Saturday, June 14th, 2014
THOM HARTMANN, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is one of the most insidious projects of the Corporatist Theocratic Right. These people are very serious about turning us into a fascist state and they will spend whatever it takes. They can do this, spend this money, because they have already rigged the tax system through their minions in the Congress. Men and women who put staying in their jobs ahead of the wellbeing of America. This is part of their long game, and the universities are such easy pickings, as this reports spells out. It is a trend almost completely ignored by corporate media.
What I find also notable is that anyone over 19 takes Ayn Rand seriously. I remember reading Atlas Shrugged at 18. It was new then, very compelling, and seemed amazingly sensible. By 25 I knew it was nonsense. I think only people driven by greed can believe it much past that age.
Dark money is flowing like water in Washington.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who has always been considered one of the more Conservative members of the House, lost in a primary to upstart Tea Party challenger David Brat.
Brat, an economics college professor, was vastly outraised by Cantor, and most polls leading up to the primary showed Cantor with a very comfortable lead.
In the immediate aftermath of last night’s shocker in Virginia, analysts have been saying Brat’s victory was just a fluke.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
Dave Brat’s victory wasn’t just a fluke, and he isn’t just some Tea Partying economics college professor from Virginia.
Both he and his victory have dark money written all over them.
Back in 2008 during America’s financial collapse, BB&T Bank was one of the many big banks that crashed. In order to stay afloat, that bank took a $3.1 billion bailout from the Bush administration.
At the helm of the bank at that time was John Allison, an Ayn Rand-loving CEO.
According to The Street, during his time as CEO of BB&T, Allison regularly used the BB&T Charitable Foundation, ‘to provide grants to schools that agree to create courses on capitalism that feature the study of “Atlas […]
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Saturday, June 14th, 2014
MATT FERNER, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: Another of the favorite alarmist claims of the Prohibitionists is revealed by actual data to be nonsense. One of the most interesting things about what is happening with the Marijuana trend is that one by one the myths are being disproved.
As marijuana’s national popularity continues to grow and more states have legalized either medical or recreational use of it, a new federal survey shows that those shifting attitudes have not produced a surge in teen use.
The biennial High School Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the rate of marijuana use among U.S. high school students remained virtually unchanged from 2011 to 2013. It’s also about 3 percent less than the peak of teen marijuana use in 1999, when nearly 27 percent of teens said they had recently used marijuana, according to the CDC data.
In 2013, 23.4 percent of American high-school-aged teens used marijuana one or more times in the 30 days before the survey, the data show. That’s nearly even with 23.1 percent in 2011.
From 2011 to 2013, five more states — Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois and New Hampshire — legalized marijuana for medical use. Currently, 22 states and the District of Columbia have legal medical cannabis programs. Also during that period, Colorado and Washington state became the first two states in the nation to legalize recreational marijuana.
The CDC’s findings are similar to those in a recent report published in […]
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Saturday, June 14th, 2014
, - University of Cambridge (U.K.)
Stephan: Further evidence that Earth's ecosystems constitute an interlocking interdependent fractal matrix of subsystems far more complex than we understand. Here is an example you have probably never heard of. I certainly had not. Until we realize and accept our ignorance our arrogance will keep us from learning. We do not have dominion over the Earth, one of the most toxic Judea-Christian myths. The Earth was here before us, and will be here long after our species is gone. At best we can be sand in the gears or lubricant. And it is yet another arrogance to believe we are the only conscious beings. We have no idea what the consciousness of dinosaurs was, any more than we can truly inhabit a whale's reality -- or a flowers.
Research shows forest debris that drains into lakes is an important contributor to freshwater food chains – bolstering fish diets to the extent that increased forest cover causes fish to get “fat’ and sparse forest leaves smaller, underfed fish.
Debris from forests that washes into freshwater lakes supplements the diets of microscopic zooplankton and the fish that feed off them – creating larger and stronger fish, new research shows.
The researchers warn that, as forests are eroded through human activities such as logging, the impacts will be felt in aquatic as well as terrestrial food chains.
In fact, the study was conducted at a Canadian lake chosen because it had suffered ecological disaster during the mid-20th century: acid rain as a result of the local nickel smelting industry.
Despite moves to reduce environmental impact, many areas of vegetation surrounding the lake are still in recovery. This enabled scientists to study Yellow Perch fish from different parts of a lake that has varying degrees of surrounding forest coverage.
Carbon from forest debris has a different elemental mass than carbon produced by algae in the aquatic food chain. By analysing the young Perch that had been born that year, scientists were able to determine that at least […]
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MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: This story broke almost a week ago, but it was so inflammatory that I decided not to run it immediately. I wanted to be sure it was accurate. Nearly 800 dead babies found in a septic tank on the grounds of a Roman Catholic home for "unwed mothers" was just too damning. As time as gone on however the story just gets worse. Here is the current state of the situation. This is part of the trend of the imploding Catholic Church. And I suspect there will be more revelations to come.
It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers [3] on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish homes.
In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports, ‘Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.”
There is no evidence yet-and there may never be-that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many children had adverse effects or died as a result of the vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, ‘The fact that no record of these trials […]
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Stephan: I can think of nothing comparable within the last 50 years to Tesla sharing its patents. Patents are a corporation's DNA, and companies usually will go to any length spending millions, sometimes, billions of dollars to protect their patents. Just do a Google on the war between Samsung and Apple to see what I mean. Yet Elon Musk the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Motors feels it is more important to get more electric cars on the road than it is for him and his company to profit from exclusive use of its patents. Quite amazing really, and I take this as possibly very good news. I also think it could turn out to be a smart move financially. The Tesla is a unique vehicle and by making his patents available hopefully other companies will embrace electronic vehicles. That said, I'm not sure they will do so. It will require massive expensive retooling, and will impact profit in the short term. I think that as usual in America immediate profit will trump long term climate change remediation in the form of phasing out carbon energy technology. But I am an optimist, and hope I am wrong.
Tesla Motors Inc. is offering the proprietary technology at the heart of its Model S electric car to any company that wants to build vehicles, and its chief suggested BMW AG already is interested in sharing certain patents.
Chief Executive Elon Musk said in an interview on Thursday the offer is intended to help spur wider development of electric vehicles. Mr. Musk said one topic discussed with BMW executives was sharing Tesla’s technology for rapidly recharging batteries, part of the company’s “supercharger” stations.
The Palo Alto, Calif., maker of $71,000 and up luxury electric cars decided to offer open access to Tesla patents out of frustration that electric vehicles remain less than 1% of new cars and light trucks sold each year.
BMW couldn’t be reached for immediate comment.
Mr. Musk also hinted at another reason for the offer: achieving greater economies of scale. For example, Tesla’s patents for its vehicle Supercharging stations could be shared with other auto makers, which could help Tesla spread costs and more quickly make more stations available.
More manufacturers should use small battery cells, as Tesla does, Mr. Musk said. “That would be one thing I would recommend.” He has outlined plans to build a large battery factory, which […]
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