Guy T. Saperstein and Kelsey Abkin , - AlterNet
Stephan: If you have travelled abroad to Europe, or Asia you have probably noticed the difference in the fear level in those countries compared to the United States. Whenever I travel I am struck by how fearful Americans are compared to much of the rest of the world. Our media, particularly Fox News and the other Christofascist outlets, use fear to get ratings. Our government uses fear to justify how it spends money, the hysteria ginned up about Muslims being example number one. In fact you are more likely to be killed by your shirt or a White Christofascist than a Muslim. Those are fake fear stimulators. In addition we have a real crisis of gun murders -- 33,000 people a year -- and an increasingly militaristic police structure which seems increasingly threatening.
The truth is crime is way down in most places, and there is no Muslim "problem." This report presents some actual facts.
Credit: Shutterstock
In December 2016, at a rally in North Carolina, a 12-year-old girl looked at then candidate Donald Trump, “I’m scared,” she said. “What are you going to do to protect this country?”
“You know what, darling?” Trump replied. “You’re not going to be scared anymore. They’re going to be scared.”
Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump played off the rising fear of the American public. His “us vs. them” rhetoric eroded people’s trust in facts, numbers, nuance, government and the news media and augmented the already fragile line of truth. Despite all negatives one can say about Trump, this tactic was clearly successful. He was right to know Americans were afraid and that they would vote accordingly.
But there is a remarkable dissonance between what seems to be and what is. According to Harvard professor, Steven Pinker, “Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.”
In most of the world, the rate of homicide has been sinking. The Great American Crime Decline of the […]
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Richard Halstead, - The Mercury News (Bay Area, California)
Stephan: As climate change wreaks greater and greater destruction on the country we are going to see all kinds of actions legal and otherwise to establish who is guilty. Here is one of the first attempts, and may it succeed. It would make a lovely precedent to what I think is going to be a growing trend.
The complaint alleges that oil companies since the 1970s concealed the harm of fossil fuels to the atmosphere and fought regulation.
Credit: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
Two Bay Area counties sued 37 oil, gas and coal companies Monday asserting the companies knew their fossil fuel products would cause sea level rise and coastal flooding but failed to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution.
The lawsuit was part of a coordinated litigation attack by Marin, San Mateo County and the city of Imperial Beach.
The lawsuit, filed in Marin County Superior Court, alleges that “major corporate members of the fossil fuel industry, have known for nearly a half century that unrestricted production and use of their fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes our climate.”
The suit goes on to say that even though the fossil fuel companies knew there was a narrow window to take action before consequences would be irreversible, they engaged in a “coordinated, multi-front effort” to “discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence and persistently create doubt.”
The […]
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Native Love , - Nativelove
Stephan: We use olive oil almost daily, and its quality and purity are important to us. I suspect many of you would say much the same. So this report will be of interest.
We use Costco Organic Virgin.
It was found that even 7 of the biggest olive oil makers in the USA, mix their items with cheap oils to get more profits. Namely, one of the products we regard as healthiest and a remedy for longevity has been corrupted.
Apparently, even 70% of olive oil sold in the U.S. stores is fake, as they have been cut with cheaper, inferior oils like canola and sunflower oil! This is similar to the 2008 practice in Italy. This meant seizure for 85 oil farms that mixed some percentage chlorophyll with sunflower and canola to the olive oil.
The oil was mixed, colored, perfumed and flavored too, and these things made the Australian government investigate their oils. The results were awful. After that, not one brand named extra virgin olive oil got the 2012 certificate of approval.
These scams made the University of California to study 124 imported brands of extra virgin olive oil and discovered that more than 70% of the samples did not pass the test.
THESE ARE THE BRANDS THAT FAILED THE TEST:
Carapelli
Mezzetta
Pompeian
Mazola
Primadonna
Colavita
Sasso
Antica Badia
Star
Whole Foods
Felippo Berio
Safeway
Coricelli
Bertolli
ON THE OTHER HAND, THE FOLLOWING […]
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Michael Goldfarb, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This is a very good essay with which I agree describing what is happening to America, the rise of the Christofascist faction, and how much it is in violation of what the Founders intended. We are in crisis, and about 38% of the country thinks its great.
Credit: Collins Flag
The Trump administration, having passed the six-month milestone in office, kicked off the next phase of his presidency with an explosion of crazy, spread over the past seven days. Like sweeps week on The Apprentice, every day saw some headline-grabbing event to garner ratings. It started with leaks against his former bosom buddy, attorney general, Jeff Sessions. President Trump, “sources” said, was planning to fire him. It moved on to a speech to the Boy Scouts of America jamboree, where Trump told the story of a property developer who lost a fortune and was lurking at a New York party with the “hottest people”. Later, there was a tweet announcement banning transgender people from the military.
This explosion of crazy concluded with his new White House chief of communications,
Anthony Scaramucci, calling the
New Yorker’s political correspondent Ryan Lizza to trash virtually everyone in the White House. He compared himself positively to the president’s dark lord and special adviser, Stephen Bannon: “I’m […]
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John Fialka, - Scientific American/Climatewire
Stephan: I've just had enough of the disaster that is Trump and the Republican Congress. With a few exceptions, I don't think I have ever seen in my lifetime such a repugnant corrupt self-interested group of individuals. The trends in which they are involved are all negative and detrimental to the nation. So even though there are new developments we're taking a break, and today's edition looks at some of the other trends going on.
This first story is about Colorado which along with California, in my view, is one of the most interesting wellness oriented states in the union. And I say that based on its social outcome data. Here is the latest. I think what we are going to see is the Blue value states increasingly adopt wellness oriented programs as the stresses of climate change become ever more urgent, even as the Red value states flounder and go into increasing crisis.
Peña Station Next
Credit: Denver Post
DENVER — Can a city built from scratch be profitable to developers and enjoyable to residents as it tries to be carbon-free?
That is the question facing owners and planners of a mostly vacant, sunburned 400-acre plot of land near this city’s sprawling International Airport as they plan an energy system with vast differences from the typical suburban subdivision.
The city, called Peña Station Next, is located at the last stop of Denver’s newly completed rail line to its airport. It’s named after Federico Peña, a former mayor and lawyer whose adroit political maneuvering helped to site both the airport and the rail line at their present location over 30 years ago.
The political uproar over the airport has long since faded, but the new city forming near it is facing engineering and economic challenges. It’s a plan that has never been attempted before. The idea is to attract a bunch of different entrepreneurs to a power system relying mainly on solar energy, a king-sized lithium-ion battery and various energy efficiency […]
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