Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday, 30 January 2015


NPR claims to report the news fully, distinguishing it from the corporate media competition, but at least when it comes to reporting on Cuba, there's little difference between 'public' and corporate broadcasts, writes TCBH! journalist, who adds that Sen. McCaine is 'scum'

If you've followed the trials of James Risen and Jeffrey Sterling, or read Risen's book State of War, you are aware that the CIA gave Iran blueprints and a diagram and a parts list for the key component of a nuclear bomb.
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton announced that the 350-officer Strategic Response Group unit, armed with machine guns and other special weaponry, has been "designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris."

Mitt Romney said Friday that he would not seek the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, shared his decision on a conference call with a small group of advisers. In a second call to a larger group of supporters, Romney said, "After putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I've decided it is best to give other leaders in the party the opportunity to become our next nominee."
By Bob Burnett
Republicans Try To Bully US Into Attacking Iran
So far, the Republican-controlled 114th Congress has attacked women's reproductive rights and savaged undocumented immigrants. Now they want to bully the Administration into attacking Iran.
By Conn Hallinan
The Greek Earthquake
One should have no illusions that Syriza will easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning. It did not start with the Greek elections, but with last May's European Parliament elections, where anti-austerity parties made solid gains. If Syriza is to survive, however, it must deliver, and that will be a tall order given the power of its opponents.

The worst argument in favor of passing this legislation isn't the minimization of potential environmental impact, but that "somebody's gonna do it, so we might as well get our piece of the petroleum pie!" If we don't drill up the wilderness and ship that dirty sludge through our nation, some other country will! Editorials from the media have used this backward logic to defend the coming destruction.
Prior to the advent of blogs, establishment journalists were largely immunized even from hearing criticisms. If a life-tenured New York Times columnist wrote something stupid or vapid, or a Sunday TV news host conducted a sycophantic interview with a government official, there was no real mechanism for the average non-journalist citizen to voice critiques.
By Paul Craig Roberts
Is Democracy Dead In The West?
Bloomberg reports that the new Greek cabinet contains communists who favor closer ties with Russia. To remind the newly elected Greek government of the whip that is held over Greek financial markets, Greek bond and stock prices were assaulted and driven down. The warning from the EU and Wall Street is clear: Defy us and we will destroy you.
In our age of careerism, it's rare for high-ranking officials to sacrifice their powerful posts for principle, but that was what NSA's William Binney and the late U.S. Ambassador Robert White did. Their sacrifices and integrity were honored by likeminded former government officials, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern describes.
Ultimately, travel to other stars and colonization of other planets will be driven not by need, but by desire: the intellectual impulse to explore strange new worlds, and perhaps an aesthetic preference for "natural" (albeit engineered) environments. The hyper-exponential growth that we have seen in other areas like automobiles and computers can now take place for space technology. The physical realities described above paint a very clear picture of the near future: orbital habitats perfectly designed for our lifestyle using resources obtained from our Sun, Earth, and the asteroids. So if Earth ever become uninhabitable, we won't need to traverse the stars to find a new home. Orbital habitats will require a significant expansion of space industry, but this will happen soon enough, especially if we are forced to leave the planet for a little while so it can recover from our mistreatment.

Two phenomena known to inhibit the potential habitability of planets-tidal forces and vigorous stellar activity-might instead help chances for life on certain planets orbiting low-mass stars, University of Washington astronomers have found. In a paper published this month in the journal Astrobiology, researchers say the two forces could combine to transform uninhabitable "mini-Neptunes"-big planets in outer orbits with solid cores and thick hydrogen atmospheres-into closer-in, gas-free, potentially habitable worlds. The bottom line is that this process-the transformation of a mini-Neptune into an Earthlike world-could be a pathway to the formation of habitable worlds. Will they truly be habitable? That remains for future research to learn. Either way, these evaporated cores are probably out there in the habitable zones of these stars, and many may be discovered in the coming year years.
Can Cool Pope Francis Change the Catholic Church?
Such was the situation when the reformist Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected by the Conclave and assumed the Papacy in March 2013. Following on the heels of two of the most conservative popes in modern history, it was uncertain how this new pope would make his mark: not only was he the first pope from the New World, he was also a Jesuit, the first in papal history. The Jesuit order is known for its uncompromising rigor and for its dedication to philosophy and introspection. Would the new Pope simply be a new face on old policies, or would he help midwife real organizational change?
New technique for growing high-efficiency solar cells
Researchers have revealed a new solution-based hot-casting technique that allows growth of highly efficient and reproducible solar cells from large-area perovskite crystals. The researchers fabricated planar solar cells from pervoskite materials with large crystalline grains that had efficiencies approaching 18%.
Identifying you and your credit card: a simple task!
Just four fairly vague pieces of information -- the dates and locations of four purchases -- are enough to identify 90 percent of the people in a data set recording three months of credit-card transactions by 1.1 million users. If someone had copies of just three of your recent receipts -- or one receipt, one Instagram photo of you having coffee with friends, and one tweet about the phone you just bought -- would have a 94 percent chance of extracting your credit card records from those of a million other people. This is true, the researchers say, even in cases where no one in the data set is identified by name, address, credit card number, or anything else that we typically think of as personal information.
'World's Poorest President' Stops His Car To Give Hitchhiker A Ride
A hitchhiker was caught off-guard when a world leader offered to give him a lift.
Research Shows Intelligent People Stay Up Late, Do More Drugs, And Have More Sex
By Steven Bancarz| What is the mark of an intelligent mind in our day and age? When we think of intelligent people, we may have been conditioned to envision them in a library somewhere studying. We associate intelligence with social reservation and good behaviour.
We may think of spiritual practice as something apart from ordinary life, but something as prosaic as facilitating a meeting can be a form of spiritual practice. Consider the People's State of the Union.
By Ronald Arrington
Young, Gifted and Bored in America: A Job, Please?
Urging schools, employers, government and policy-makers to stop pointing fingers at what's wrong in America, and start erecting programs to put America's New Millennias to work!
By Bobby Ramakant - CNS
Tobacco smoking ruining lives: Lung cancer rates alarming
Smoking has had a great adverse impact on many communities and has been directly responsible for the plight of those who are slowly wasting away from the ravages of lung cancer. In 2012 (the most recent year for which data are available) lung cancer was the most commonly diagnosed cancer with 1.8 million cases worldwide, accounting for 13% of all cancer cases.
"It is beyond refute that there is a more than glaring level of hypocrisy in the Republican Party, and there is no better example than in the House of Representatives; particularly since the Koch brothers invested power in the tea party movement. After the 2010 midterm elections when Republicans took control of the House they immediately launched myriad investigations into wrongdoing by the Obama Administration; including fabricating highly-profitable and phony scandals, only to find the Obama Administration is guilty of nothing untoward. In fact, the House, under the direction of Speaker John A. Boehner, initiated a lawsuit against the President for exercising his executive authority according to the Constitution and long-settled Supreme Court rulings."

Mikhail Gorbachev stated that the United States has pulled Russia into a new Cold War that faces the risk of further escalation. The 83-year-old former Soviet leader made the comments on Thursday in an interview with Russian news agency Interfax. "The U.S. has already dragged us into a new Cold War, trying to openly implement its idea of triumphalism," he is quoted as saying.
Close your eyes and imagine America circumventing a do-nothing Congress, and a blatantly partisan Supreme Court of the United States, to effect necessary democratic change. Daydream for a moment about empowered citizens successfully lobbying State governments to create a mechanism for reversing the corrosive influence of private money into local, regional and national elections.
Protesters from the group Code Pink chanted, "Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes!" and raised signs in the air as Kissinger entered the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing room. The protesters were objecting to Kissinger's past roles in the Nixon administration during the Vietnam War, the bombing of Cambodia and other issues. As the protesters were led out by police, McCain said, "I've been a member of this committee for many years, and I've never seen anything as disgraceful and outrageous and despicable as the last demonstration."
A tried and true solution to the Isael-Palestinian conflict which the US can implement.
Yeah it's a bit of old news, House Speaker John Boehner inviting Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu to speak before congress giving him the bully pulpit to voice the threat-nonexistent-Iran poses not just to Israel but the world & his attempt to try & scuttle the current P5plus1 negotiations w/ Iran. But remember, this is the Israeli PM we're talking about; the US is his "domestic territory". Let's not quibble. Boehner surely didn't.
By what logic does Netanyahu have the chutzpah to second-guess the US and act in a reckless and appalling manner, which can only damage Israel's sacred ties with the US to score some political points at home, especially at election time? Notwithstanding the accolades Netanyahu may receive from the floor of Congress, he has betrayed what is best for Israel.
Once the crown jewel of public universities, the University of Wisconsin stands on the brink of ruin as Scott Walker does the bidding of the Koch Brothers to privatize public education in the Badger State.
Change is in the air. Following the December 17, 2014 agreement to restore relations with Cuba, President Obama instructed the Secretary of State to launch a review of Cuba's inclusion on the list and provide a report and recommendation within six months.

 Latest Articles
Pentagon Silent on Current Use of DU in Iraq
Recent reports by CENTCOM have noted that 11% of the U.S. sorties have been flown by A-10s.
Mitt Romney clears the path for a Bush candidacy.

Students Save Palestine
In proposing that Congress Members boycott or walk out on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned speech to Congress, expected to push for sanctions if not war on Iran, activists are drawing on actions engaged in by college students in recent years, as they have boycotted or walked out on or disrupted speeches by Israeli soldiers and officials on U.S. campuses.
LAPD Cop Lauded by Michelle Obama & Invited to D.C. was Among People Listed as Grievances in Chris Dorner's Manifesto
LAPD Captain Phil Tingirides was targeted in Christopher Dorner's infamous manifesto. Dorner viewed Tingirides as biased and the cause of his unjust firing.
My experience of getting hurt in Turkey and navigating the medical system in Georgia.

The Gold Standard: A Philosophical Dialogue On the Nature of Poverty
A philosophical dialogue on the nature of poverty.
Its called stepping on a rake. It always jumps up to meet you. Can Congress and the Obama administration survive now that the reason for sanctions has been taken away? Will they flirt with world war now that the world knows it was all a lie!

Bacevich: A Hug for the Muddlers
En route back to Washington at the tail end of his most recent overseas trip, John Kerry, America's peripatetic secretary of state, stopped off in France "to share a hug with all of Paris." Whether Paris reciprocated the secretary's embrace went unrecorded.

 Best News Links from the Web
"After their 2012 general election defeat, Republicans performed a self-autopsy and concluded that they had to convince the American people that they cared more about the 'regular people' and not solely their special-interest donors. Obviously they ignored their own diagnosis and have committed to serving the interests of their owners the Koch brothers. This week, despite a looming veto threat from President Obama, after House Republicans passed a bill subverting the President's purview over a foreign nation's pipeline and the Senate is following suit sometime this week. Of all the reasons to not build the Keystone pipeline, one that is often overlooked, and ignored by the corporate media, is the real and present danger of a break in TransCanada's rupture-prone pipeline the company claims is safe and environmentally friendly."

"MOSCOW--Ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev says the confrontation between Russia and the West could spill into all-out war. More than 5,100 people have been killed in a bloody conflict in eastern Ukraine between government troops and pro-Russian separatists. Ukraine accuses Russia of aiding the separatists while Russia says the West is behind Ukraine's attempts to retake the rebel-held areas. Gorbachev, in comments to the Interfax news agency, said Thursday the West has 'dragged' Russia into a new Cold War and warned of risks of a military confrontation: 'I can no longer say that this Cold War will not lead to a "Hot War." I fear that they could risk it,' he was quoted as saying. Gorbachev was one of the architects of the peaceful dismantling of communist rule in eastern Europe."
The Obama administration has announced a major shift in the way Medicare will pay hospitals and doctors. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced the initiative Monday following a closed-door meeting with representatives of the insurance industry, large employers and doctors' professional organizations.
An explosion ripped through a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan during weekly prayers on Friday, killing at least 55 people and wounding at least 59 in an apparent suicide bombing, the police said. One factor behind the killings may be the proximity of Karachi, where Shiites have come under repeated attack in recent years. The bombing on Friday coincided with a visit to the city by the country's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in an attempt to resolve the turbulent political and security situation there.
Recent events in Greece pose a fundamental challenge for Europe: Can it get past the myths and the moralizing, and deal with reality in a way that respects the Continent's core values? If not, the whole European project -- the attempt to build peace and democracy through shared prosperity -- will suffer a terrible, perhaps mortal blow. What happens if the new Greek government -- which was, after all, elected on a promise to end austerity -- refuses to give in? That way, all too easily, lies a forced exit of Greece from the euro, with potentially disastrous economic and political consequences for Europe as a whole.
Professor Sues University For Free Speech Rights--so much for free speech in the U.S.
Professor Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American professor of Indigenous studies whose offer of a tenured position at the University of Illinois at Urbana--Champaign was rescinded last year because of his tweets criticizing the Israeli government's bombing of Gaza, has filed a civil rights suit against the school and its top officials and donors, saying that his termination violated his First Amendment right to free speech and other constitutional rights, as well as basic princ
Iceland rises as its glaciers melt from climate change -- ScienceDaily
Earth's crust under Iceland is rebounding as global warming melts the island's great ice caps. In south-central Iceland some sites are moving upward as much as 1.4 inches (35 mm) per year. A new paper is the first to show the current fast uplift of the Icelandic crust is a result of accelerated melting of the island's glaciers and coincides with the onset of warming that began about 30 years ago, the researchers said.
Global warming won't mean more storms: Big storms to get bigger, small storms to shrink, experts predict -- ScienceDaily
Atmospheric physicists predict that global warming will not lead to an overall increasingly stormy atmosphere, a topic debated by scientists for decades. Instead, strong storms will become stronger while weak storms become weaker, and the cumulative result of the number of storms will remain unchanged.
Indiana: OUTRAGE! Republicans Sneer at State Superintendent Glenda Ritz:by Diane Ravitch
What is happening in Indiana right now is an outrage. The Republican party holds every statewide office but one: State Superintendent of Education. Indiana: Republicans Sneer at State Superintendent Glenda Ritz: "She is a Librarian, OK? by dianeravitch What is happening in Indiana right now is an outrage. The Republican party holds every statewide office but one: State Superintendent of Education. That post was won by Democrat Glenda Ritz in 2012, when she defeated Tony Bennett, the avid promoter of charters, vouchers, and Common Core, even though Bennett outspent her by a margin of 5-1. It was a stunning upset. Ritz got more votes than Governor Mike Pence or anyone else on the ticket.From the day of Glenda Ritz's election a little more than two years ago, Governor Pence has employed every political strategy to strip her office of any authority for education. READ....
Three American civilian contractors and an Afghan national were killed Thursday in a shooting incident at a military base attached to Kabul's international airport, according to U.S. officials. A fourth American contractor was wounded in the attack. When asked whether the incident was an "insider attack," a U.S. military spokesman, Col. Brian Tribus, declined to comment. He said there would be no further comments on the incident until the investigation was complete.

Georgia's New State Superintendent Criticizes Federal Testing Mandates: A Must-Read!; Diane Ravitch
Georgia's recently elected State Superintendent Richard Woods wrote a terrific letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, explaining patiently why federal testing mandates are defective. The letter was printed in Maureen Downey's blog at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Superintendent Woods sounds like a veteran educator, which he is. He pulls no punches. This is what he wrote: With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) comes an opportunity to address the valid concerns of students, parents, teachers, and communities regarding the quantity and quality of federally mandated standardized tests. As Georgia's School Superintendent, I have a constitutional duty to convey those concerns and provide ideas on how to move my state and our nation forward.
Moody's: Financially stressed Pennsylvania school districts creating recovery plans to cope with charter school pressure
Moody's: Financially stressed Pennsylvania school districts creating recovery plans to cope with charter school pressures. .While charter advocates assert that competition will cause public schools to improve, this is not what is happening in Pennsylvania. Charters make alluring promises and drain away students and funding. "Some fiscally stressed Pennsylvania public school districts have come up with new approaches for combating a primary pressure point: competition from charter schools, Moody's Investor Service says in a new report. Some of the plans would be transformative, such as a proposal to send all students to other school districts and pay tuition, or to operate a public school district as all-charter. Some financially stressed districts have offered recovery proposals that fundamentally alter the nature of their public school district operation.
A goat frolics with a baby rhinoceros. A pig nestles up to a house cat. A rat snake makes nice with the dwarf hamster originally intended as its lunch. Videos of unlikely animal pairs romping or snuggling have become so common that they are piquing the interest of some scientists, who say they invite more systematic study. Among other things, researchers say, the alliances could add to an understanding of how species communicate, what propels certain animals to connect across species lines and the degree to which some animals can adopt the behaviors of other species. "There's no question that studying these relationships can give you some insight into the factors that go into normal relationships," said Gordon Burghardt, a professor in the departments of psychology and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee.

Jon Stewart took aim at the Koch brothers' plan to spend $900 million on the 2016 election cycle Wednesday night. Always ridiculous Ted Cruz has argued that it is "grotesquely unfair to paint the Koch brothers as nefarious billionaires." Oh no, they are "benevolent gods," quipped Stewart next to a picture of the Koch brothers as Venuses on clam shells.
People who are concerned about the use of excessive force by law enforcement may have to deal with another fatal can of worms. If Texas state Rep. Dan Flynn (R) gets his way, teachers will have the right to use deadly force against students in Texas classrooms, in the near future. Such a bill could have disastrous consequences for students of color. A coalition of civil rights organizations found that black and Latino students face much higher rates of disciplinary action in schools, which exacerbates the so-called school-to-prison pipeline.
The president of social conservative group American Family Association said Wednesday that the organization had relieved longtime spokesman Bryan Fischer of his duties. Time reported that AFA and another group it sponsors, the American Renewal Project, were inviting RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and all the committee's 168 members on an all-expenses paid trip to Israel that runs from Saturday through Feb. 8. An RNC spokesman told Time that about 60 members had reserved spots.
Yes, We Can Prosper Without Growth: 10 Policy Proposals for the New Left
In our recent book "Degrowth. A vocabulary for a new era" we argue that economic growth is not only becoming more and more difficult in advanced economies, but that it is also socially and ecologically unsustainable. The global climate, the welfare state, or social bonds that have lasted for ages, are all sacrificed in the name of appeasing the god of growth.
The United States has spent about $65 billion to build Afghanistan's army and police forces, and until this month the American-led coalition regularly shared details on how the money was being put to use and on the Afghan forces' progress. The military command's explanation for making the change is that such information could endanger American and Afghan lives, even though the data had been released every quarter over the past six years, and Afghan officials do not consider the information secret.

Smothered oceans: Extreme oxygen loss in oceans accompanied past global climate change -- ScienceDaily
From the subarctic Pacific to the Chilean margins, extreme oxygen loss is stretching from the upper ocean to about 3,000 meters deep. In some oceanic regions, such loss occurred within 100 years or less, according to a new study. From the subarctic Pacific to the Chilean margins, they found evidence of extreme oxygen loss stretching from the upper ocean to about 3,000 meters deep. In some oceanic regions, such loss took place over a time period of 100 years or less.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 19:28