Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Wednesday 7 January 2015


 Headlines
Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a "Cyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday" if they "vote wrong." But they have been bullied for too long and are saying "no more."

By Robert S. Becker
What's Left of the Left?
There is our most vexing question: if progressives can't gain ground during today's hard times, full of failures at home and abroad, then when? If progressives don't gain when the right lurches between disgrace and farce, gloating with lies that scandalize reality, then when? Bright spots surface, but what notable change, especially on income distribution, speaks to unified progressive activism?
By Corp Watch
Subsidizing Contractor Misconduct
Last summer, to help put an end to these kinds of mistreatment, President Barack Obama signed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order.
The background to today's killing, by armed Islamist gunmen, of twelve employees of a prominent French satirical weekly.

Washington's plan to push down oil prices (to hurt the Russian economy) might have made sense on a short-term basis (to shock Putin into submission) but as a long-term strategy, it's nuts. And what's even crazier, is that Obama has decided to double-down on the same wacky plan even though Putin hasn't given an inch.
The New York Times keeps insisting that last year's Ukrainian coup wasn't a coup and anyone who thinks so lives inside "the Russian propaganda bubble." But a slanted Times "investigation" shows that the newspaper remains lost inside the U.S. government's "propaganda bubble," writes Robert Parry.
Protesting NY cops, refusing to ticket or arrest people for minor crimes, have not caused a wave of big crimes, showing their own uselessness. If they were fired now for insubordination, as they should be, it would free up hundreds of millions of dollars for better use, writes TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff
Finding Common Ground Between Progressives and Business; defining progressive values and matching them to the interests of big and small business is not only doable, it's essential.
A timely return to James Baldwin's "The Dungeon Shook," from The Fire Next Time.
President Obama would veto a bill that would allow for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the White House said Tuesday. "If this bill passes this Congress the president wouldn't sign it," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. The White House's announcement comes the Republican-controlled Congress was being sworn in -- and whose members have pledged to pass a bill authorizing the pipeline's construction.
This is one of the best articles on war and warriors I've read. Not only are certain factions of this country convincing folks to vote against their own self-interest, they are convincing citizens to sacrifice their children and themselves for ambiguity and lies, the purported opposite of Democracy and Christianity which have had "truth" as foundations. We have recently been in situations no less dire than the Viet Nam era and Artists are making jingoistic BS -- shame on us. I haven't seen the Eastwood movie. It has received good reviews. However, is it an anti-war movie?

A new NASA-led study shows that tropical forests may be absorbing far more carbon dioxide than many scientists thought, in response to rising atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas. The study estimates that tropical forests absorb 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of a total global absorption of 2.5 billion--more than is absorbed by forests in Canada, Siberia and other northern regions, called boreal forests. "This is good news, because uptake in boreal forests is already slowing, while tropical forests may continue to take up carbon for many years," said David Schimel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Forests and other land vegetation currently remove up to 30 percent of human carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. If the rate of absorption were to slow down, the rate of global warming would speed up in return.
By Frosty Wooldridge
Your Inner Life Elevates Your Outer Life
Think positive, act positive, feel positive and speak positively in everything you do every day. That means to catch yourself if you fall into negative thoughts or actions stemming from anything that happens to you. Once you climb onto the "positive" thought train, your inner life leads to your outer expression in positive ways.
Astronomers have discovered eight new exoplanets that may be capable of supporting life as we know it, including what they say are the two most Earthlike alien worlds yet found. All eight newfound alien planets appear to orbit in their parent stars' habitable zone -- that just-right range of distances that may allow liquid water to exist on a world's surface -- and all of them are relatively small, researchers said. "We don't know for sure whether any of the planets in our sample are truly habitable," co-author David Kipping, also of the CfA, said in the same statement. "All we can say is that they're promising candidates." Such hedging is unavoidable at this point, because researchers just don't have enough information. For starters, there's the uncertainty about the planets' composition, as evidenced by the estimated rockiness probabilities.

Astronomers have proved that they can accurately tell the age of a star from how fast it is spinning. We know that stars slow down over time, but until recently there was little data to support exact calculations. For the first time, a US team has now measured the spin speed of stars that are more than one billion years old - and it matches what they predicted. Establishing the age of stars is a central question in astronomy - much like dating fossils is crucial to studying evolution. This method applies to "cool stars" - suns about the size of our own, or smaller. These are the most common stars in our galaxy and they also last for a long time. "They act as lamp posts, lighting up even the oldest parts of our galaxy," said senior author Dr Soren Meibom from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Cool stars also host the vast majority of earth-like planets...
Scientists have used computer modeling to show that so-called "super-Earth" planets -- worlds that are up to five times more massive than Earth -- can play host to long-lived oceans. The modeling shows that the oceans can potentially remain on the planet for billions of years, possibly allowing life to develop on the alien planet. Scientists think that Earth's oceans have existed for almost the entire history of the planet, and water is key to life as humanity understands it. Therefore, finding other worlds with long-lived oceans could help scientists narrow down planets that might have a good chance of hosting life. Schaefer and her team suggest that it might be better to hunt for life on older super-Earths. Researchers might have a better chance of finding complex life on planets that are 1 billion years older than Earth, the team said.
Eight new planets found in 'Goldilocks' zone: Two are most similar to Earth of any known exoplanets -- ScienceDaily
Astronomers announced today that they have found eight new planets in the 'Goldilocks' zone of their stars, orbiting at a distance where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface. This doubles the number of small planets (less than twice the diameter of Earth) believed to be in the habitable zone of their parent stars. Among these eight, the team identified two that are the most similar to Earth of any known exoplanets to date.
"The Pillars of Creation quickly become one of the most iconic images of outer space after the photograph was taken in 1995. A new, high-definition photo recently unveiled at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle provides an even sharper, wider and colorful view of three massive gas columns and their surrounding celestial neighbors in near-infrared light. NASA said the frame 'hints that they are also pillars of destruction.' 'I'm impressed by how transitory these structures are,' Paul Scowen of Arizona State University, who worked on the initial Hubble observations of the Eagle Nebula, told NASA. 'They are actively being ablated away before our very eyes. The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars is material getting heated up and evaporating away into space. We have caught these pillars at a very unique and short-lived moment in their evolution.'"
By Pascal Robert
Mario Cuomo: Governor of Mass Incarceration
Mario Cuomo will lionized in the mainstream media as a champion of liberal causes. What most will ignore is his role as a Governor who built more prisons than any in New York State's history.
Has the election campaign mantra "It's the economy, stupid" outlived its usefulness?

The state of American society as 2015 begins
As the New Year begins, the social crisis gripping tens of millions of working people in the United States is worsening. Hunger, poverty and long-term joblessness remain at the highest levels in decades, while vital social services continue to be slashed.
One of the most iconic images ever produced by NASA is the "Pillars of Creation" photograph taken by Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. The photo depicts tall columns (called elephant trunks) of interstellar dust and gas within the Eagle Nebula about 6,500 light years from Earth. For the first time in 20 years, NASA revisited the Pillars of Creation using a new camera installed on Hubble back in 2009 capable of much higher resolutions. The new photo, including an infrared version, was published Monday.

Along with the unresolved disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, the downing of the same airline's flight MH17 over the Ukraine was no less a tragedy, albeit of a different kind.
Fox News Is OFF the Air and the Foul Odor of Deception has Ceased.
Fox News ignored the Florida scene of grisly, domestic violence. Apparently, without a Muslim suspect under arrest for the beheading, Fox News wasn't interested. However, in late September 2014, Fox News became almost singularly obsessed with the gruesome work-place beheading in Moore, Oklahoma by a recent Muslim convert, Alton Nolen.
A member of the grand jury in the case against former Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson has filed a 58-point lawsuit against prosecutor Bob McCulloch, alleging that the prosecutor knowingly and deliberately misrepresented to the public how the grand jury felt about the evidence and whether or not Darren Wilson should have been charged. In the lawsuit the juror, suing in part for the opportunity to speak openly about the case without harm of criminal penalty, claims that she/he did indeed feel that Darren Wilson should've been charged with crimes, but that McCulloch, in his public statements about the case, suggested otherwise. The lawsuit also alleges that the entire grand jury process was prejudicially managed by McCulloch and that it often felt like slain Ferguson teenager Mike Brown was on trial instead of Darren Wilson.
Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who was once on the short list of potential Republican vice presidential nominees, was sentenced to two years in prison by a federal judge on Tuesday. McDonnell, 60, and his wife were found guilty on a number of corruption charges back in September. The 11 charges that McDonnell was convicted on are related to accepting roughly $165,000 in gifts and loans from a businessman promoting his vitamin supplement company. McDonnell's lawyers argued that the former governor couldn't have engaged in a conspiracy with his wife and the businessman because the couple's relationship was broken. They plan to appeal the conviction after sentencing.
"Thank you, rich Americans!" said Yonatan Benizri, a 27-year-old Likud activist. As Netanyahu kicked off his campaign, records from Israel's State Comptroller Office showed he had raised just over 1 million shekels (roughly $250,000), with more than 90% of it coming from donors in the United States. "It's nothing new," said Benizri, who volunteers with the Likud in the Tel Aviv area. "Why get money from Israel when you can get it from the U.S.?" Over Netanyahu's last three elections, publicly available records show that he has consistently received over 90% of his campaign contributions from the United States.
Republicans took full control of Congress Tuesday for the first time in eight years, and John A. Boehner was reelected as House speaker, after a group of hard-right conservatives tried and failed to deny him another term. Boehner's election provided the only drama on a day of ceremony and swearings-in on Capitol Hill. But, in the end, even that drama didn't last very long. His adversaries need to turn 30-plus other Republicans against Boehner to prevent him from winning a majority on the first vote.
Tag-teaming with the Koch brothers and some of the nation's largest utilities, the Waltons are not being shy in browbeating state lawmakers and agencies to roll back or throw out their renewable energy policies. Over the past few years, they've bankrolled campaigns against residential solar in Arizona, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Washington. Results in these states have been mixed, so far.

 Latest Articles
They like photogenic misery, inarticulate is OK, but dumb is best...

Stop the NYPD Coup and Create the Police-Community Relationship We Want to See Do the police serve the city or are they a law unto themselves? This is an issue of concern throughout the country but it has come into crisp focus in New York.
Engelhardt: Feeling Insecure in 2015
From the point of view of the national security state, each failure, each little disaster, acts as another shot of fear in the American body politic, and the response to failure is predictable: never less of what doesn't work, but more. More money, more bodies hired, more new outfits formed, more elaborate defenses, more offensive weaponry.
The trial of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is set to go ahead Monday, despite potential jurors in the case openly admitting to bias towards the defendant, some calling for him to face 'the electric chair'.

the GE chestnut has been engineered with foreign DNA from wheat, a process which damages the genome and leads to numerous mutations. This means the engineered tree will likely have unanticipated and unpredictable consequences when released into a forest ecosystem. As we've seen time and again with GMO crops, these unanticipated consequences can be very damaging to biodiversity and wildlife, not to mention people.
The TPP is a Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits. The Trans Pacific Partnership is the wrong remedy to the wrong problem. Any way you look at it, it's just plain wrong.
The mainstream U.S. news media sometimes rallies to the defense of a reporter who is pressured to reveal a source but not so much for the brave whistleblower who is the target of government retaliation. Such is the case for ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, writes Norman Solomon.
My Dream of Equality
A straight white man's dream for LGBT marriage equality. This piece begins with a genuine dream followed by the dreamer's interpretation.
The Keystone Pipeline will move "up to 830,000 barrels" each day of Canadian tar sands oil to a U.S. port so it can be sold to China and elsewhere. It uses eminent domain to seize land from ranchers, and crosses sacred Native American land. It creates only 35 permanent U.S. jobs.

British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have changed how the world thinks about inequality -- and they have plenty more insights to share.
The unhappy events of the last several weeks triggered by the Grand Jury's decision in the Eric Garner case -- in which the police were acquitted of homicide -- and the fatal shooting of two police officers in Brooklyn last month brought to mind another city in another part of the world plunged into chaos.
This article describes how US foreign policy has destroyed a good portion of the Middle East and is a preview of more destruction to come in the future.
Fukushima update 1-5-15
While the fuel rods are out of the pool atop Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi, Units 1, 2, 3 are still too hot to approach, and the groundwater problem is intractable, and getting worse. Please sign the two petitions: click here click here
How Bloomberg 'News' Lies
understanding how propaganda is done
Niall Ferguson on Kissinger's World Order [Part Two]
Part Two of a review of Niall Ferguson's TLS article on Henry Kissinger's views on foreign policy.
Apparently the government doesn't like when people use seed banks to save and trade their crops.

No lover of democracy can hate the Trans-Pacific Partnership enough. While the reasons to detest TPP--and above all TPP fast track--are abundant, no prior article has captured its full loathsomeness by pinpointing its deep political significance. Nothing short, that is, of rapidly streamlining the slow, ongoing political castration of the U.S. public. Metaphorically speaking, a project worthy of Dr. Mengele.
Homelessness is increasing all over America but the numbers from New York are shockingly high compared to most of the US Empire's failing cities. This is the Dickensian nightmare that litters America, the stark reality of American capitalism and it only promises to get worse under the tutelage of banksters, media sophists, philanthro-pirates and their supplicant coin-operated politicians.
Presidents Are Gods
A former Governor of Virginia is expected to be sentenced to a long stay in prison. The same fate has befallen governors in states across the United States, including in nearby Maryland, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
A slave has only external value. A slave is a thing. This is what we have done to animals. Animals are property. Animal welfare laws cannot work because they are based on balancing the interests of humans and nonhumans. As long as animals are chattel property the animal owners win.

For folks like Timothy Geithner it is a big thing to boast about the profit the government made on the TARP. We got more of this children's story in the NYT yesterday in an article reporting on the end of the TARP. It is worth understanding the meaning of profit in this context.
Leelah Alcorn's suicide exposed many things - especially the conditions of "unconditional" love.
Freedom of the press depends on media outlets being able to provide the public with information about powerful people and institutions that those powerful people and institutions don't want publicized. If whistleblowing is shut down, freedom of the press suffers. Politically and legally, the situation with Risen in the Sterling trial is apt to be a hugely important test case that will cast a long shadow for the future.
Name any nat'l problem & issue in contemporary America where a real solution has been carried out? From health care, gun control to the environment among the issues facing America real solutions are found wanting. Solutions are known but big money-corporate, individual, special interest & dark money from anonymous sources control the entire electoral, political process & agenda preventing any real solutions from being enacted.
The Philly Inquirer is the latest example of the demise of US journalism, with a puff piece on Obama's appointee to head a study of police violence, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, writes TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff
The real story behind "Argo"

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Do something or nothing about tax havens.
Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 19:35