Saturday, January 18th, 2014
STEPHANIE PAPPAS, Senior Writer - Live Science
Stephan: Yet more on the Dark Ages Trend. This process of willful ignorance is going on all around us. The corporate media barely mentions it, doesn't in fact see it, I think, or credit its reality, but it is a growing power and force in American society. Great numbers of Americans are no longer grounded in a reality of facts, at precisely the historical moment when science has never been more important.
The number of Americans who believe global warming isn’t happening has risen to 23 percent, up 7 percentage points since April 2013. The latest survey, taken in November 2013, finds that the majority of Americans – 63 percent – do believe in climate change, and 53 percent are “somewhat” or “very” worried about the consequences.
The proportion of people who do believe in climate change has been steady since April 2013, but the proportion of those who say they “don’t know” whether climate change is happening dropped 6 percentage points between April and November 2013, suggesting that many “don’t knows” moved into the “not happening” category.
“People who prior said don’t know are increasingly saying they don’t believe it,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, which released the new results today (Jan. 16). [10 Climate Change Myths, Busted]
Climate opinion
Leiserowitz and his colleagues surveyed a nationally representative sample of 830 Americans in late November and into early December 2013. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The findings reveal that Americans’ understanding of climate change is mixed.
For example, 42 percent of Americans correctly believe that most scientists agree that global warming is happening. […]
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Friday, January 17th, 2014
GUIDO MINGELS, - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: Very few media people in the U.S., either in print or digital media talk about Iceland and what it has done to recover from the mendacity and greed of bankers. Although this writer doesn't seem to feel there is much to learn from Iceland's experience and response, I think there are some lessons here; it is a shame they are almost unknown.
In 2008, Iceland experienced one of the most dramatic crashes any country had ever seen. Since then, its recovery has been just as impressive. Are there lessons to be learned? SPIEGEL went to the island nation to find out.
What should one expect from a country in which the sentence, “What an asshole!” is a compliment? Icelanders say “asshole,” or “rassgat,” when they tousle a child’s hair or greet friends, and they mean it to be friendly.
While trudging through a lava field within view of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, the guide says: “Iceland is the asshole of the world.” That, too, is a positive statement. It’s also a geological metaphor. In Iceland, which lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and thus on the dividing line of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, the earth has a tendency to relieve itself through various geysers, volcanoes and hot springs.
The island, an unlikely geological accident, has existed for some 18 million years, but has only been inhabited for 1,100 years. A pile of lava pushed out of the Atlantic that could eventually disappear again, it’s affectionately called “The Rock” by residents. Icelanders were traditionally fishermen and farmers until they decided to turn their country into […]
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Friday, January 17th, 2014
LYDIA SAAD, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: Here is the proof -- in the form of a just released reputable survey -- of the point I have been making. Large numbers of Americans see their government as the problem. It reminds me of conversations I had with Russians and others in the Soviet Union before its fall.
Click through to see the charts that accompany this report.
PRINCETON, NJ — Americans start the new year with a variety of national concerns on their minds. Although none is dominant, the government, at 21%, leads the list of what Americans consider the most important problem facing the country. The economy closely follows at 18%, and then unemployment/jobs and healthcare, each at 16%. No other issue is mentioned by as much as 10% of the public; however, the federal budget deficit or debt comes close, at 8%.
Most Important Problem Facing the U.S., January 2014
Americans’ current telling of the top problems facing the country comes from a Jan. 5-8 Gallup poll. The rank order is similar to what Gallup found in December, although the percentage mentioning unemployment has risen four percentage points to 16%.
Mentions of the government as the top problem remain higher than they were prior to the partial government shutdown in October. During the shutdown, the percentage naming the government as the top problem doubled to 33% from 16% in September.
Compared with a year ago, mentions of government are up slightly. Mentions of healthcare, on the other hand, have quadrupled — from 4% in January 2013 to 16% today, likely related to highly visible problems with the rollout of […]
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Friday, January 17th, 2014
JOSH ISRAEL, Senior Writer and Investigative Reporter - Think Progress
Stephan: Since the Rightist activists on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and threw the country to the corporate funded Theocratic Right we have seen the states controlled by the Rightists do everything they can to suppress voters' rights. Perhaps the most strongly affected state in this downward spiral has been North Carolina. The impact this will have on voting in 2014 and 2016 can only be conjectured. The contempt of the North Carolina Rightists have for democracy is quite breath-taking, as this report spells out.
The people of North Carolina are literally voting their rights as citizens away, and the result is the loss of representation. This is how democracy dies.
Click through for the video.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) dismissed concerns that a district with a majority of non-white voters may go unrepresented for an entire year, suggesting that delaying the special election until November would not hurt citizens because Congress gets nothing done in the fall anyway. Though Rep. Mel Watt (D) resigned his seat on the first day of the legislative year to become director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Governor Pat McCrory (R) announced last Monday that his replacement will not be elected until November 4.
The comments came on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown on Wednesday. Host Chuck Todd grilled McCrory on why nearly 1 million citizens in North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District – which which includes a long swath of central North Carolina running from Charlotte to Greensboro and has a majority of voters who are minorities – will have no representative for more than 300 days. McCrory noted that under his state’s election law, he could only have sped up the elections by a couple of months at best:
TODD: I have to say, I’m sort of dumb founded that, you know, I know people have a low opinion of Congress, but to have… basically […]
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Friday, January 17th, 2014
Stephan: Once again we have Edward Snowden to thank for this newly released information concerning the rise of the American police state. This stuff is truly amazing, particularly because there is not a shred of evidence that it has done anything to stop terrorist attacks, which is its putative reason for being. Why does any government have to have everyone's telephone records?
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has collected and stored almost 200 million text messages a day from around the world, UK media report.
The NSA extracts and stores data from the SMS messages, and UK spies have had access to some of the information, the Guardian and Channel 4 News say.
The reporting is based on leaks by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and comes ahead of a key US policy announcement.
The NSA told the BBC the programme stored “lawfully collected SMS data”.
“The implication that NSA’s collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false,” the NSA said.
President Barack Obama is set on Friday to announce changes to the US electronic surveillance programmes, based in part on a review of NSA activities undertaken this autumn by a White House panel.
On Thursday, the White House said Mr Obama had briefed UK Prime Minister David Cameron on the review.
The documents also reveal the NSA’s UK counterpart GCHQ had searched the NSA’s database for information regarding people in the UK, the Guardian reports.
In a statement to the BBC, GCHQ said all of its work was “carried out in accordance with the strict legal and policy framework”.
‘Privacy protections’
The programme, Dishfire, analyses SMS messages to extract information including […]
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