful thing—not just the absence of war

from YES! Magazine:


Peaceful Revolution? Gandhi’s Four Paths to Get There
The Indian leader saw nonviolence as an active and powerful thing—not just the absence of war.

by Madhu Suri Prakash
posted Jul 12, 2013


Gandhi lived Ahimsa as a daily practice, waging peace to stop war and violence. His lifelong “experiments” with truth proved that truth force is more powerful than brute force.

Ahimsa reveals forms of peace that extend far beyond mere absence of war. For Gandhi, peace means walking with truth and justice, patience and compassion, courage and loving-kindness. Ahimsa actively promotes universal well-being and encourages the flourishing of all life, not just humans. It is the art of living in the present and opening our imaginations to a good life for all.

Gandhi offers four sustaining pillars for Ahimsa.

1. Sarvodaya: Justice for all creatures

This is Gandhi’s central pillar: the practice of economic, political, and moral justice. All creatures are included in a quest for universal well-being; all take their just share of the abundance of our Mother Earth.

Sarvodaya means the end of injustice and hunger. There is enough for every being’s needs and not enough for even a single person’s greed. Sarvodaya societies and communities ensure that all enjoy the dignity of sharing their skills and talents.

Sarvodaya serves to remind us, moment by moment, of our entire Earth family—interdependent, made of each other, inextricably interconnected. ..........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/love-and-the-apocalypse/peaceful-revolution-gandhi-s-four-paths-to-get-there

July 13, 2013

The Billionaires' War Against Public Education

The Billionaires' War Against Public Education

Monday, 08 July 2013 15:26
By Peter Dreier, Truthout | Op-Ed


Ever since the emergence of talking pictures, schools have been a major subject of both Hollywood movies and documentary films. One consistent theme of Hollywood portrayals of schools - from Blackboard Jungle (1955), Up the Down Staircase (1967) and Stand and Deliver (1988) to Mr. Holland's Opus (1995), October Sky (1999) and Freedom Writers (2007) - has been the idealistic teacher fighting to serve his and her students against overwhelming odds, including uncaring administrators, cynical colleagues, a stultifying required curriculum that crushes the spirit of teachers and students alike, dilapidated conditions, budget cuts, unruly and hostile students, or students suffering from the symptoms of poverty or neglect. The underlying message is that while occasionally a rare teacher can light a spark in a few students, our public schools are failing most of the students they are supposed to serve. Most documentaries about education - from Frederick Wiseman's High School (1968) to Bill Moyers' Children in America's Schools (1996) - paint a similarly grim picture.

Grim, but not hopeless. All these films hold out the prospect that change is possible if society is willing to honestly confront the social, economic, and bureaucratic conditions that have made public education less effective than it could and should be.

In contrast, the two most recent high-profile films about public education - the documentary Waiting for Superman (2010) and Hollywood's Won't Back Down (2012), starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis - portray our public schools as beyond reform and redemption.

Waiting for Superman - directed by Davis Guggenheim, who made An Inconvenient Truth about Al Gore's environmental crusade - portrays the public school system as a total failure. It follows several students as they attempt to get into a private charter school that is superior in every way. Guggenheim skillfully tells the stories of these children and their families so that we can't help but root for them to win the lottery and get into the charter schools that, we're led to believe, will unleash their potential rather than stifle their creativity. The film boils down the problems facing public education as simply one of bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by corrupt unions. The film demonizes teachers' unions as the destroyer of public schools, while celebrating charters as the panacea for what ails American education. It reduces most teachers and their union leaders to one-dimensional, cartoon-like figures. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17455-go-public-finally-a-film-that-celebrates-public-schools

July 13, 2013

The Impending Afghan Defeat

from Consortium News:


The Impending Afghan Defeat
July 11, 2013

Frustrated over negotiations for a stay-behind force of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, President Obama is now weighing the possibility of a faster withdrawal and a “zero option” on troops going forward. That may signal the belated recognition of twin American defeats in the Afghan and Iraq wars, says Beverly Bandler.

By Beverly Bandler


Americans hate the word “defeat” but that is what we face in Afghanistan. After nearly 12 years, the longest war in U.S. history is winding down with an almost inconceivably staggering cost in blood, treasure and what economists call opportunity cost — the value of the best alternative forgone.

As Tom Engelhardt, author of The End of Victory Culture, wrote, “Leave the mystery of who beat us to the historians.”

Yet, while future historians may provide the details of the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan, one assessment is possible now: The United States was defeated most of all by its own arrogance and ignorance. The cause for this defeat was bipartisan, implicating both Democrats and Republicans, neoconservatives and neoliberals as well as hubristic officials at the CIA and tunnel-vision generals dispatched by the Pentagon.

The folly dates back more than three decades to 1979 when President Jimmy Carter’s hard-line national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski devised a plan to poke at the Soviet Union by helping Islamist mujahedeen warriors harass the Soviet-allied government in Afghanistan. Brzezinski hoped the provoked Russian bear would fall into an “Afghan trap.” ............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/07/11/the-impending-afghan-defeat/