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28 September 2011
The Dangerous Cult of the Guardian » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
"For the first time, Western publics – or at least those who can afford a computer – have a way to bypass the gatekeepers of our democracies. Data our leaders once kept tightly under wraps can now be easily searched for, as can the analyses of those not paid to turn a blind eye to the constant and compelling evidence of Western hypocrisy." - Jonathan Cook
26 September 2011
24 September 2011
22 September 2011
Class War Indeed! » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
"The Republicans’ hypocrisy is staggering, as is almost everything that emanates from their quarters these days." - Andrew Levine
19 September 2011
16 September 2011
15 September 2011
12 August 2011
01 August 2011
20 July 2011
12 July 2011
11 July 2011
09 July 2011
18 April 2011
15 April 2011
31 March 2011
30 March 2011
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26 February 2011
25 February 2011
14 February 2011
12 February 2011
27 December 2010
05 December 2010
25 November 2010
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17 November 2010
09 November 2010
05 November 2010
28 October 2010
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07 October 2010
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26 June 2009
09 February 2009
British Schools Secretary says recession is "worst in 100 years"
British Schools Secretary Ed Balls has warned that the world is facing its worst recession in more than a century, surpassing even the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In the gloomiest prediction yet made by a government minister, Balls said the pain of the economic downturn could be still be felt 15 years from now.
"These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape," Balls told members of the Labour Party at a weekend conference.
"This is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s," he said. "The economy is going to define our politics in this region and in Britain in the next five years, the next 10 years and even the next 15 years."
Extracts of the speech by Balls, who is widely regarded as Brown's closest cabinet ally, were released by his office on Monday night.
Government officials said the remarks were in line with previous statements made "time and time again" by Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling.
"The unprecedented global nature of this crisis and its impact on the global financial sector is affecting every single economy in the world," a spokesman for Ed Balls said.
Britain fell into recession at the end of last year, with the economy shrinking by 1.5 percent in the last three months of 2008, the biggest decline since 1980.
(Reporting by Kate Kelland. Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Blogged with the Flock Browser
03 February 2009
On Commerce, Gregg's Hot and Cold and Yes and No
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30 January 2009
Don't worry Gov, imitation is the best form of flattery
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Bush Wants to Retain the Right of Executive Privilege
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14 December 2008
Senate torture report confirms Bush, top officials guilty of war crimes
A report issued Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee has provided official and bipartisan confirmation that the infamous acts of torture carried out by US personnel at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were planned, ordered and orchestrated by the highest-ranking officials in the US government. Based on the Senate's own conclusions, those named in the document, including President George W. Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, are guilty of war crimes.
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29 November 2008
The Meltdown Continues
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No Escape: Thaw Gains Momentum
Scientists have concluded that the momentum behind human-caused warming, combined with the region's tendency to amplify change, has put the familiar Arctic past the point of no return.
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Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death
Jdimytai Damour, 34 was crushed to death when a mob of shoppers would apparently rather kill a man than miss out on a holiday bargain. |
Bush Last Minute Rule Changes Put Workers at Risk of Illness and Death
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25 November 2008
Home Prices in Record Decline
The S&P Case-Shiller Home Price national index recorded a 16.6% decline in the third quarter compared with the same period a year ago. That eclipsed the previous record of 15.1% set during the second quarter.
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Cuomo Investigates Bonuses at Banking Companies
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Reverse Socialism
Over $60,000,000,000 in bonuses from taxpayers to rich bankers. True, but they only get that once a year.
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24 November 2008
Why Bailouts Don't Work
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30 September 2006
14 September 2006
Kerry: I'm prepared to kick Swift Boat's ass
This is the kind of talk I was saying needed to be heard from Kerry during the 2004 campaign.
12 September 2006
27 March 2004
Global Warming Is A Tragedy, Not A Myth
The following is an article written by Nathan Mantua and found in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer entitled, "We need to get out of the clouds on issue of warming." This article is presented in its entirety. You can also click here to go directly to the article.
Life in the Northwest is shaped by the rhythms of climate. The evidence is all around us. The wet and mossy evergreen forests that tower west of the Cascade Range and the sage-steppe, orchards and rolling wheat fields of the dry and sunny area east of the mountains illustrate our region's amazing contrast in landscapes, flora and fauna.
Each year we see a hefty winter snowpack build in our mountains and witness the spring melt sending water surging into our largest rivers. The ongoing cycle brings the spring blooms of Skagit Valley tulips, the summer cherries of the Yakima Valley, the fall apple crops of Wenatchee and the fall and winter return of tens of thousands of coho and chum salmon to the streams of Puget Sound.
Just like the natural systems that make the region unique, human-built systems have evolved in ways that work with the climate of this place. We have built an extensive infrastructure to tap into our renewable resources. In particular, hydropower dams and storage reservoirs were designed to take advantage of the mountain snowpack and the resulting abundance of spring and summer runoff. These provide inexpensive and abundant electricity for people and industry and water for irrigators, industry and urban centers.
Those who built the dams, reservoirs and irrigation canals may not have realized it at the time, but they were basing some of their decisions on long-range climate forecasts. Did they consult The Old Farmer's Almanac?
Perhaps, but a more typical story is that those politicians, planners and engineers assumed the climate of the future for which they were building would look like the climate of the past. To their credit, most planners sifted the historical climate record to identify the most challenging conditions their systems might face, whether an extreme winter flood or a prolonged drought.
Plans were (and still are) written so that water and hydropower systems will work if the historic worst-case climate scenario happens again.
Recent climate extremes produced tangible reminders that many facets of Northwest life remain sensitive to the push and pull of climate change. In the winter of 1998-99, the region experienced one of the wettest periods in memory. Mount Baker, near Bellingham, set a record for the greatest annual snowfall ever recorded anywhere, with a remarkable total just shy of 100 feet. The spring and summer of 1999 saw a wide abundance of runoff and hydropower production in the region.
The winds and ocean currents of 1998-99 also brought significant cooling to the coastal ocean environment, with upper ocean temperatures dropping up to 8 degrees Fahrenheit from the exceptionally warm winter of 1997-98. That cooling marked the beginning of a four-year run of much more productive ocean conditions for many stocks of Northwest coho and chinook salmon that had been severely depleted in the mid-'90s.
But just two years later, our climate swung to the other extreme. The winter of 2000-01 brought the region one of the driest "wet" seasons in a century.
Late-season snowpack in the Cascades and the snowmelt runoff in the Columbia Basin were only about 60 percent of the long-term average. Irrigation flows for some farmers were severely restricted, and stream-flow targets aimed at protecting migrating salmon were frequently missed.
To make matters worse, the California energy markets were spinning wildly out of control, ultimately spiking the price of electricity all along the West Coast -- a convergence of climatic and socioeconomic events that will affect electrical ratepayers for years to come.
El Niño and La Niña get a lot of media attention around here, even though those labels apply to changes in winds, ocean temperatures and rainfall patterns in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Yet those two phenomena deserve our attention because they shift tropical rainfall patterns in ways that disturb wind and weather patterns over the northern Pacific and North America.
El Niño typically favors a relatively warm and dry Northwest winter and a yearlong warming of our coastal ocean. Those who ski or fish for salmon ought to be fans of La Niña, because that typically favors a cool and wet Northwest winter and a salmon-friendly, yearlong cooling of our coastal ocean. Natural tropical swings between El Niño and La Niña typically get started in our summer, then develop through the fall and winter months before fading away the next spring. An extensive network of buoys, ships and satellites provides us with an accurate picture of the status of El Niño or La Niña several months before our winter begins.
When we look back at our region's climate in the 20th century, we also find 20- to 30-year eras of climate conditions that strayed from the long-term average.
Mostly cool-and-wet years were the rule from 1946 through 1976, while warm-and-dry periods prevailed from 1925 through 1945 and again from 1977 through 1998. Part of this longer-term climate variability has been associated with a long-lived El Niñolike climate pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
After 1976, that phenomenon brought an increase of a degree or two in the cold half of the year and about a 10 percent decline in average annual precipitation. Because of the warmer and drier conditions, spring snowpack at Paradise ranger station on Mount Rainer was typically 20 percent (about 44 inches) lower than it was during the cool periods of the '50s through early '70s.
Moisture in our forests, which varies with temperature, precipitation and snowpack, is thought to be a key climate link to past changes in forest regeneration and the frequency and intensity of large Northwest forest fires.
Low snowpack in the '80s and '90s allowed subalpine fir trees to invade wildflower meadows on the east side on Mount Rainier. The history of large forest fires in the Northwest also parallels the changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, with large fire years concentrated in the warm-and-dry periods of the '30s, '80s and '90s, and relatively quiet fire eras in the late '40s through mid-'70s.
Climate effects on ecosystems can be seen in the ocean as well as on land. When the Pacific Decadal Oscillation shifted from cool to warm conditions in the late '70s, ocean temperatures warmed by 1 to 2 degrees, and there were major shifts in coastal ocean food webs. The abundance of cold-water forage fish and plankton dropped, but numbers of warm-water fish such as mackerel, hake and sardines increased. Ocean survival rates for many Northwest chinook and coho salmon populations reached historic lows in the warm-ocean years of the early to late '90s, and the persistently low return rates contributed to large population declines for already depleted stocks.
Century-long trends account for another important part of the long-term changes in 20th-century climate. The warming observed globally during the past century, which averaged about 1 degree, was mirrored by Northwest warming of about 1.5 degrees. Precipitation increased by 10 percent to 30 percent across much of the region. Since the 1950s, the warming climate has eroded our annual snowpack, especially at elevations below 6,000 feet.
Because of human-caused increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels and converting forests to agricultural lands, an overwhelming majority of scientists expect 21st-century climate to be substantially warmer than that of the recent past. Climate models are providing some clues about what will happen because of the accumulation of greenhouse gases. State-of-the-art climate models suggest additional year-round increases in regional temperatures of 2.5 to 4 degrees for the 2020s, and 3 to 6 degrees for the 2040s. Most climate models also project modest increases in winter precipitation (typically around 10 percent).
Some of the consequences of a warmer and wetter Northwest climate are clear.
Rising snow lines, a declining snowpack, stream-flow increases in winter and declines in summer are always observed during an unusually warm Northwest winter and spring. Our present climatic course promises to transform the "unusual" of our experience to the "normal" of our future.
Warming-induced changes in the region's snowpack and stream flow will bring new challenges to our water and power systems, and even more problems to wild salmon that inhabit already degraded streams. Reduced snowpack likely will allow west-side forests to expand to higher altitudes, yet warmer temperatures may increase drought stress in low-elevation forests in ways that increase fire, disease and pest outbreaks.
Whether you farm or garden, work or play in the mountains, forests, streams, lakes, estuaries or ocean, your experience always will be shaped by climate. A climatic warming of a few degrees will change life as we know it in the Northwest; residents and regional planners can take that forecast to the bank.
US Senator Admits Iraq War Vote Was Wrong
The following is an AP article found on Yahoo News and entitled, "W. Va. Sen. on Iraq: 'My Vote Was Wrong' ." This article is presented in its entirety. You can also click here to go directly to the article (the link usually expires after a few days).
U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller regrets his vote to authorize a war against Iraq.
"If I had known then what I know now, I would have voted against it," Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Friday. "I have admitted that my vote was wrong."
The Democratic-led Senate approved the war resolution 77-23 on Oct. 11, 2002, one day after the U.S. House approved a similar resolution.
"The decision got made before there was a whole bunch of intelligence," said Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I think the intelligence was shaped. And I think the interpretation of the intelligence was shaped.
"We had this feeling we could be welcomed as liberators. Americans don't know history, geography, ethnicity. The administration had no idea of what they were getting into in Iraq. We are not internationalists. We border on being isolationists. We don't know anything about the Middle East."
Rockefeller also said he is disturbed at the failure to involve the United Nations in creating a new government and finding peace in Iraq.
Many of the senator's feelings were strengthened last week during a weeklong trip with four other Democratic senators to Iraq and four other Middle Eastern nations.
In Iraq, the senators visited a team of researchers investigating the presence of weapons of mass destruction.
"They have three million pieces of paper," Rockefeller said. "But it is a sham. There is nothing to point to any weapons of any kind."
Rockefeller said the influence of terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida, is growing in Iraq. He estimated that only about 5 percent of insurgents in Iraq are recent arrivals, with the rest "homegrown."
U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller regrets his vote to authorize a war against Iraq.
"If I had known then what I know now, I would have voted against it," Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Friday. "I have admitted that my vote was wrong."
The Democratic-led Senate approved the war resolution 77-23 on Oct. 11, 2002, one day after the U.S. House approved a similar resolution.
"The decision got made before there was a whole bunch of intelligence," said Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I think the intelligence was shaped. And I think the interpretation of the intelligence was shaped.
"We had this feeling we could be welcomed as liberators. Americans don't know history, geography, ethnicity. The administration had no idea of what they were getting into in Iraq. We are not internationalists. We border on being isolationists. We don't know anything about the Middle East."
Rockefeller also said he is disturbed at the failure to involve the United Nations in creating a new government and finding peace in Iraq.
Many of the senator's feelings were strengthened last week during a weeklong trip with four other Democratic senators to Iraq and four other Middle Eastern nations.
In Iraq, the senators visited a team of researchers investigating the presence of weapons of mass destruction.
"They have three million pieces of paper," Rockefeller said. "But it is a sham. There is nothing to point to any weapons of any kind."
Rockefeller said the influence of terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida, is growing in Iraq. He estimated that only about 5 percent of insurgents in Iraq are recent arrivals, with the rest "homegrown."
21 March 2004
Bushmen: Karl Rove and the people who are seeking to give us four more years of the shrub (aka President Bush)
The following is an AP article found on Yahoo News and entitled, "Rove, Small Circle Lead Bush Campaign." This article is presented in its entirety. You can also click here to go directly to the article (the link usually expires after a few days).
President Bush entrusts adviser Karl Rove to oversee his bare-knuckle bid for a second term. Yet Rove is but one of a small group of counselors helping to guide the most expensive, and possibly the most corporate-like, presidential campaign in history.
Aides emphasize Bush's hands-on role in the $170 million campaign. For instance, it was his decision to mount an early attack on his presumptive Democratic rival, John Kerry, and to air television commercials naming Kerry. The presiden