JESSICA CORBETT, - In These Times
Stephan: Here is some at least potentially good news about GMOs.
In June, legislators in Connecticut took a bite out of the secrecy surrounding genetically modified foods.
Connecticut is the first state to pass legislation that requires food manufacturers to label products containing genetically modified ingredients. But the historic legislation, pushed forward by consumer and environmental advocacy groups such as GMO Free CT, comes with a caveat. Before the new law can take effect, four other states, including at least one that borders Connecticut, must pass a similar bill, and a combination of northeastern states with a total population of 20 million must also approve GMO labeling legislation.
This ‘safety-in numbers
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TIM RADFORD, - Climate News Network
Stephan: The alarms just keep ringing, but I don't think any adults are home. We simply seem to have lost the capacity of self-preservation.
LONDON — New research suggests that by 2100 there will be no sea water left with the chemical properties that have supported coral reef growth in the past.
Without deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, the planet’s coral reefs could be in serious trouble. In a world in which humans continue to burn fossil fuels unchecked, ocean conditions will become ultimately inhospitable, according to US scientists.
Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution in Washington and colleagues make their sombre prediction in Environmental Research Letters. Their argument on the face of it seems inconsistent with other recent research on reef response to climate change, which in one case suggests that some corals could vanish, and in another that some corals might adapt, very slowly.
But the debate in all three cases is about the rate of warming, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the ultimate impact of changes in the pH levels of the seas.
Ricke and Caldeira looked not so much at the warming of the seas – tropical corals are very sensitive to temperature – nor at the levels of acidification as such (because rain dissolves carbon dioxide to form a weak carbonic acid and inevitably affects […]
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Stephan: Here is an excellent essay that addresses an issue that has come to concern me more and more: the apathy of Americans, our passive acceptance of what is happening to our country.
This is the big question, right? It’s what people are wondering everywhere.
The answer is simple and plausible – but the explanation is a bit more complicated. The majority of Americans are suffering terribly from the current economic crisis, but they do not yet have a political self-identity that will allow for a successful fightback. They don’t know who they are or what they’re fighting for. Neither do they understand whom or what they are fighting against.
‘If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles . . . if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.’ These are the words of SÅ«n ZÇ, a 6th century BCE Chinese general, military strategist, and author of The Art of War, an immensely influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy.
All fighting is the same. Self-knowledge and knowledge of the enemy confer on the fighter the outlines of a winning strategy, based on the best utilization of available weapons of offense and defense.
The majority of Americans, unknowingly, are members of the working class, AKA the proletariat, and will be fighting for the kind of socialism in which sharing, […]
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JUAN COLE, - Informed Comment
Stephan: More and more judicial decisions, particularly those of Republican appointed judges, overwhelmingly favor corporations over people. These decisions get almost no coverage in the media, but they have real and far-reaching consequences. Here's an example of what I mean.
‘Sweeping’ subpoena violates rights of those who spoke out against oil giant’s devastating actions in Ecuador
– Lauren McCauley writes at Commondreams
‘Following their guilty sentence for the dumping of 18.5bn gallons of toxic waste in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chevron is amassing the personal information of the environmentalists and attorneys who fought against them in an effort to prove ‘conspiracy.’
The US government is not the only entity who, with judicial approval, is amassing massive amounts of personal information against their so-called enemies.
A federal judge has ruled to allow Chevron, through a subpoena to Microsoft, to collect the IP usage records and identity information for email accounts owned by over 100 environmental activists, journalists and attorneys.
The oil giant is demanding the records in an attempt to cull together a lawsuit which alleges that the company was the victim of a conspiracy in the $18.2 billion judgment against it for dumping 18.5 billion gallons of oil waste in the Ecuadorean Amazon, causing untold damage to the rainforest.
The ‘sweeping’ subpoena was one of three issued to Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.
‘Environmental advocates have the right to speak anonymously and travel without their every move and association being exposed to Chevron,’ said Marcia Hofmann, Senior Staff Attorney […]
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GEOFF DYER, - Financial Times (U.K.)
Stephan: There is a growing anti-American attitude taking root in Europe, one already well-established in the Islamic world, and parts of Asia. The long term consequences of this are not going to be happy. But our foreign policy barely deals with it.
Holed up in Moscow airport for the past three weeks, Edward Snowden has only had a limited impact on the political debate about surveillance in the US that he wanted to ignite.
Yet the self-confessed National Security Agency leaker has managed to orchestrate a very different political phenomenon: the biggest bout of anti-Americanism since the Iraq war.
When he first revealed his identity a month ago while in Hong Kong, Mr Snowden used selective disclosures about US global surveillance to rally public opinion in China and Russia. Since then, he has managed to create uproar in Europe with information about the bugging of EU offices and over the past week he has created a new international stir in Latin America.
According to reports this week in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo based on documents provided by the 30-year-old former NSA contractor, the US has been using telecoms infrastructure in Brazil to absorb huge volumes of communications and to spy on governments in the region.
With the US economy looking robust for the first time since the financial crisis, the US is again being seen as an over-weaning superpower that brushes aside smaller nations.
‘It sends chills up my spine when we learn they are spying […]
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