Thursday, September 25th, 2014
Stephan: We have now had constant war well into a second decade, through two presidencies. It has destroyed the lives of millions, Americans, and others in even greater numbers. We are creating this monster by our policies and, for a small group of people in the military, intelligence, corporate triad it has all been extraordinarily profitable. Eisenhower warned us, but no one paid him any heed.
Think: a child born on 9/11 is now a teenager, and has never known a time when the U.S. was not at war.
People say we never seem to learn. To which I would reply, to the people who profit from war, they have learned a formula that works year after year, decade after decade.
Northrop Grumman test pilots prepare to taxi the Navy X-47B drone, to be launched off the USS George H. W. Bush. (Credit: AP/Steve Helber)
A massive, $7.2 billion Army intelligence contract signed just 10 days ago underscores the central role to be played by the National Security Agency and its army of private contractors in the unfolding air war being carried out by the United States and its Gulf States allies against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
That war was greatly expanded Monday night when U.S. forces launched a ‘mix of fighter, bomber, remotely-piloted aircraft and Tomahawk” cruise missiles against ISIS targets in Syria. The Central Command said the strikes were led by the United States with support from Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
INSCOM’s ‘global intelligence support” contract will place the contractors at the center of this fight. It was unveiled on Sept. 12 by the U.S. […]
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Thursday, September 25th, 2014
Stephan: The almost daily questionable killings of civilians, particularly people of color, by the police is undermining our population's assessment of law enforcement. Personally I would never call the police for fear that involving them could well end up with an innocent dead by a policeman's bullet. But what is particularly alarming is that young people all over the country are coming to see the police as a problem not a solution, as this report outlines.
This is dangerous ground for a democracy.
Click through to see the charts.
Source: Public Religion Research Institute, American Values Survey, September 2014; PRRI Religion & Politics Tracking Poll 2013
A majority of Americans no longer believe the criminal justice system treats people of all races equally, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute. As Mic.com news director Jared Keller pointed out in a tweet, the change from 2013 and 2014 shows the possible policy implications of the August 9 shooting of unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which led to weeks of tense protests and national media attention in the St. Louis suburb. The shift could also have been influenced by the death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York City Police officer in July.
criminal justice race poll Ferguson
The poll’s findings apply across the board. While young adults saw the most dramatic shift toward acknowledging racial disparities in the criminal justice system, everyone else – seniors and Republicans included – saw […]
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Wednesday, September 24th, 2014
JENNIFER A. KINGSON, - The New York Times
Stephan: I am beginning to see reports coming out that attempt to grapple with the implications of climate change. It isn't pretty, but it may be useful to you. We are going into a very different world.
Alaskans, stay in Alaska. People in the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, sit tight
New York Times/Associated Press
Scientists trying to predict the consequences of climate change say that they see few safe havens from the storms, floods and droughts that are sure to intensify over the coming decades. But some regions, they add, will fare much better than others.
Forget most of California and the Southwest (drought, wildfires). Ditto for much of the East Coast and Southeast (heat waves, hurricanes, rising sea levels). Washington, D.C., for example, may well be a flood zone by 2100, according to an estimate released last week.
Instead, consider Anchorage. Or even, perhaps, Detroit.
‘If you do not like it hot and do not want to be hit by a hurricane, the options of where to go are very limited,” said Camilo Mora, a geography professor at the University of Hawaii and lead author of a paper published in Nature last year predicting that unprecedented high temperatures will become the norm worldwide by 2047.
Under any model of climate change, scientists say, most of the country will look and feel drastically different in 2050, 2100 and beyond, […]
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Wednesday, September 24th, 2014
Stephan: Here is another story about what the future holds under climate change. As it begins to dawn on people that where they live will either have too much water, they may even be underwater, or too little water we are going to have a real estate collapse the like of which has never been seen, far greater than 2008.
Porta-potties are delivered the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014 at Eagle’s Nest Resort in Porterville, Calif., because the well went dry.
Porta-potties are popping up outside homes. Drinking water is being trucked in from faraway places. Girl Scouts are setting up collection points for residents to donate bottled water.
This is the reality of life in East Porterville – a central California town where the wells are beginning to run dry. Gripped by a severe drought, water sources for residents aren’t replenishing, and that spells big problems for the future.
In the Central Valley town of roughly 7,000 residents, some 290 families say their wells are already out of water. The town mostly consists of poor, Hispanic residents – people who simply can’t afford another setback. Elsewhere in Tulare County, many other homes are suffering dry wells, too, and the problem has expanded sporadically all over the Central Valley, though the data isn’t quite as […]
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Wednesday, September 24th, 2014
WILLIAM BOARDMAN, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: Nuclear power was a Faustian bargain. And like all such, there is a fearsome price. Everybody gets agitated about Fukushima -- as they should -- but we don't need to go overseas to see the curse of nuclear power. This report of a 10,000 year facility that lasted less than 50 years is a cautionary tale to be taken very seriously. What do we do with the waste? And it isn't just the formal waste, like spent fuel rods. The plants themselves are going to be an ongoing problem as they age into decrepitude. Where I live on the mainland there is the Hanford facility. These things are all over the United States. And they are going to cost tens of billions of dollars essentially until someone figures out a disposal or neutralizing system.
A photograph looking over the top of nuclear waste emplaced at WIPP in drums, waste boxes and overpacks in Panel 7 where the release of radioactive material took place. (photo: WIPP)
U.S. Energy Dept. denies fake claim, ignores serious reports
More than seven months after the release of Plutonium and other radioactive materials into the environment from the failed Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) on Valentine’s Day 2014, the only U.S. nuclear weapons waste repository remains closed and unsafe, with little certainty as to when, or even if, it will be able to re-open. Nuclear experts continue to argue about just what actually happened last winter, and why, and how much radioactivity was released from the contaminated underground storage area near Carlsbad, New Mexico. To date, WIPP investigators have identified just one radioactive waste drum that ruptured underground.
According to a recent Reuters report, a ‘second container […]
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