MERLYN SEELEY, - Examiner.com
Stephan: Monsanto, in my view, is an evil -- a word I do not use lightly -- Virtual Corporate State. They are not alone certainly in their vileness, but there are few other corporations whose almost every move leaves death and destruction in its wake. And, of course, quite predictably, they are also one of the major forces using their billions to buy and influence the government so that they can operate without regulation or oversight. I think it is time for a mass movement to arise to picket and stand witness against them everywhere their products are sold. Look in your garage or garden shed. Do you have any Monsanto products? If you do throw them away and never buy another again.
Please click through and sign the petition mention at the end of this article.
According to the Organic Consumers Association post just yesterday on their official Facebook page, Monsanto is trying another sneak attack on the American people. Their website stated, ‘The House Farm Bill contains HR 872, the so-called Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, which stops the EPA from reviewing new and expanded uses of pesticides and requires the USDA to make the approval of new genetically engineered crops easier and faster, limiting USDA review to 180 days. While the USDA has never rejected a new GMO crop, public opposition, environmental concerns and litigation to protect farmers have slowed new approvals. This bill, to give Monsanto and the other biotechnology companies a free pass for new GMOs, includes a provision limiting USDA environmental review to a narrow evaluation of plant pest risks, even though the courts have ruled that a full environmental impact statement is required and must take into consideration the real threats of GMO crops, including ‘the potential elimination of a farmer’s choice to grow non-genetically engineered crops, or a consumer’s choice to eat non-genetically engineered food.’
If you do not know who Monsanto is then here is a brief introduction. They are the makers of Round up, the world’s deadliest herbicide. They […]
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ROGER BRADBURY, - The New York Times
Stephan: Yet another cry of desperation, pleading with us to address what climate change, over fishing, pollution, and just general stupidity and inertia are creating. But few in power are listening. Are you? What are your prepared to do about it?
Roger Bradbury, an ecologist, does research in resource management at Australian National University.
CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA — It’s past time to tell the truth about the state of the world’s coral reefs, the nurseries of tropical coastal fish stocks. They have become zombie ecosystems, neither dead nor truly alive in any functional sense, and on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation. There will be remnants here and there, but the global coral reef ecosystem – with its storehouse of biodiversity and fisheries supporting millions of the world’s poor – will cease to be.
Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution are pushing coral reefs into oblivion. Each of those forces alone is fully capable of causing the global collapse of coral reefs; together, they assure it. The scientific evidence for this is compelling and unequivocal, but there seems to be a collective reluctance to accept the logical conclusion – that there is no hope of saving the global coral reef ecosystem.
What we hear instead is an airbrushed view of the crisis – a view endorsed by coral reef scientists, amplified by environmentalists and accepted by governments. Coral reefs, like rain forests, are a symbol of biodiversity. And, like rain forests, they are portrayed as existentially threatened – but salvageable. The message is: ‘There is yet […]
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LYMARI MORALES, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: One of the fundamental truths of history is that when a people distrust all of their social institutions, because they have been disappointed over and over by the performance of those institutions, to the detriment of their own personal wellbeing, social decay is well advanced. Poll after poll is telling us that is where America is today. Here is the latest poll on yet another crumbling foundation pillar of American culture: television news media.
Click through to see the very revealing charts that accompany this report.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ confidence in television news is at a new low by one percentage point, with 21% of adults expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. This marks a decline from 27% last year and from 46% when Gallup started tracking confidence in television news in 1993.
Trend: Americans’ Confidence in Television News
The findings are from Gallup’s annual update on confidence in U.S. institutions, conducted June 7-10 this year. As such, the findings preceded the erroneous initial reports by cable-news networks CNN and Fox News regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 28 decision about the constitutionality of the U.S. healthcare law.
Among 16 U.S. institutions tested, television news ranks 11th, following newspapers in 10th place. The 25% of adults who express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers is down slightly from 28% last year. Confidence in newspapers is now half of what it was at its peak of 51% in 1979.
Trend: Americans’ Confidence in Newspapers
This year’s updates mark a setback from last year for both television news and newspapers, when Americans appeared to be regaining some confidence in these institutions, though they are more in line with 2007-2010 readings.
Liberals’ and […]
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PAUL HARRIS, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: I spent a good part of this afternoon talking with two young Marine brothers. One had just returned from his second tour in Afghanistan, and is scheduled to go back in 3 months. His brother has just come back from a tour in Iraq. I am not going to use their names because I don't want them to get into trouble for telling me the truth.
The one who had been in Arghanistan confirmed what I have been telling you for several years. 'Afghanistan is completely corrupt. It isn't really a country it's a series of tribal valleys each ruled by a strong man village elder. We are spending billions building them roads, hospitals, schools, and none of it is going to make any difference. As soon as we leave the country will revert back to what it has always been.' He described for me how one of the Afghan soldiers his unit was training, a former Taliban, decided to defect back to the Taliban, so one day he walked up behind two of his Marine trainers and shot them in the back of the head. 'It was his initiation price for the Taliban to take him back,' he said.
We can't build schools, roads, and hospitals here at home, but you can look at the little counter on the left side of the SR website to see what we can spend in Afghanistan. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were insane to begin with, the result of the overweaning hubris of the Bush neocons, and a group of corporations that have become obscenely rich servicing this madness. All these wars have done is exploit the honor, sense of duty, and service, of thousands of young American men and women, in many cases costing them there lives, or leaving them suffering with PTSD.
Meanwhile as this report makes clear, cities all over the U.S. are literally falling apart because they have no money, and their citizens have no money. And political ideology trumps commonsense. All of this is self-inflicted.
Scranton is the setting for the hit American version of the sitcom The Office. Not many people in this beleaguered city are laughing any more.
A former industrial city of 76,000 citizens, nestling amid the rolling wooded coal country hills of north-eastern Pennsylvania, Scranton is in crisis.
Its political system is deadlocked. The city coffers are virtually empty and its debts are huge. Last week the pay packets of all its municipal workers – including firemen, police and the mayor – were slashed to the minimum wage of $7.25 (£4.70) an hour. That effectively equates a life-saving Scranton fire chief with a burger-flipper elsewhere in the US. Not surprisingly, many expect Scranton to go bankrupt soon.
And Scranton is far from the only American community to face this dismal prospect. In the past month three Californian cities – San Bernardino, Stockton and Mammoth Lakes – have all gone bankrupt. Some experts have warned that a wave of municipal bankruptcies is set to sweep the United States as towns, cities and counties plunge into a fiscal black hole, collapsing under the weight of huge debts and reduced revenues. Last week Michael Coleman, a fiscal policy adviser to the League of California Cities, warned in […]
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STEVE BOUSQUET, - Miami Herald
Stephan: Here is another example of the emerging surveillance society. This will be tried in Florida and, if it works well, expect to see it across the country by 2016.
TALLAHASSEE — A year-long stalemate between Florida and Washington ended Saturday when the federal government gave the state access to a comprehensive federal citizenship database, which the state will use to resume an election-year purge of noncitizen voters.
After repeatedly refusing, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security agreed to open its database to the Department of State, which oversees Florida’s voter registration system. The state will now cross-check the names of Florida voters against a federal citizenship database known as SAVE, or Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.
It wasn’t clear why DHS changed course and the department had no comment Saturday. But the reversal comes after a federal judge in Florida refused to halt purge efforts.
The news is a victory for Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who has said the purge is necessary to guarantee fair elections. Democrats and voter advocacy groups have criticized Scott for the action, saying it is aimed at Democratic-leaning voters in an election year. Some groups filed lawsuits to block it.
Within days, Florida will resume the laborious process of purging non-citizens from the list of 11.2 million registered voters. A previous purge based on a flawed list of 2,700 drivers with voter cards who were suspected of being […]
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