Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
STEVE CARPENTER, - University of Wisconsin-Madison
Stephan: Here is another Greed Crisis about to shove itself into our consciousness. Consider this. The language is technical but the conclusion is easily understood.
'Carpenter and Bennett write in their Environmental Research Letters report that the 'planetary boundary for freshwater eutrophication has been crossed while potential boundaries for ocean anoxic events and depletion of phosphate rock reserves loom in the future.'
Recalculating the global use of phosphorous, a fertilizer linchpin of modern agriculture, a team of researchers warns that the world’s stocks may soon be in short supply and that overuse in the industrialized world has become a leading cause of the pollution of lakes, rivers and streams.
Writing in the Feb. 14 edition of the journal Environmental Research Letters, Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Elena Bennett of McGill University report that the human use of phosphorous, primarily in the industrialized world, is causing the widespread eutrophication of fresh surface water. What’s more, the minable global stocks of phosphorous are concentrated in just a few countries and are in decline, posing the risk of global shortages within the next 20 years.
‘There is a finite amount of phosphorous in the world,
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Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
Stephan: The petroleum industry seems to have sleaze and greed in its DNA. American courts won't take it on, but emerging countries seem to be stepping up.
A court in Ecuador has fined US oil giant Chevron $8.6bn (£5.3bn) for polluting a large part of the country’s Amazon region.
The oil firm Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, was accused of dumping billions of gallons of toxic materials into unlined pits and Amazon rivers.
Campaigners say crops were damaged and farm animals killed, and that local cancer rates increased.
Condemning the ruling as fraudulent, Chevron said it would appeal.
The company will also have to pay a 10% legally mandated reparations fee, bringing the total penalty to $9.5bn (£5.9bn).
Pablo Fajardo, lawyer for the plaintiffs, described the court ruling as ‘a triumph of justice over Chevron’s crime and economic power’.
‘This is an important step but we’re going to appeal this sentence because we think that the damages awarded are not enough considering the environmental damage caused by Chevron here in Ecuador,’ he told the BBC World Service.
A Chevron statement said the firm would appeal, and called the ruling ‘illegitimate and unenforceable’.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadoreans, in a case which dragged on for nearly two decades.
BBC map
The plaintiffs said the company’s activities had destroyed large areas of rainforest and also led to an increased risk of cancer […]
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Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
TONY PUGH, - McClatchy Newspapers
Stephan: We have poured billions into rebuilding Iraq, most of it to little effect, but what was once one of our most important cities continues to struggle to rebuild itself, and will probably never be the vibrant city it once was. I have several readers who live in New Orleans, and they have written me several times about the Kafkaesque bureaucratic obstacles that make rebuilding a nightmare. And then there is the polluted Gulf, and the tainted shrimp.
WASHINGTON — Blighted and vacant homes continue to plague Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts in New Orleans, new U.S. Census Bureau data released Monday show.
More than 65,000 homes that the 2005 storm damaged were still unfit for habitation in 2009, according to the bureau’s 2009 American Housing Survey for the New Orleans Metropolitan Area.
About two-thirds of these units were headed for condemnation or demolition, but that legal process is slow, leaving the city littered with tens of thousands of unsafe, unsanitary dwellings.
Fortunately, the number of blighted buildings is decreasing steadily as homeowners get federal money to rebuild or rehabilitate their properties, said Allison Plyer, chief demographer at the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, a research organization.
Only about 44,000 blighted homes or lots were found in a data center report from October 2010. While the 2010 census counted nearly 48,000 vacant homes in the New Orleans area, Plyer said 41,000 of them were thought to be blighted and uninhabitable.
Despite the progress, the vacancy rate in the New Orleans metro area is 25 percent, one of the highest in the nation and up from 12 percent in 2000.
After peaking at nearly 628,000 residents in 1960, New Orleans has steadily lost population […]
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Monday, February 14th, 2011
, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: We are morally culpable in this war that has killed tens of thousands. It all arises from the insanity of American drug policies. Much of this would dissolve like a toxic cloud if marijuana were legalized. Like the Mafia that survived Prohibition, the monster would not be killed. But, once again, the bloody street fights would end.
At least 30 people died in a staggering surge in drug-related violent crime in Mexico rocking the cities of Monterrey and Guadalajara, and the northern state of Chihuahua, police said Saturday.
The attacks were the latest deadly violence gripping Mexico’s war on drugs, as the country’s various criminal cartels struggle over turf and the government uses police and soldiers in an attempt to crush them.
In Chihuahua state, 11 people were slain in several separate murders in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s deadliest city, across from the US city of El Paso, Texas between late Friday and Saturday, authorities said.
And gunmen shot dead five men together in an additional group killing on a highway between Chihuahua city, the state capital, and Ciudad Juarez, police said.
Separately, around 4:00 am (1000 GMT) a special unit of soldiers and police known as the Immediate Reaction Group stopped two suspicious vehicles in a suburb of the industrial city of Monterrey, the Secretariat of Defense said.
The car occupants responded by pulling out weapons and opening fire.
‘Seven alleged aggressors lost their lives’ in the shootout, the secretariat said in a statement, adding that the attackers ‘struck the side of a vehicle, resulting in a civilian death.’
Monterrey, a prosperous city and […]
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Monday, February 14th, 2011
Stephan: The Right wants another Cold War; it's a familiar model, and it gives them a place to put their hate and anger. China is their other option, but radical Islam is so easy, because it's not really much of a threat to the United States, and it is so amorphous that it can be any kind of threat you like.
It is always important to keep a sense of perspective. Here's a data point that will help. On 9/11 approximately 3,000 people were killed by 19 Islamists. From that day to this 270,000 Americans in the United States have been killed by gunfire, mostly by other Americans -- 84 people died today because they were shot with a gun, 84 more will die tomorrow for the same reason. Which do you think is a bigger threat to your life?
While a gay rights controversy drew headlines at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, another – and even more bitter – dispute rippled as views varied widely on how to reconcile the conservative movement with Islam in the United States.
At the 38th annual conservative gathering, there was no shortage of accusations of Islamist sympathies, Muslim Brotherhood infiltration and charges of fear-mongering. Republican presidential hopefuls, including Newt Gingrich and John Thune, also drew applause with suggestions that the Obama administration has taken a politically correct blind eye to the connection between radical Islam and terrorism.
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Freshman Rep. Allen West also drew thunderous applause in his keynote speech about the threat to America posed by Islam and other security threats. And as Republican candidates define their national security stands in the 2012 elections, conservative discomfort with Islam in America will be a feature of the debate.
‘We are also faced at home and abroad with a mortal threat in political Islam,
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