Bill McKibben - The Great Carbon Bubble

If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet -- as we shall see -- it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us.

In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology.  Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on January 4th, a good day for snapping photos because there weren’t many clouds.

It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web’s most widely readmeteorologist, explains, “The U.S. and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western U.S. is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s.”

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175499/

[Video] The Life of Flowers

The Life of flowers (Жизнь цветов) from VOROBYOFF PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

This is a simple video with the music.
Video footages: Artbeats Timelapse Flowers

Music: West One Music.
album: 067 Simple Strings.
Track: Happy-go-lucky

Edit: Vladimir Vorobyov
Adobe Premiere Pro 5.1

You can download this video in full quality
http://depositfiles.com/files/exv2i0mcd

This video on Youtube
http://youtu.be/N1X5fReUmqY?hd=1

The next video in this series - Cocktail "Allegory"
http://vimeo.com/vorobyoff/cocktail

John Feffer - The Next Marx

Lenin graces the cover of a recent issue of The Economist. The Financial Times is running an entire series on the “crisis in capitalism.” Francis Fukuyama, a recovering neoconservative,makes a plea in Foreign Affairs for the left to get its intellectual act together. And that noted class warrior Newt Gingrich has been assailing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for being a ruthless moneybags.

Excuse me? Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing? What parallel universe did we all just stumble into? It’s not the first time, of course, that the political spectrum has become all jumbled. Ten years ago, the 9/11 attacks sent some liberals scurrying rightward in support of the Bush administration’s extended response. The disastrous aftermath of the Iraq War then pushed even some leading neoconservative lights, like Fukuyama, in the other direction. The aftershocks of this upheaval can still be felt in the debate around the Libya intervention and the “right to protect” doctrine.

Read More:

http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/the_next_marx

TAKE ACTION: REPRESENTATIVE MALONEY WANTS TO LIMIT YOUR ACCESS TO SCIENCE!

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who represents much of Manhattan, and Rep. Darrell Issa of California want to limit your access to scientific and medical research.  Currently, all federally funded research publications have to be made available through Pub Med, and accessible online for free, so all of us have the ability to stay informed about research being conducted with our tax dollars.  Bill HR 3699, the Research Works Act, would prevent the National Institutes of Health or any other agency from allowing private-sector work to be disseminated online without prior consent both from the publisher and the authors of the study.  If this bill passes, research information will only be available through subscription to each and every journal that publishes a study.  Subscriptions to scientific and medical journals cost hundreds of dollars annually, and copies of individual articles -- or access for 24 hours -- usually cost $15 to $30 apiece.  This bill would make it impossible for consumer and health organizations to keep their members informed about scientific and medical research that concerns all of us.  If this bill passes, you will only know what mainstream medicine WANTS you to know!

Please click this link to sign on to the Alliance for Natural Health action alert to fight this bill: https://secure3.convio.net/aahf/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1021.  

If you happen to live in Rep. Maloney’s district, please send her an email and let her know what you think: http://maloney.house.gov/.

For more information, visit the Alliance for Natural Health at http://www.anh-usa.org/no-science-for-you/, or the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/research-bought-then-paid-for.html?_r=1.

Dean Baker - A Competitive Dollar: The Missing Link in President Obama’s Manufacturing Agenda

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama announced a renewed commitment to manufacturing in the United States. While the commitment to rebuilding the country’s manufacturing base is welcome – manufacturing has historically been a source of good-paying jobs for workers without college degrees – he unfortunately left the most important item on the list off the agenda.

President Obama failed to commit himself to restoring the competitiveness of dollar as part of his agenda for bringing back manufacturing jobs. The value of the dollar really has to be front and central in any effort to restore U.S. competitiveness since it is by far the most important factor determining the relative cost of U.S. goods compared with goods produced elsewhere.

If the dollar is 20 percent above its proper value then it is equivalent to putting a 20 percent tariff on all of our exports. If the price of U.S. made goods are 20 percent higher for people living in other countries because of an over-valued dollar, we are not going to be able to export very much.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/competitive-dollar-missing-link-president-obama-s-manufacturing-agenda-1328028595

Richard Brenneman - Steve Chu fulfills Eisenhower's darkest nightmare

The headline of the announcement from Julie Chao of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [LBNL] says it all: "National Labs Seek Closer Industry Ties."

In his farewell address to the nation, Dwight David Eisenhower sounded the now-familiar alarm of the danger of growing power of the military/industrial complex, a power that might be said to have its foundation in Berkeley, a point we'll take up later.

But less familiar to most is that the military and industry were only two of three components of the force force Eisenhower saw gaining ascendancy over the nation.

Here's the part of that same address which rarely, if ever, gets noted [emphasis added]:

Read More:

http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/steve-chu-fulfills-eisenhowers-darkest-nightmare/ 

Robert Reich - The Republican Myth of Obama’s “Entitlement Society”

One of the few things Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich agree on is that President Obama is turning America into “European-style welfare culture.”

In his standard stump speech Romney charges Obama with creating a nation of dependents. “Over the past three years Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society.”

Gingrich calls Obama “the best food-stamp president in American history.” What’s their evidence? Both rely on federal budget data showing direct payments to individuals shot up by almost $600 billion, a 32 percent increase, since the start of 2009. They also point to Census data showing that 49 percent of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit – Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, or subsidized housing. That’s up from 44 percent in 2008.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/republican-myth-obama-s-entitlement-society-1328199765

Peter Schroeder - Disputed rule intended to shame CEOs

Business groups and unions are sparring over a little-known provision in the Dodd-Frank reform law that supporters concede is an effort to shame the nation’s highest-paid CEOs. The rule, which predates the Occupy Wall Street movement but channels it in spirit, requires companies to disclose the difference in pay between their chief executives and average employees. “It’s really a political talking point that’s managed its way into legislation,” said Tom Quaadman, vice president of the capital markets center for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Critics of the provision are at work trying to repeal it. The House Financial Services Committee approved legislation sponsored by Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) that would do away with the disclosure requirement. But the repeal movement is unlikely to make headway in the Senate, where Democrats are lining up behind President Obama’s election-year message of working to “level the playing field” for workers and reduce income inequality.

With repeal unlikely for now, industry groups are encouraging regulators to take their time implementing the provision, and to solicit plenty of business input along the way. Labor groups and other critics of Wall Street, meanwhile, are urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to move swiftly to put the requirement in place, and dismiss arguments that it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Read More:

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/208161-disputed-rule-intended-to-shame-ceos

Nobel Peace Prize Jury Under Investigation

Today marks the 2012 deadline for nominations for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, but as the prize committee meets this year to discuss what individual or group has "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace," they will be under heightened scrutiny to be sure their choice fulfills the original intent of its founder, Albert Nobel.

The reason for the heightened pressure rests on an investigation by the Stockholm County Administrative Board of the committee's recent choices prompted by 'persistent complaints' by author and peace researcher, Fredrik Heffermehl, and roundly criticized choices by the committee in recent years -- most notably US President Barack Obama, a war commander governing over numerous military conflicts at the time he was awarded the auspicious "peace" prize in 2009.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/02-1

Christopher Sabatini - China’s Geostrategic Designs on Latin America

In the last 5 years China’s military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean have grown at an unprecedented rate.   Beijing now regularly hosts officers from Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay  in its military academies, has expanded arms sales and technology transfers to countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela, and in October last year even sent  a navy ship to the Caribbean.

Is China—now Brazil and Chile’s number-one trade partner—buttressing its economic interests in the Western Hemisphere with military ties and alliances?  Is this the Middle Kingdom’s equivalent of President Barack Obama’s Pacific pivot to balance China’s saber rattling in Asia? There’s no doubt that China’s torrid economic growth rate and its arrival as an emerging—if not already emerged—global economic superpower has shifted the international system and brought a more muscular Chinese foreign policy.  That policy—part of what the Chinese labeled its “Going Out” strategy—has come with a growing Chinese diplomatic, economic and even military presence in many of its closest trade partners.  Given China’s need for raw materials to feed its manufacturing growth and urbanization—gobbling up everything from iron, to oil, to soybeans and frozen chicken—the country’s rise has been felt most obviously (at times with alarm) in the developing world, including Latin America.

Read More:

http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3311