IDF's YouTube channel

What YouTube Doesn’t Want You to See
By Noah Pollak

Yesterday, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) did something innovative: it opened a channel on YouTube and posted videos to it that help explain why Israel is fighting Hamas. The site hosted about a dozen videos showing things like Israeli humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza and airstrikes that prevented terrorists from firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

This was apparently too much for YouTube, which moments ago removed several videos from the IDF’s channel, including the most-watched video, which showed a group of Hamas goons being blown up in an air strike as they loaded Katyusha missiles onto a truck. The point of such footage, as if it needed to be said, is not to revel in violence — it is to show the legitimacy of Israeli self-defense.

The rank double-standard that YouTube has applied to Israel is disturbing. YouTube hosts all manner of similar footage — much of it far more gory than the grainy infrared images posted by the IDF — of U.S. air strikes. Why is YouTube capitulating to those who do not wish for Israel to be able to tell its side of the story?

Should the Military Be Called in for Natural Disasters?

Should the Military Be Called in for Natural Disasters?
By Siobhan Morrisey for Time Magazine

Theoretically, even pacificists would probably admit that no one can respond as quickly and efficiently to a major U.S. disaster as the military. But the news that active duty soldiers fresh from a combat tour of Iraq will be gearing up to assist civilian agencies charged with responding to anything from accidental chemical spills to terrorist attacks has sparked mixed reactions from experts in emergency management and civil liberties advocates....

Facebook's War on Nipples

Facebook's War on Nipples By Ada Calhoun

A clash of culture wars....when did breast feeding become obscene? and why is it ok to show a fully naked guy on facebook but not a boob? It's Janet Jackson's Superbowl fiasco all over again...

Energy and the Family Tree

Energy and the Family Tree
By Jonathan Phillips for Reality Sandwich

For those on the healing path, going home for the holidays can be a true challenge of heart and spirit as old energy patterns kick up dust from the floorboards of our childhood. In this podcast, I discuss how the energy field of our families is stronger than we might imagine and how family constellation work can help us heal and forgive electromagnetic blocks within our own ancestral lines.

I also share a recent experience of transcending familial patterns this Christmas during a surprising ecstatic moment at the Comfort Inn in Branson, Missouri. And I encourage RS participants to share their own moments of family healing, realization, and transformation in the comments section below.

To listen to the podcast follow the above link through the article...

Magnetic Breach

Magnetic Breach
By Erin Shaw for Reality Sandwich

NASA's latest exploration reveals "a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist." Five space probes from the THEMIS mission (time history of events and macroscale interactions during substorms) flew through the opening and recorded "a torrent of solar wind particles streaming into the magnetosphere, signaling an event of unexpected size and importance." The opening was created by magnetic reconnection, when terrestrial and solar magnetic fields press against each other and crack open the magnetosphere. In this case, the conduits of solar wind from Earth's North and South Poles overlapped at the equator to create this unprecedented breach.

While the solar winds don't necessarily trigger geomagnetic storms themselves, they do load the magnetic field with plasma, which is linked to the auroras, power outages, and satellite disturbances that directly affect us. The Solar Storm Watch could become more important as we enter Solar Cycle 24, during which it is more likely that solar winds will load the magnetosphere with plasma just before a geomagnetic storm. According to space physicists, this increase in solar winds and plasma levels could create "the perfect sequence for a really big event," possibly stronger storms that are more disruptive of satellite activity and power supply.

If An Asteroid Hit Earth

Based on NASA projections, there is 1 in 2,518,072
chance that a total destruction type asteroid will impact Earth in the next year.


...extraordinary video

"Lets Move the Center"

A nice piece on Naomi Klein, author of the Shock Doctrine, the article goes into her political upbringing and her hopes for the Left's future.

Outside Agitator
by Larissa MacFarquhar for The New Yorker

Klein argues that the only circumstance in which a population would accept Friedman-style reforms is when it is in a state of shock, following a crisis of some sort—a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a war. A person in shock regresses to a childlike state in which he longs for a parental figure to take control; similarly, a population in a state of shock will hand exceptional powers to its leaders, permitting them to destroy the regulatory functions of government.

Quote of the Week

And Still I Rise

The Death of My Beautiful Arches

Redrock Redemption
from Reality Sandwich by Adam Elenbaas

The auction of Utah's beautiful Redrock lands is taking place on December 19th. Over 300,000 acres of wilderness are being sold to the highest bidder (including oil and gas speculators).

The Redrock area includes vistas like Canyonlands, Arches National Parks, and Dinosaur National Monument. The plan to sell off leases for the land was advanced on election day this year.

Click here to take action against the Redrock giveaway.

FDA Admits Mercury Fillings May Be Dangerous to Children

The FDA has finally caved to pressure this month and admitted, for the first time, that mercury contained in silver dental fillings may be dangerous to children and pregnant women. The FDA's website now reads: "Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses..."

*Update 12/18/08
FDA Stuns Scientists, Declares Mercury in Fish to be Safe for Infants, Children, Expectant Mothers!

In a truly astonishing betrayal of public safety (even for the FDA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today revoked its warning about mercury in fish, saying that eating mercury-contaminated fish no longer poses any health threat to children, pregnant women, nursing mothers and infants.

Is anyone really surprised? The FDA is a drug-pushing, people-betraying, scientifically illiterate criminal organization that, time and time again, seeks only to protect the profits of powerful corporations whose products poison the people. This statement is no longer a mere opinion. It is an observable fact based on the FDA's own pattern of behavior and its outlandish decisions that predictably betray the American public.

The real reason this is happening
You want to know the REAL reason the FDA is easing up on its warning about mercury in fish? It's because the agency is being relentlessly pounded over two related issues: Mercury in dental fillings and mercury preservatives in vaccines. And the FDA can't keep up its lie about the "safety" of vaccines and mercury fillings if it has already declared mercury to be dangerous in fish, right?

To the criminal minds running the FDA, the clever solution is to revoke the warning about mercury in fish. Thus, the FDA takes the position that all mercury is safe, and suddenly they're off the hook on mercury fillings and thimerosal in vaccines.

21 page lawsuit filed against the FDA by Consumers for Dental Choice.
http://www.fdaweb.com/source/MercuryComplaint.pdf

The CDC Fact Sheet on Mercury
http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/pdf/factsheet_mercury.pdf

The War Between Church and Science

Motivating video, where Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science.

Predictions

Predictions for the next five years on Boing Boing...some interesting stuff

The Athens Riots: Fallout from the Financial Crisis?

The Athens Riots: Fallout from the Financial Crisis?
By Jeff Israely for Time

One important target stands out in the riots and street clashes engulfing Greece as the damage totals are tallied. In addition to the scores of cars burned and shops ransacked by radical youths, the damage in Athens extends to banks. Since the violence ignited Saturday night, when a policeman fatally shot an Athens teenager, rioters have damaged at least 38 banks in the capital, with more than 150 targeted across all of Greece, as the rioting has spread to such cities as Thessaloniki, Larissa and Patras. (See pictures of the unrest in Athens.)

Of course, attacking the arteries of capitalism has long been a favorite symbolic act of hooded anarchists and hard-left protesters, including the dozens of ATMs smashed and banks set ablaze during the antiglobalization uprisings in Seattle in 1999 and Genoa in 2001. But Athens 2008 comes as the very words damaged banks have taken on a whole new connotation. Indeed, in the weeks before the violence began, many Greeks had expressed outrage at the government's $35 billion in aid to the nation's lenders at a time when one out of five citizens lives below the poverty line. And so, nearly a week after they began, the Greek riots offer the first tangible sign since the West's financial meltdown of the potential social unrest percolating just below the surface...

Quote of the Week

"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself".

-Master Chief John Urgayle quoting "Self-Pity" by D.H. Lawrence in the film GI Jane

Mysterious Acorn Shortage

Scientists baffled by mysterious acorn shortage

Hard to Find Seeds

It's never too early to start planning that garden. And towards that goal, Mother Earth News has created a nice custom Google search engine that scours over 600 seed suppliers. It's the perfect way to find those obscure plants and varieties not at the local nursery. You can test out this new tool here on the Mother Earth website

Book Burning....Computer Style

by George Ure for Urban Survival

Don't know if you have seen the story yet, but "Google Earth accused of aiding Terrorists" says a Times Online report.

In court papers, seems Indian authorities are saying that Google Earth was used for mapping out some of the terror events.

Don't know about you, but I have a problem with this 'ban Google Earth' move. What if (as seems likely) the terrorists used other readily available tools? Would the Indian court system be considering whether to "Ban Microsoft Streets and Trips"? "Banish Garmin from the Indian subcontinent"?

Hell, ban printed roadmaps while we're at it , too!

Better lock up the pens, pencils, and paper, too while we're at it - those could become terrorist tools as well.

This gets to the ugly heart of the 'terror' mindset that has infected world governments. If people had surety of a place, regular meals, and meaningful work, plus a chance to work hard and get ahead (instead of work hard for 40-years then get eff'ed-over by inflation, financial fraud, and whathaveyou) then gee, where would terrorism find root?

I know, don't be asking those obvious questions ("Where does it stop, though?"). Common sense is the kind based on the near-certain knowledge that someone who means you harm is going to get you with a .308 round, or a knife in your back. With or without Google, Streets & Trips, LandSat data which is all over the place, or a trip to key targets with a video recorder - maybe we should ban them, too?

Where does it stop? With the banning of everything! The end game is in a police state where we're all employed watching each other. And then everyone will join whatever revolution against oppression comes along.

Book burning always ends badly and this is just the same thing...with a few more chips and maybe a lithium battery.

Climbing the World's Biggest Trees

Science writer Richard Preston talks about some of the most enormous living beings on the planet, the giant trees of the US Pacific Northwest. Growing from a tiny seed, they support vast ecosystems -- and are still, largely, a mystery.

REDD - Paying Countries to Keep Their Trees

Green Banks: Paying Countries to Keep their Trees
By Bryan Walsh for Time

In 1997 TNC, U.S. utility companies American Electric Power (AEP) and PacifiCorp, and oil major BP Amoco paid Bolivia $10.8 million for the credits represented by all the carbon and potential greenhouse gas that is locked inside trees. In return, the government simply has to ensure that the forest remains standing and healthy for the next 30 years. It's called avoided deforestation, and projects like this may represent one of the most promising ways to simultaneously slow the destruction of tropical forests and the pace of climate change — if we can get it right.

[The] promise of avoided deforestation, in which rich countries pay to keep rain forests standing and receive carbon credits in return is also known by the acronym REDD, for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. Currently, the international carbon cap-and-trade system organized by the Kyoto Protocol only recognizes industrial projects — such as a rich country paying to improve energy efficiency at a power plant — or programs to actively reforest land already cleared. It doesn't recognize avoided deforestation. Supporters are confident that when the world meets for the annual U.N. summit on climate change in Poznan, Poland, this month, avoided deforestation will be one of the main topics of discussion. "This is too important not to be front and center on everyone's minds," says Jake Schmidt, head of international climate policy for the New York City-based Natural Resources Defense Council. "It will be a major focus."..

An estimated 50,000 sq. mi. (129,500 sq km) of forest are lost to the logger's ax or to fire every year, and that hurts the planet in two very important ways. Rare plants and animals, many still undiscovered, depend on the forests — especially the rich rain forests that encircle the earth either side of the equator. When the forests disappear, all that wildlife disappears as well. But trees also contain carbon, and while they live, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, compensating in part for the greenhouse gases spewed into the air from cars, power plants and factories. When trees are cut down or burned, that carbon is put back into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. At least 20% of annual global carbon emissions come from deforestation. If we can't stop forest loss, we'll struggle to stop climate change...

Obama's Economic Recovery Plan

The Exaltation of Exhaustion

Rendell, Napolitano, and the Exaltation of Exhaustion
by Arriana Huffington

Ed Rendell's off-mic assessment that Janet Napolitano is a "perfect" choice for Homeland Security Secretary because she has "no life," "no family" and "can devote, literally, 19-20 hours a day" to the job is emblematic of a pervasive misperception in America: the idea that to be a success you have to make work the be-all of your life. The truth is the exact opposite. It turns out people are not only happier - they are also much more productive if they are able to get away from work, and renew their passion and focus. More than ever, judgment and wisdom are what's most urgently needed in our leaders, and round-the-clock stress and exhaustion are conducive to neither.

"Prop 8 - The Musical"

Starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more...
No more picking and choosing what you want to take from the bible...So let's promote love.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Feinstein's Statement on Interrogations

So it looks like we are having some favorable movement in the government toward a renewed policy of anti-torture.

Incoming Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, released a statement yesterday, clarifying her position on what standards the Obama Administration should use to govern interrogations. ....

Here is the new Feinstein statement:

I strongly believe there should be a single, clear standard for interrogation across the federal government, and that this standard should comply with the Geneva Convention, the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and U.S. law. I plan to introduce legislation in January that would close Guantanamo, make the Army Field Manual the single standard for interrogations, prohibit contractors from being used to carry out interrogations and provide the International Committee of the Red Cross with access to detainees. If the incoming administration decides to propose an alternative to this legislation, I am willing to hear its views. But I believe we must put an end to coercive interrogations by the CIA.

Bravo..

Foodies Make a Pitch to Obama

Foodies Make a Pitch to Obama
By Kim Severson for The New York Times

The fact that a Secretary of Agriculture has yet to be named has some chefs, farmers and animal welfare advocates wondering whether food and farming have been shoved to the Obama D team.

To help move the process along, nearly 90 notable figures in the world of sustainable agriculture and food sent a letter to the Obama transition team earlier this week offering their six top picks for what they called “the sustainable choice for the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.”

The hope is that the new secretary will be less aligned with industrial agribusiness and commodity farming than secretaries past. And if he or she embraces the connection between food, health and the environment, well, that’s all the better.

The letter lays out a tall order:

“From rising childhood and adult obesity to issues of food safety, global warming and air and water pollution, we believe our next Secretary of Agriculture must have a vision that calls for: recreating regional food systems, supporting the growth of humane, natural and organic farms, and protecting the environment, biodiversity and the health of our children while implementing policies that place conservation, soil health, animal welfare and worker’s rights as well as sustainable renewable energy near the top of their agenda.”

It was signed by 88 people, among them: Michael Pollan, Judy Wicks, Alice Waters, Rick Bayless, Wendell Berry, Eric Schlosser, Anna Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Paul Willis, Dan Barber, Michel Nischan, Ann Cooper, Marion Nestle, Peter Hoffman, Winona LaDuke, and Michael Dimock.

For those playing along at home, here’s their list of the six top picks for Secretary of Agriculture. Keep in mind that yesterday, Rep. John Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, a potato farmer, said he was being considered. (And no, the effort to nominate Michael Pollan never got off the ground):

Gus Schumacher, former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services and former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture.

Chuck Hassebrook, executive director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, Neb.
Sarah Vogel, former Commissioner of Agriculture for North Dakota, lawyer, Bismarck, N.D.

Fred Kirschenmann, organic farmer, distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, and president of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY.

Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Secretary of State, former policy analyst in Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich, co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Neil Hamilton, Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and director of the Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

No More College Educations

A scary trend....

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.
By Tamar Lewin for The New York Times

The report found that college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

Quote of the Week

"Abandon your fears or be abandoned because of them"
-Caroline Myss

Deepak Chopra on Terrorism and our Government

This is a long article....I had wanted to cut it down before I posted it but as I kept reading it, it just kept getting more insightful so inturn I decided to posted the entire thing. This is one of the most thought provoking interviews on Terroism I've ever read. Please make time to read....

My Uncensored Interview with Deepak Chopra
by Michelle Haimoff for Huffington Post

I recently wrote an article entitled "Deepak Chopra on Mumbai: Too Controversial for CNN?" about Chopra's November 26th interview on CNN, which CNN had possibly edited. Within a week of the interview, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article entitled "Deepak Blames America," and Elisabeth Hasselbeck of The View called him "Glitter glasses whatshisface" and mumbled "Go light a bowl of incense." On December 2nd, I interviewed Chopra by phone and gave him the opportunity to speak candidly about censorship in the media, the new patriotism, and latent anti-Muslim racism in the United States. The unedited podcast of the interview will soon be posted on MichelleHaimoff.com/Interviews.

Chopra started off by clarifying what happened in the CNN interview. "The interview actually went on for another ten minutes when I was doing it but it was a tape...I talk about a lot of things which were not there on the transcript."

As far as what was cut, he says, "I spoke about how we are funding both sides of the conflict through our military industrial complex, which is a huge industry and we fund it through our petrol dollars, through the Saudis who then buy weapons from all over the world, but including from us. And these weapons end up in the hands of terrorists as well, so willy-nilly we are participating in the funding on both sides."...

"It's a very complex situation." He says. "What I've discovered is that, if you start to tell the truth in that atmosphere that -- are you recording this?"

"Yes." I say.

"If you start to tell the truth or even want to know the truth, the atmosphere that has been created in the last eight years in the Bush administration and also with the patriot act and so on... if you start to even look in that direction in the last eight years it has become extremely dangerous because you, first of all, are accused of not being patriotic. You probably want to see the US government overthrown and you are a traitor. I've got some really good friends at CNN and other places... The good people are scared. They've been scared. It's very different to snap out of that mindset."

Chopra hopes that the Obama presidency will encourage freedom of speech, honesty and integrity, and that the media will no longer view critical citizenry as treasonous.

"I have lived more years in this country than I have lived in India. My children are born here. They're citizens of this country as much as Obama is. And I get hate mail from tons of people, hundreds of people everyday saying, 'You should go back to India. You're a traitor. You're this or that.' It's an atmosphere that has been created for eight years. It does a great disservice in the United States to have that atmosphere. And I'm just feeling right now that opportunity to really test if we can speak our truth and not be afraid. Otherwise we might as well live in the former USSR or in China or something. Even in India you can speak your truth and not have to be afraid of being accused of these things by the government or by special interest groups."

But why would a network like CNN censor itself for fear of seeming unpatriotic? What are they afraid of?

"Michelle, we have to be very careful that we don't assume that," he said. "That CNN is afraid. Then we'd be doing the same thing that other people do -- just making assumptions. My perception is that journalists at large are not comfortable by raising sensitive issues... News is sold as a commodity these days and the more sensational it is, the better it is."

He later continued: "I just want to clarify one thing. I don't want to imply that the reason that the interview was cut off suddenly was because of some policy decision. If anything, CNN is more open than anybody else." For example, he says, it could have been a segment time issue.

Does he really think that CNN is more open than anyone else?

"I think CNN definitely. FOX and the Wall Street Journal are cheerleaders for the old paradigm. They're cheerleaders for right wing extremism and right wing fundamentalism... in a sense two institutions that do more disservice to our country than anybody else."

Chopra's understanding of Islamic extremists provides a much-needed glimpse at where these fundamentalists are coming from, but does the violence stem from a culture war or are terrorists settling the score for a perceived crime?

"Here is my analysis of it." He said. "There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. That's about 25% of the world's population. By no means are the majority of these people violent or fundamentalists either."

Chopra, who is a senior scientist at Gallup, was part of a team that conducted a poll of 600 million Muslims (about half of the Muslim population of the world). Countries polled included Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. What he concluded in the poll is that the vast majority (92-95%) of Muslims are moderates, and they admire the West for their entrepreneurship, business and modernism. A small minority (<5%) are extremists, and of that we don't know how many are actual terrorists. His guess is very few.

Based on the survey, the cause of terrorism is "a rage that comes from humiliation, lack of respect, and also from factors that we are unaware of, generally uneducated about."

He cites Wikipedia estimates of the number of people that have died in Iraq since the war, ranging from 400,000 to over a million. "When we initiated the war on Iraq we forget to remind ourselves that the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing to do with 9/11. We also know that the Iraqis had no weapons of mass destruction. We now say that Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer. That he used torture and that he needed to be out. We should remind ourselves that we knew this a long time ago and we have used him as our ally for a long time. He was in the senior Bush administration before the first war. You know, much before that... And then we decided to make him our enemy. Nothing changed. He was definitely a mass murderer. He was a torturer. When we did the 'Shock and Awe' campaign. The 'Shock and Awe.' Listen to the words. We're bombing Baghdad and many parts of the country we're calling it the 'Shock and Awe' campaign."

"FOX News actually produced the Shock and Awe campaign as a theatrical production. They hired a musical director. They had symphonic music. And when you saw it on TV it was a glorious, glorious attempt to liberate the people of Iraq. It's easy for a person sitting in a plane 32,000 feet above sea level to press a button. When he looks at the map he presses a button. And you know, we're seeing it on screens. We're calling it 'Shock and Awe' and we hear this beautiful music - sounds almost like Mozart - while this is happening, while on the ground there are grizzly scenes which we don't see in the media, of people being mutilated. People in the throes of death. Bodies all over the place. And gruesome scenes the American public is totally unaware of, but people in the Muslim world are very aware of... We are very self-absorbed."

The deaths that appear in our papers are Western deaths. The women, children and non-Jihadis that die are not part of our conversation.

"I think this kind of mentality that demeans the life of somebody who is perhaps brown, Muslim, inferior, is not that important, but it enlists huge amounts of rage. It takes some of the moderates and certainly makes them fundamentalists. It takes some of the fundamentalists and certainly makes them terrorists."

"Imagine you're on the streets of Baghdad you see planes going up in the sky. You hear in the news this is shock and awe and bombs are falling your relatives are killed. Your brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, parents are killed and it's called shock and awe. Would you not call that terrorism? Just because the person is in uniform and pressing a button and is calling it shock and awe and doing it to music, is that any worse than a beheading? It's worse because you're not aware of the damage that's being done."

Chopra and his son, Gotham, are involved in Shasta Planet, an organization that encouraged dialogue between New York-based American children and Iraqi children before the Iraq War about ways to prevent the war from taking place. After the US bombed Iraq, the Chopras couldn't find many of the kids who were involved in the project because some had died, while others had lost a parent, brother or sister. "This is the kind of thing that enlists rage in that world," Chopra said.

"Despite that, there are millions of Muslims that admire the US, that would love to have economic partnerships with the US. Would love to learn business leadership skills. Would love to know what makes an entrepreneur. You know, the vast majority of people in the world of any religion want a decent life want to send their kids to school and want to be at peace. And the terrorists are as much a threat to these people as to anyone else."

Chopra's deeper understanding of the reasons for terrorism has been misconstrued of late, most notably in the Wall Street Journal's "Deepak Blames America" article.

"I didn't blame America," Chopra says and then elaborates that placing blame is complex and that Pakistan is suffering because of the people that don't want Pakistan to have a relationship with a nuclear-armed India. "The worst thing India could have done is to have a nuclear deal and to be part of a nuclear club... Why are we selectively choosing to have nuclear deals and making the rest of the world feel unsafe?"

"We have a very self-righteous attitude towards the rest of the world. We have no understanding of how these violent ideologies are born. We want to just go to war and kill the terrorists. Well, the bad news is you can kill as many terrorists as you want, but you cannot kill terrorism. In order to kill terrorism it's gonna have to be a 50-year Marshall Plan to not build war torn cities, but to build ideas. To rebuild violence torn minds. To educate them, to help them, to cooperate with them, to create economic partnerships so that the rage disappears, and to understand them. There are very simple rules for having a dialogue. You respect your enemy. You talk to them with the attitude, 'Yes. We understand that you also have injustice and we also feel injustice. Can we have a room here for forgiveness on both sides? Can we refrain from belligerence?' The more belligerent we get, the more belligerent the radicals get."

Chopra says that, according to Rabinowitz, "I'm a purveyor of aromatherapy, enemas, I say happy thoughts make people happy." He touches on Elisabeth Hasselbeck's comment that he should "go light some incense." He takes personally when the media dismisses thousands of years of wisdom and traditions, and is patient in explaining that aromatherapy and incense work through neuro-associative conditioning. If anyone bothered to ask, he would mention that he is a neuro-endocrinologist and that everything he studies has a medical basis. "If you really examine this, this is racism. This is bigotry. This is hatred. This is prejudice. And this is total lack of knowledge of another person's culture." You can almost hear him rolling his eyes when he says, "The only time I've prescribed enemas is when somebody has constipation."

So what is the nature of his expertise?

"What's an expert? Who's an expert?" he asks. "I have not been indoctrinated by the US government to a particular point of view." But he has the unique perspective of someone with emotional ties to the East and the West. His inner circle includes a CIA agent, his son, Gotham, a former a war correspondent in war torn regions ("He sat across the table with Taliban leaders and had mangoes with them"), and the Muslims that comprise his world ("I come from a culture where Hindus and Muslims for the most part live peacefully").

Chopra wants us to understand about Muslims that which we don't yet understand -- that they have a value system but that it's different than ours. In the Gallup Poll Chopra helped design, Muslims talk about taking care of the elderly and the poor. Despite the terrorism, the crime rate of Saudi Arabia and most Arab countries is much lower than that of LA or DC. Perhaps taking care of the elderly and the poor helps keep crime rates so low.

After Rabinowitz's scathing Journal piece, he received a number of invitations from the conservative talk show circuit, but when he appeared on Hannity and Colmes, Hannity shot him down for comparing a recent Scientific American article about cancer to terrorism. Evidently, when we treat cancer too aggressively, cancer cells hijack normal cells and make them co-conspirators in spreading the cancer. "Do you see an analogy there?" he said. To him, the collateral damage of the war on terror has caused some people to get hijacked by terrorists to become co-conspirators in spreading the terrorism.

Bill O'Reilly asked him to come on The O'Reilly Factor too. "I will appear on your show on two conditions," he emailed O'Reilly. "Number one: You will not raise the volume of your voice. And number two: You will not interrupt me. And I will not raise the volume of my voice and I will not interrupt you." O'Reilly has yet to reply.

"A terrorist has an ideology." He says. "That ideology is savage. It's brutal. It's primitive. It is the worst ideology you can imagine because it's ancient. It's not relevant to our normal times. When you kill a terrorist you do not kill the ideology."

He repeats twice that on Hannity the other night, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen quoted Donald Rumsfeld as saying, "Are we creating more terrorists than we are killing?"

The US has the best weapons and intelligence in the world and yet we can't seem to eliminate terrorism. According to Chopra, this is because we have yet to understand it in its historical, economic and psychological contexts. Economically, the conditions in Pakistan are so abysmal that the poor flock to the Mujahid simply so they can eat. Psychologically, young boys in ghettos in Europe turn to terrorism because they have been marginalized by racism. When one has no sense of identity one may seek identity by joining a radical group.

"Marginalized people get radicalized." Chopra says. "When you have marginalized people living in ghettos who feel humiliated and enraged, when you have poor people living in third world countries and you have people who have no sense of identity, these marginalized people get radicalized by special interest groups which happen to be the terrorists. You cannot get rid of these terrorists without getting the help of the majority of the Muslims in the world who are peaceful people. They're like anybody else. We know that from our own surveys. You can't say that a quarter of the world's population is insane and Jihadist. The terrorists are insane and Jihadist. You can not get rid of an idea... The only way ideas can be given up is if you educate people, if you help people, if you have a conversation with people and if you recognize that other people have a sense of perceived injustice. We don't recognize even that there is a sense of injustice in these people. We also have an ally like Saudi Arabia, and we fund money to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is controlled by very few people who live a very opulent lifestyle. It is to their advantage to channel money to these terrorists and to divert it from the gross inequities that exist in their own countries. Spend a little money and divert and other people are killed and you're getting money from the US anyway, who's your ally. And they will be your ally as long as it is to the US's advantage."

"Why don't we remember? We have such short memories that Saddam Hussein was a CIA sponsored thug that our CIA brought out of exile, put into power after a coup in Iraq. Then George Bush Sr. flooded billions of dollars into Iraq in his support, all the while knowing full well about his torture chambers and rape rooms. It didn't bother us because the US policymakers thought they could use him to their advantage. When they found out not, now he suddenly becomes this evil person which he was all along."

"A state official was once asked, 'How do you abandon your friends so easily?' And he answered, 'We don't have friends. We have interests.'"

So where are all the Islamic moderates? They don't seem to be getting much airtime these days. Perhaps that's because their voices are too quiet, but perhaps it's because we don't want to hear them.

"One of the things we have to do now is ask the moderates to speak out," Chopra says. "I think one of the reasons the moderates don't speak too much is that they're defensive. They're defensive of things they did not do but they're being at least perceived as having participated in it. This is the attitude of people that feel attacked and judged against. And we do nothing to prevent that from happening. If we were actually to reach out to the moderates and say, 'You have nothing to be defensive about. You don't have anything to be guilty about. We are not judging or humiliating you. Or demeaning you.' When is the last time we said to the moderate Islamic world? 'We want your help?' We said it belligerently when we said, 'Either you're with us or you're against us.'"

One of the comments on "Deepak Chopra on Mumbai: Too Controversial for CNN?" was the suggestion that, just as we wear red ribbons to support AIDS awareness and pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness, we should wear a ribbon to show condemnation for acts of terrorism and see Muslims wear it openly. Would something like this be an effective way for Muslims to demonstrate their stance against terrorism?

"I think something like this would be symbolic for sure." Chopra said, but then quickly adds, "It would not get to the root cause that's contextual and relational. You're not gonna solve this the day after tomorrow. If you really want to solve this we have to work at it for 50 years."

Obama's Tool Belt

REPAIRING BUSH’S REGULATORY WRECKAGE
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

You don’t hear it outside the Beltway, but there’s a constant roar inside Washington these days.

With time running out on the Bush presidency, wrecking balls are swinging and bulldozers are growling at full throttle as George W and crew rip through federal agencies to knock down as many regulations as they can. At the behest of their corporate cronies, the Bushites have targeted more than 90 regulations that protect consumers, workers, and our environment from corporate greed and carelessness.

One example is a last-minute change in the Clean Air Act to benefit pollution-spewing utilities, allowing utilities to pump an additional 74-million tons of CO2 into our atmosphere. That's the equivalent amount of pollutants that 14 additional coal-fired power plants would emit.

To help rush through such industry-friendly changes, agency heads are arbitrarily curtailing public participation in the process and trying to circumvent requirements for scientific review. For example, in rigging the Clean Air Act for utilities, the scientific analysis justifying the change was so weak that the analysis was simply not put out for public comment.

But, wait – what’s that other sound coming out of Washington? Why it’s the welcome hum of presidential transition!

While the Bushites have been frantically wrecking the regulatory structure to enhance corporate interests, President-elect Barack Obama has quietly been laying plans to restore the regulatory balance to enhance the public interest. He has pulled together a transition team of four dozen experts, and they've been studying the regulatory favors that Bush has done for his political backers. Already, the team has identified some 200 of these overtly-political regs that Obama can quickly reverse after his inauguration.

It looks like Obama and his team are going to come into office wearing tool belts and ready to get right to work repairing the wreckage.

Shrinking Products

STEALTH PRICE INCREASES ON CONSUMER PRODUCTS
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

Good grief! Whole industries are downsizing, paychecks are shrinking, home values are dwindling, and our 401Ks are deflating to 1Ks. It can’t get any worse, can it?

Well, don’t look now, but they shrunk the toilet paper. Scott Paper is pleased to announce that its "new" toilet product has fully 1,000 sheets of tissue on each roll. Actually, so did the old rolls. What's really new and what the company didn’t announce is that each sheet has been shorted. The old version gave us 4 inches of tissue, but the new and “improved” Scotts has quietly been cut to 3.7 inches in length. That’s a decline of 300 square inches per roll! Yet the price remains the same.

All sorts of corporations are instituting stealth price increases these days by shrinking product content while holding up prices. Skippy peanut butter, for example, ought to change its name to Skimpy. The company is now providing two ounces less in each jar, but it did not lower what it charges us. Worse, Skippy is intentionally trying to hide its consumer heist by playing eye tricks on us. The new jar is the same size as the old one was, so it looks like you’re getting the same amount – unless you turn the jar upside down. Instead of a flat bottom, the jar has an inward dimple that reduces the volume inside.

Likewise, cereal makers are cutting content while maintaining prices, and also using package deception to keep consumers from knowing what’s up – and what’s down. The new cereal boxes have the same height and width, thus looking the same as the old ones on the shelf. But cereal makers cleverly reduced the depth of the packages, leaving you paying more per ounce without knowing it.

One outraged consumer has launched a website chronicling these sneak attacks on our pocketbooks. Check it out: www.mouseprint.org.

Citi the Latest to Join the Bailout (But we still aren't forcing these banks to loan!)

We must start demanding more from this bailout...It should not be just a blank check to these CEOs for their bonuses.

CITIGROUP BAILS OUT ON EMPLOYEES
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

“We are a bank,” Vikram Pandit recently told employees of Citigroup, the Wall Street banking conglomerate that Pandit heads.

Perhaps he thought it would be comforting for employees to hear the CEO say that at least he knows what business they’re in. But then he asked, “What does a bank do?” That definitely was not a comforting question.

Indeed, Pandit’s utterances were a bizarre prelude to the real, totally-discomforting purpose of the meeting, which was to announce that 53,000 Citigroup employees were being booted out the door – the largest mass firing in American corporate history. This is on top of 23,000 Citigroupers who had already gotten pink slips this year.

Citigroup, once the most valuable financial company in the nation, became a sprawling giant through the loosy-goosy deregulation policies of the past decade, and its top executives bet heavily on the speculative racket built on risky subprime mortgages. It was an awful bet. Citigroup has lost billions of dollars in the past year, and its stock price has plummeted.

So, now, Pandit says the employees have to take the hit. He brags that such wholesale downsizing is a sign of his executive boldness, referring to it as corporate “shock therapy.” As you might expect, however, Mr. Bold himself is not going to share in the shock. He is taking no cut in his $216 million pay, nor has he even been modest enough to say that he’ll forgo any bonus this year for presiding over Citigroup’s collapse.

Perhaps Pandit feels he deserves a bonus because of his chief achievement this year: getting $25 billion in bailout money from you and me.

Despite taking public money, Citigroup still has not increased its lending to help our economy. Excuse me, but if they’re not making loans and are slashing jobs, why are we bailing them out?

Quote of the Week

"We [Democrats] believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child -- that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure."

-Mario Cuomo
DNC Keynote Address delivered 7/16/1984 in San Francisco

Wind Turbines for the Home

Got Wind? Turbines for the Green Home
Saverio Truglia for TIME

Doug Morrell had already installed solar panels on his house in Coopersville, Mich., but he was eager to get a little bit greener. So the 52-year-old Navy veteran bought something that might seem more at home in the Dutch countryside than in a small town in western Michigan: a personal wind turbine. The 33-ft.-high (10 m) machine, whose blades span 7 ft. (2 m) in diameter, sits next to the pole barn 100 yd. (90 m) from Morrell's home. (Turbines like Morrell's convert the energy of the wind to electricity, while old windmills are geared for mechanical power, like pulling water from a well.) On days with decent wind — which occur frequently enough, since he can feel the breeze from Lake Michigan — the $16,000 Swift wind turbine can generate 1.5 kilowatts (kW) an hour, i.e., enough to power the average lightbulb for 15 hours. Together with his solar array, that's enough to take care of much of his electricity bill. "It's clean energy we don't have to dig for. It just comes right to us," says Morrell. And best of all, he says, "it's fun watching our meter run backward instead of forward."

Thanks in part to a new tax credit put into place by Congress in October, owning your own wind turbine could be the next green trend. While it's true that wind power has taken off in the U.S. — adding more in new capacity to the electrical grid last year than any other power source — most of that increase comes from utility wind farms, vast fields of turbines more than 300 ft. (90 m) tall. For homeowners seeking renewable-energy sources, however, better-known solar power has always dominated. Home solar power currently generates 12 times as much energy as small wind power, which is defined as turbines that have a capacity of 100 kW or less (though most household turbines will produce 10 kW at most). That's partly because residential wind turbines require space and sky — at least half an acre of open land — to get access to consistent winds. Still, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), some 15 million homes in the U.S. fit that definition — and small turbines, unlike large wind farms, can be productive in weaker breezes, which puts more of the country into play, though the best areas are still windy spots like the Midwest or West Texas.

What's really held back residential wind power has been the lack of federal subsidies, which have fed the growth of other renewables like solar and large-scale wind. "We've had zero federal assistance," says Ron Stimmel, AWEA's small-wind expert.

But when Congress passed the bailout bill this fall, it added a 30% tax credit for small-wind projects, which Stimmel believes will enable the industry to grow 40% next year, even in a down market.

In other words, small wind may not be small potatoes for much longer. And that could be a boost for domestic green businesses as well: U.S. firms control 98% of the small-wind market, in contrast to large-scale wind and solar, in which foreign manufacturers dominate. "Since the tax credit, our phone has been ringing off the hook," says Andy Kruse, a co-founder of Southwest Windpower, a major small-scale-turbine producer in Flagstaff, Ariz. "It's really exciting to see the market coming to us."

More than 20 states offer separate subsidies, including ever green California and Vermont. "The federal and state subsidies can make it feasible to get a quicker payback," says Mike Bergey, president of Bergey Windpower, a small-wind producer in Norman, Okla.

Even so, buying your own windmill isn't cheap. A turbine that could produce most of your family's electricity might cost as much as $80,000 and take as long as two decades to pay back, depending on wind strength and state subsidies. (The 30% federal tax credit is currently capped at $4,000.)...

Success Story of the Week

Last week the OCA alerted us (and posted here) that President-elect Obama was considering former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack for USDA Secretary of Agriculture. Vilsack has been an ardent supporter of Monsanto, genetically engineered crops, and corn and soy-based biofuels. Thanks to vocal opposition from thousands of you in the OCA network, Vilksack's nomination has now been withdrawn. Although Vilsack told the Des Moines Register he didn't want to comment on why he had been sacked, sources at the Obama transition headquarters reported "a flood of calls and emails" from organic consumers opposing Vilsack's nomination. Thanks to your participation, the OCA office in Washington, DC is submitting a petition with 8,000 signatures to Obama's transition team this week, urging Obama to take a strong stand in support of organic food and farming.

Ten Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong

A Funny List grabbed from a Facebook Group

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms, just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Gen-We

Numbering 95 million, Generation We or "Millennials" were born between 1978 and 2000 and are emerging as a social, political and philosophical force. In 2016 the youngest of us will reach voting age and we'll be the largest voting block in the history of the country.



Join the movement...The 'We Declaration'

Gen-We plans to release a site in 2009 that will allow us to connect, organize, develop campaigns, and launch actions that influence the political process, enable collective voices to be heard and heeded, and encourage a movement of globally responsible citizens.

An Open Letter To Joe Lieberman

Dear Senator Lieberman,

Congratulations! You got away with it! So despite having supported and endorsed the Republican candidate for president -- and going so far as to question the patriotism of the Democratic nominee -- you've managed to keep your chairmanship. By rights, you should've been summarily ejector-seated from your committees, bonked on the head with your gavels -- cartoon-style -- and hauled from the Democratic caucus naked and on a rail whilst being pelted with wadded-up copies of your RNC address.

The aforementioned reasons for this still-lenient serving of justice fails to include the syllabus of other trespasses against you, including, first and foremost, your unwavering support for the Bush administration's unforgivable foreign policy -- a policy which has all but bankrupted our treasury and besmirched America's reputation abroad. Heckuva job, Senator!

One might be inclined to consider your conduct to date as somehow principled -- even mavericky, had it not been so transparently self-serving. Your behavior has been that of a man guided by nothing more than petty vengeance and retribution -- attention-starved opportunism not unlike grade-school instigators and gossip-mongers whose only path to relevance is to play two friends against each other. Worming your way from side to side depending on which kid or clique likes you more.

Now, I completely understand the political reasons for why President-elect Obama and the caucus ultimately chose to keep you around. Unfortunately, the Democrats need your stinky vote -- such as it is -- in order to theoretically break any future Republican filibusters. And there will be many of those to be sure. However, the closer we get to 60 votes in the caucus the better our chances of reversing the craptastical policies and legislation of your favorite Bush administration and the formerly Republican Congress.

Sure, there's no guarantee that you'll vote with the caucus, but you made it clear that you would have pitched a spasmodic, petulant fit and changed your affiliation to the Republican Party from the "Lieberman Loves Lieberman" party or whatever the hell it's called, had you been stripped of your chairmanship. Consequently, the Democratic caucus would've definitely lost your vote. It's an unenviable "possibly" versus "definitely" proposition. And with the caucus being this close to 60 against what will surely be an obstructionist Republican caucus, we have no other choice but to roll the dice with "possibly."

That is until 2010 when the Democrats will hopefully attain enough members, and thus votes, that they won't need your support anymore. Then you can storm off and mind-screw the Republicans for a couple of years until -- and it's probably not good strategy to tip our hand like this, but you know it's coming -- until you lose in 2012.

Nevertheless, you got what you wanted yesterday. Circumstances allowed you to keep your chairmanship irrespective of your weasely and contemptible maneuvering. And more than a few of us on the left actually agree with you for once: you managed to abscond off without adequate punishment.

You got away with it, despite those meddling kids, right?

Not so fast.

I submit to you, Senator Lieberman, that you were punished yesterday more than you realize. Stick with me on this. I'll explain.

I've been a supporter of the president-elect for the better part of a year now, and while I've always recognized a deep intellectualism and multilayered thoughtfulness in the man, it never fully occurred to me how he would use these strengths in a position of leadership. Until this week.

In sharp contrast to your behavior, President-elect Obama hasn't shown any predilection for pettiness or disloyalty, nor has he undermined his allies for the sake of political expedience. He's proved himself to be a man of great character. Of values. I don't need to remind anyone how he stood by Jeremiah Wright, for example, and at his own political peril when most would've tossed him overboard like political chum.

You, on the other hand, have shown an unapologetic contempt for the party that once nominated you for the vice presidency -- the party that welcomed you back to the fold even though you slipped through the system and defeated the fairly elected Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, in 2006. You've betrayed your fellow liberals to settle a political score, Senator -- in order to exact some kind of ignoble payback against your former party, against your caucus and against the netroots for merely calling you out on your literal and figurative smooching of the president.

This is behavior President-elect Obama doesn't appear to be capable of. Because he's clearly better than you. In fact, it's not difficult to hypothesize that had you possessed a fraction of his political instincts or any small measure of his morality, you would absolutely not be in this position, Senator.

See, by allowing you to keep your precious chairmanship -- by letting you off the hook -- President-elect Obama, through his political bigness, punished you without punishing you. He beat you yesterday, Senator. He beat you because he let you be you, and underscored it with his demonstrably better angels and strength of character.

In the final analysis, the hard reality is that by not choosing retribution, he made you look...

...small.

And that, Senator, is good enough for me.

Cheers!
Bob Cesca
The Huffington Post

Quote of the Week

"The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God."
-Thomas Jefferson

Monsanto Peddling More GMO's

MONSANTO'S LATEST BIOTECH MIRICLE
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

Once again, here comes the Monsanto Medicine Show! The corporate flimflammer is hawking yet another brand of pricey biotech snake oil, guaranteed to work miracles.

Monsanto promises that its latest high-tech hocus-pocus will allow farmers to grow crops without water. Amazing! Well, at least not much water. “More crop per drop” is the PR slogan, and the corporation is exploiting public fears about global warming and food shortages as its marketing leverage. The white-smock food manipulators in Monsanto's labs claim to have added some powerful mystery genes to the DNA of corn, forcing the plant to reconfigure its make-up so it survives in a drought.

It’s a miracle plant, bark the corporate flimflammers – a drought-tolerant crop that even Momma Nature hasn’t been able to produce in millions of years of evolution! But– shazaam – we made it in our handy gene-splicing machine in no time at all! It’s just what those poor people of Africa need, say the hucksters, so step right up and buy a ton of our magic corn seed!

Not so fast. What are these mystery genes? Monsanto won’t say. From what species of plants or animals did you take the genes? Trade secret, says Monsanto. If the pollen of this frankencorn gets loose in nature, it can have unimaginable negative impacts on our entire food supply, so what are you doing to prevent that? Trust us, says Monsanto. Why not just push for better water management practices, which is easier, more effective, less costly, and won't endanger our health? We can’t profit from that, says Monsanto. Well what about labeling this corn? No way, says Monsanto, because consumers wouldn't buy it if they know it's been genetically altered.

Like other biotech “miracles,” this one amounts to a kernel of corporate greed suspended in unexamined dangers, coated with secrecy, and tainted with deceit.

Michael Pollan for U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

Just saw this petition going around...http://www.petitiononline.com/MPoll4Ag/petition.html
If you don't know who Michael Pollan is(author of Omivore's Dilemma and many other books) below is a link to his CV

This is a real chance for us to have someone in the cabinet that has our best interests at heart not another corporate lobbyist for the large GMO and pesticide companies..please sign the petition and pass it along to others.

What is Section 382, you ask?

It seems the Treasury Dept is going behind our backs yet again...

A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks: With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax Policy
By Amit R. Paley for the Washington Post

In just a couple months, I must have read well more than 100 newspaper articles on the financial collapse and the federal response to it. But none is more remarkable than Amit Paley's story in the Washington Post...The story concerns an obscure change in the U.S. Tax Code that was forced through by the U.S. Treasury Department without any public review or Congressional involvement, a change that will grant an estimated $25 billion in tax savings to Wells Fargo and deprive the federal government of somewhere between $105 and $140 billion in revenue...The change was announced with no fanfare within 24 hours after the House voted down the first bailout bill. Treasury acted without clear legal authority. "I've been in tax law for 20 years, and I've never seen anything like this," says one lawyer quoted in the article. (Summary for TIME.com by Michael Scherer)

Newt Gingrich Concerned About Gays

When did protesting for your rights become radical and fascist?



And for a little irony on the situation we always have Wonkette...
Newt Gingrich Very Concerned About, What Now, The Gays

Here’s what Newt Gingrich tells Bill O’Reilly in response to the latest Homosexual-Mormon War battles: “I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion.” Dude… they’re just Mormons.

Newt loves “traditional religion” and its values so very much. You know, Ten Commandments and the like! Such as, say, leaving your wife for a mistress while impeaching someone who got a BJ.

You can tell he really enjoys pretending that he has any convictions whatsoever. Also: near the end of this video he is credentialed as, “Co-Host Of The DVD, ‘We Have The Power.’” Which “they” don’t.

Restore the Rule of Law

Huzzah!!!

Democratic Pressure on Obama to Restore the Rule of Law
By ADAM COHEN for the NY Times

In a Senate hearing room in September, weeks before Barack Obama won the election, a series of law professors, lawyers and civil libertarians outlined one of the biggest challenges that will be facing the next president: bringing the United States government back under the rule of law.

Over the past eight years, they testified, American legal traditions have been degraded in areas ranging from domestic spying to government secrecy. The damage that has been done by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others is so grave that just assessing it will be an enormous task. Repairing it will be even more enormous.

This was not a new complaint. Civil liberties advocates have been sounding the alarm for years. The difference now is that a Democrat is about to assume the presidency, and one of the most ardent defenders of civil liberties in his party — Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin — is dedicated to putting the restoration of the rule of law on the agenda of the incoming government, with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.

Mr. Feingold, who is chairman the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution, already has left his imprint on campaign finance, with the McCain-Feingold law, and has been a leading critic of pork-barrel spending and corporate welfare.

Now he has a new cause. Before the election, Mr. Feingold argued that whoever won should make a priority of rolling back Bush administration policies that eroded constitutional rights and disrupted the careful system of checks and balances. Now that Mr. Obama — a onetime constitutional law professor who made this issue a cause early in the campaign — has won the election, there is both reason for optimism and increased pressure on the president-elect to keep his promises.

Mr. Feingold has been compiling a list of areas for the next president to focus on, which he intends to present to Mr. Obama. It includes amending the Patriot Act, giving detainees greater legal protections and banning torture, cruelty and degrading treatment. He wants to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to restore limits on domestic spying. And he wants to roll back the Bush administration’s dedication to classifying government documents.

Many reforms could be implemented directly by the next president. Mr. Obama could renounce Mr. Bush’s extreme views of executive power, including the notion that in many areas, the president can act as he wants without restraint by Congress or the judiciary. Mr. Obama also could declare his intention not to use presidential signing statements as Mr. Bush did in record numbers to reject parts of bills signed into law.

Congress also has work to do. Many of the excesses of the last eight years have been the result of Mr. Feingold’s colleagues’ capitulation as much as presidential overreaching. He expects Congress to do more than just fix laws like the Patriot Act. He wants the Senate to question presidential nominees closely at their confirmation hearings about their commitment to the rule of law. And he hopes Congress will do its duty to impose the rigorous supervision it rarely imposed in the Bush years.

Restoring the rule of law will not be easy, Mr. Feingold concedes. Part of the problem is that it is hard to know how much damage has been done. Many programs, like domestic spying and extraordinary rendition — the secret transfer of detainees to foreign countries where they are harshly interrogated — have operated in the shadows.

And it would be a mistake to overlook Congress’s role. Members from both parties voted for laws like the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which stripped detainees of habeas corpus rights, and looked the other way while the rule of law was diminished.

Still, Mr. Feingold is convinced that this is a critical moment. If the next president does not reverse the Bush administration’s doctrines, he fears that they will no longer simply be the policies of one extremist president. The danger is that they will be the nation’s new understanding of the Constitution.

Space Portals

Magnetic Portals Connect Sun and Earth
Dr. Tony Phillips for NASA

During the time it takes you to read this, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.
"It's called a flux transfer event or 'FTE,'" says space physicist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible."

Researchers have long known that the Earth and sun must be connected. Earth's magnetosphere (the magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet) is filled with particles from the sun that arrive via the solar wind and penetrate the planet's magnetic defenses. They enter by following magnetic field lines that can be traced from terra firma all the way back to the sun's atmosphere.

Several speakers at the Workshop have outlined how FTEs form: On the dayside of Earth (the side closest to the sun), Earth's magnetic field presses against the sun's magnetic field. Approximately every eight minutes, the two fields briefly merge or "reconnect," forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth. The European Space Agency's fleet of four Cluster spacecraft and NASA's five THEMIS probes have flown through and surrounded these cylinders, measuring their dimensions and sensing the particles that shoot through. "They're real," says Sibeck.

The Destruction of our Mountains

HELP STOP MOUNTAINTOP MINING MADNESS
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

Industrial polluters are very skilled at perverting our language when they want to eliminate regulations that protect us and our environment from their rampant destruction. Rather than saying honestly that they’re out to kill anti-pollution regulations – they speak soothingly of “easing,” “modifying,” and “relaxing” the rules. This sounds like a mattress ad.

They're at it again. Pushed by Appalachia’s coal barons, George W’s office of surface mining is trying to rush through a rule change that would be one of the most destructive imaginable. It involves a horrendous, ruinous mining method called mountaintop removal. “Removal” is another Orwellian euphemism, disguising the industry’s brutal practice of simply blowing up the tops of ancient Appalachian mountains, then callously shoving the massive piles of rubble down the mountainside, burying everything below.

The one deterrent – often ignored by coal corporations – is a rule prohibiting this rubble from being dumped within 100 feet of valley streams. Rather than enforce this clear regulation, however, Bush & Company have recently proposed to “clarify” the meaning of “Don’t Do That.” The new language says the coal giants can dump their waste right into streams, so long as they try to minimize the damage “to the extent possible.”

In other words: Free for all – blast away! This is a grotesque departing gift from the Bushites to corporations that have been loyal campaign funders. It would encourage more mindless decimation of our mountains and the burying of hundreds of miles of streams beneath tons of coal waste.

Still, there is hope for sanity. The EPA must okay the rule change, there are moves in Congress to stop it, and both Barack Obama and John McCain say they oppose it. To join this fight, connect with this grassroots group: www.ilovemountains.org.

Bill Ayers Gets a Chance to Speak

Bill Ayers finally gets to speak, share his side of the story, and explain his relationship with Obama...even though through the entire interview they are attacking him and coercing him to say something damning.

Here's the link to the Bill Ayers interview by 'Good Morning America's' Chris Cuomo and below is a section from the accompanying article to the interview.

Campaign Bogeyman William Ayers Talks to 'GMA'
By MARK MOONEY

William Ayers, the 1960s radical whose violent history became a focal point in the 2008 presidential election, said today that the Republicans unfairly "demonized" him in an attempt to damage the campaign of President-elect Barack Obama...

The Weather Underground bombed the Capitol, the Pentagon and the New York City Police Department to protest the Vietnam War. Breaking his silence, Ayers told Cuomo that the GOP attack was a "dishonest narrative...to demonize me."

He added, "I don't buy the idea that guilt by association should have any part of our politics," he said.

Ayers scoffed at the Republican effort to make his ties to Obama appear suspicious.

"This idea that we need to know more, like there's some dark, hidden secret, some secret link," Ayers said. "It's a myth thrown up by people who want to exploit the politics of fear."

But he was unapologetic about his militant actions during the Vietnam War.

"What you call the violent past, that was a time when thousands of people were being murdered every month by our own government... We were on the right side," he told "GMA."

"The content of the Vietnam protest is that there were despicable acts going on, but the despicable acts were being done by our government... I never hurt or killed anyone," Ayers said.

Update: 11/17/08

Just came across another recent article with an Ayer's interview. It gives a very clear picture of the Orwellian echoes of the McCain campaign.

SHAPIRO: During the campaign, how many clips did you see of people like Sarah Palin denouncing Bill Ayers, "the terrorist pal" of Barack Obama?

AYERS: I'm not a big consumer of television, so I didn't see a lot. I also felt from the beginning that this is a cartoon character that's been cast up on the screen and I didn't feel personally implicated in that character. One of the delicious ironies of a campaign filled with ironies was that the McCain campaign tried to use me to bring Obama down -- and every time that he mentioned my name his poll numbers dropped. Again, I think that's a big credit to the American people. But I did see a few clips. I saw the clip where she [Palin] first talked about Barack Obama palling around with terrorists and the crowd shouted, "Kill him, kill him." That was sent to me by my kids. I don't know if you remember the Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell's "1984"? In Two Minutes Hate, the party faithful gather in front of a television screen and the image of Emmanuel Goldstein is cast up on the screen and they work themselves into a frenzy of hatred and they begin to chant, "Kill him." That's how I felt. I felt a little bit like I was this character cast on the screen. It bore no relation to me. And yet it had a serious purpose and potentially serious consequences. I was in New York when this was shown and my alderman from Chicago called -- worried -- and wanted to know how I was taking care of my safety. I was touched that she would do that. . . .

SHAPIRO: In [your] book you also state that a phone call was made to the Pentagon a half-hour in advance warning them to evacuate that part of the building [before the Weather Underground's 1972 bombing]. But reading this entire passage -- and remembering the era -- what baffles me is how could you possibly ever believe that doing things like this would be an effective way to getting what you wanted?

AYERS: What we thought we were doing was to raise a screaming alarm -- to try to wake up anybody who was still sleepwalking to the reality of what was going on in our name. Frankly, I look back at it, and I don't claim or claim in the book, any particular heroism or status as leaders in any sense. What I do try to point out is that 1968 comes and the war is massively unpopular and our democracy can't grapple with that. It can't end the war somehow. And those of us who are committed to ending the war did many, many different things. Some went to Europe and Africa to get away from the madness. Some went to the communes of Vermont and California to start an alternative life. Some went into the factories of the Northeast to organize the workers. My younger brother actually enlisted in the Army and tried to build a serviceman's union. You talk about nuts. Was that nuts? It was admirable and a little unrealistic.

And a small group of us decided that we wanted to survive what we thought was an impending American fascism. We saw this in the murders of black leaders close to us. The murder of Fred Hampton [of the Black Panthers] had a huge impact on us. We wanted to survive that -- and make the making of the war painful for the war makers. So, looking back, it was hard for me to say that anybody had a purchase on the right thing to do. . . . History is always lived looking forward not backward. What are we doing now to end two unpopular wars? Two wars without end. What are we doing? And I would argue that we're not doing enough, those of us who see the war as illegal, immoral, unwinnable. What are we doing to stop it?

The Paper from the Future - NY Times 7/4/09 Edition

What's crazy about this whole thing is that from just reading the articles as if they have happened makes me feel we really have a chance right now to accomplish everything we've been seeking.


New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.

Liberal Pranksters Hand Out Times Spoof
By Sewell Chan for The New York Times

In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed thousands of free copies of a spoof edition of The New York Times on Wednesday morning at busy subway stations around the city, including Grand Central Terminal, Washington and Union Squares, the 14th and 23rd Street stations along Eighth Avenue, and Pacific Street in Brooklyn, among others.

The spurious 14-page papers — with a headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS” — surprised commuters, many of whom took the free copies thinking they were legitimate.

The paper is dated July 4, 2009, and imagines a liberal utopia of national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, a national oil fund to study climate change, and other goals of progressive politics.

The hoax was accompanied by a Web site that mimics the look of The Times’s real Web site. A page of the spoof site contained links to dozens of progressive organizations, which were also listed in the print edition.

(A headline in the fake business section declares: “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.” Uh, sure.)

The Associated Press reported that copies of the spoof paper were also handed out in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, and that the pranksters — who included a film promoter, three unnamed Times employees and Steven Lambert, an art professor — financed the paper with small online contributions and created the paper to urge President-elect Barack Obama to keep his campaign promises.

According to The A.P., software and Internet support were provided by the Yes Men, who were the subject of a 2004 documentary film.

On Wednesday, the Yes Men issued a statement about the prank, stating, in part:

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a co-author of “The Trust,” a history of the family that controls The Times, said in a telephone interview that the paper should be flattered by the spoof.

“I would say if you’ve got one, hold on to it,” Mr. Jones, a former Times reporter, said of the fake issue. “It will probably be a collector’s item. I’m just glad someone thinks The New York Times print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort.”

Who will be the verrry 1st CTO (Chief Technology Officer)

This is very cool...democracy in action. I just got through looking at this and voted for my fav ideas!

Micah Sifry writes:

While much of the tech industry and blogosphere is pondering who President-elect Barack Obama might appoint as the nation's first Chief Technology Officer--Eric Schmidt? Jeff Bezos? Larry Lessig?--a bunch of heavy-hitting public interest groups in Washington and a couple of civic-minded techies out in Seattle have each launched promising interventions in the discussion.

The first one, out yesterday, is a new site called ObamaCTO.org. The site is basically a feedback forum centered on one question: What should be the CTO's top priorities?

ObamaCTO is built on Uservoice, which enables anyone to create an account, post their own idea, comment on any idea, and distribute up to 10 votes to help rank all the ideas posted.

Who will be the next Secretary of Agriculture?

A likely turning point in history took place on November 4th with the election of Barack Obama, a politician who has consistently voiced his support for family farms and organic agriculture, among other progressive positions. Organic consumers and farmers now have an incredible opportunity to shape the future of federal farm and food policy. President-Elect Obama is in the process of formulating policy, assembling his transition team, and considering nominees for Secretary of Agriculture, among other important positions. The Secretary of Agriculture is responsible for directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its $90 billion annual budget, including the National Organic Program, food stamp and nutrition programs, and agriculture subsidies.

Obama throughout his campaign, and since his election, has stressed that he wants to hear from the public in order to formulate his policies. Let's all take him up on his invitation. Please sign the Organic Consumer Association's petition letter to President-Elect Barack Obama today and urge him to take a stand in support of organic food and farming. After you sign this petition, please forward it to everyone you know. We need to raise our common organic voice on a massive scale, if we are to move the new Administration and the nation in a healthy, just, sustainable, and organic direction.

Quote of the Week

Socrates put on trial, for undermining state religion and corrupting young people, offered this speech in his own defense, as reported in Plato's Apology. And this is after he had been convicted by the jury, where he refused to accept his penalty, exile from Athens or a commitment to silence, even though he knew the next sentence would be death.

"Perhaps someone might say, "Socrates, can you not go away from us and live quietly, without talking?" Now this is the hardest thing to make some of you believe. For if I say that such conduct would be disobedience to the god and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to convince you."

How to Close Guantánamo

How to Close Guantánamo
By Mark Kukis for Time

...Obama has vowed to close Guantánamo and reject the Military Commissions Act, the 2006 law underpinning the ongoing Guantánamo tribunals. But major hurdles stand in the way of doing so, even for a new President with a clear mandate....

First, what do you do with the roughly 255 people currently imprisoned at Guantánamo — a group of whom only 23 have been charged? If Obama wanted to move as swiftly as possible to close Guantánamo, the strongest step he could take as President would be to simply shutter the camp by Executive Order and transfer all of the detainees to prison sites inside the U.S. At that point, in theory, the detainees would face four possible fates: being charged with offenses that could be tried in federal courts; court-marshaled according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice; turned over to the governments of their native countries; or simply released...

There are no good options for trying the roughly 14 others the government appears intent on prosecuting, because the Bush Administration has held them for so many years by Executive Orders in contravention of regular U.S. criminal and military law...

Obama may consider working to create so-called national-security courts, which would essentially be a hybrid tribunal system blending military and civilian criminal law. Those who support the creation of national-security courts say that only a new, carefully constructed system can effectively deal with issues like classified evidence and other matters that sometimes snarl proceedings in regular criminal and military courts...

The emerging Obama transition team has yet to spell out its plans for closing Guantánamo officially...But there's little doubt that the Guantánamo problem Bush leaves behind for Obama will be one of the hardest the President-elect will face when he finally sits in the Oval Office.

Exit Polls

A little late on posting this info....but it's def worth a gander (goes back all the way to 1980's for a comparison)

Election Results for 2008

A Word of Difference

In the past 500 years, thousands of languages have disappeared, becoming extinct, similar to that of plant diversity. A Word of Difference examines the relationship between the decline of the world’s endemic languages and that of the planet’s biodiversity.

Harmon writes

“It is perfectly conceivable that life on Earth could have evolved so as to present us with conditions much closer to those that, say, a prisoner feels in solitary confinement. Rather than a world supplied with millions of species, thousands of languages and other cultural distinctions, and a tremendously varied landscape, we might have drawn one far more barren. We could have been born into a world populated by starlings and weeds, where every person spoke and dressed and ate and behaved more or less the same, where every field and town looked pretty much like any other… But we were lucky. We got the world that we have. The one we have inherited is truly, even yet, a world of difference. At its heart is a paradox: human beings need sameness, but being human means we first need genuinely rich stores of biocultural diversity to distill it from. If we continue to act in ways that destroy diversity, life of a sort will go on, but our aliveness – our uniquely human feeling of what life is supposed to be about – will have become extinct.”

Change Depends On Us....And the Job Begins Now

REAL CHANGE DEPENDS ON US
from Jim Hightower's Common-Sense Commentaries

Obama elected! Job done, right?

Uh… not quite. If last week’s sweeping vote for change is to mean anything substantive, We The People have stay alert and on the move. And the job begins now.

Like fresh-poured concrete, the shape of Obama’s presidency is going to set up quickly, and we can’t be lulled into thinking that casting a ballot is all that democracy requires of us. Now is not the time to crank back in our La-Z-Boys, trusting Obama to do the heavy lifting for us. Wall Street, the war machine, Republican Congress critters, weak-kneed Democrats, and other powerful forces of business-as-usual policies will be all over him. These insiders intend to shape him in their mold.

We have to be the counter force – an aggressive and vociferous Loyal Opposition pushing insistently and persistently from the outside. We must stand up and speak out on every move the insiders make; we must propose and propel progressive ideas and ideals; and we certainly must expose and vigorously oppose any capitulations that he’ll be pressured to make to the corporate powers. If his presidency is to be worthy of the deep potential of this political moment in our history, you and I have to step up.

It’s real change we’re after, a fundamental shift in national direction and policy: Get our troops and our national reputation out of Iraq, provide good health care for all, end “tinkle down” economics, reign in corporate greedheads, reinvest in America’s infrastructure, deal with global warming, no more torture, get serious about green energy, restore our stolen liberties – and generally reinstate the Common Good as our nation’s governing ethic.

Obama himself has often said that he is not the change, we are. Through him, we opened the White House door to the possibility of change last Tuesday. Now, we must see it through.