April 5, 2011

In a zoo in California , a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth. The mother tiger after recovering from the delivery, …

By Robert Reich, RobertReich.org
Posted on April 4, 2011, Printed on April 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150497/why_we_must_raise_taxes_on_the_rich%2C_asap%21

It’s tax time. It’s also a time when right-wing Republicans are setting the agenda for massive spending cuts that will hurt most Americans.

Here’s the truth: The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.

Even if we got rid of corporate welfare subsidies for big oil, big agriculture, and big Pharma – even if we cut back on our bloated defense budget – it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

The vast majority of Americans can’t afford to pay more. Despite an economy that’s twice as large as it was thirty years ago, the bottom 90 percent are still stuck in the mud. If they’re employed they’re earning on average only about $280 more a year than thirty years ago, adjusted for inflation. That’s less than a 1 percent gain over more than a third of a century. (Families are doing somewhat better but that’s only because so many families now have to rely on two incomes.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/04/japan-disaster-peak-oil

Published on Monday, April 4, 2011 by Our World 2.0 and Guardian/UK

by Brendan Barrett

For large parts of eastern Japan that were not directly hit by the tsunami on 11 March 2011, including the nation’s capital, the current state of affairs feels very much like a dry-run for peak oil. This is not to belittle the tragic loss of life and the dire situation facing many survivors left without homes and livelihoods. Rather, the aim here is to reflect upon the post-disaster events and compare them with those normally associated with the worst-case scenarios for peak oil.

The earthquake and tsunami affected six of the 28 oil refineries in Japan and immediately petrol rationing was introduced with a maximum of 20 litres per car (in some instances as low as 5 litres).  On 14 March, the government allowed the oil industry to release 3 days’ worth of oil from stockpiles and on 22 March an additional 22 days’ worth of oil was released.

http://truthout.org/the-lessons-fukushima68749

Thursday 31 March 2011

by: Hugh Gusterson, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists [3]

As an anthropologist, I am always interested in what humans learn from their mistakes. Can humans change their behavior, thereby improving their chances of survival, not just through natural selection, but also through cultural learning? Or are we hardwired to repeat our mistakes over and over, like humanoid lemmings?

More to the point, what lessons will we learn from the nuclear accident at Fukushima, an accident thought to be impossible just two weeks ago?

Some people, many of them presumably already ill-disposed toward nuclear energy, have concluded that the lesson of Fukushima is that nuclear energy is inherently dangerous. Thus, Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post [7]: “We can engineer nuclear power plants so that the chance of a Chernobyl-style disaster is almost nil. But we can’t eliminate it completely — nor can we envision every other kind of potential disaster. And where fission reactors are concerned, the worst-case scenario is so dreadful as to be unthinkable.” His colleague Anne Applebaum wrote on the same op-ed page [8]: “If the competent and technologically brilliant Japanese can’t build a completely safe reactor, who can? … I … hope that a near-miss

Monday 4 April 2011 by: Noam Chomsky, Truthout http://truthout.org/libya-and-world-oil/1301900400 Last month, at the international tribunal on crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone, the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor came to an end. The chief prosecutor, U.S. law professor David Crane, informed The Times of London that …

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, April 4, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24146

In the 1930s the US, Great Britain, and the Netherlands set a course for World War II in the Pacific by conspiring against Japan. The three governments seized Japan’s bank accounts in their countries that Japan used to pay for imports and cut Japan off from oil, rubber, tin, iron and other vital materials. Was Pearl Harbor, Japan’s response?

Now Washington and its NATO puppets are employing the same strategy against China.

Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen arose from the people protesting against Washington’s tyrannical puppet governments. However, the protests against Gaddafi, who is not a Western puppet, appear to have been organized by the CIA in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is and where China has substantial energy investments.

By MIKE WHITNEY

http://counterpunch.org/whitney04042011.html

According to a new report by the BEA, personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased by $69 billion (7 percent), while personal income rose by only $38 billion (3 percent) in February.

So consumers are back to their old ways again, spending more than they earn?

Well, not exactly. The truth is, consumer spending is slowing down because food and energy are taking a bigger chunk out of the old paycheck. After factoring in inflation, personal consumption is up just 3 percent while real income fell to 1 percent. In other words, the numbers look a lot different once you factor in inflation.

The reason all this matters, is because consumption is 70 percent of GDP, so if the consumer is on the ropes and getting pummeled by stagnant wages and inflation at the same time, then you can bet the economy is headed for the dumpster. Of course, a good portion of the blame for this mess goes to Ben Bernanke whose miracle QE2 elixir has kept the stock market bubbly while commodities and food prices have skyrocketed. That’s the real source of the problem, an uneven policy that rewards the investment class while leaving the workerbees (you and me) fending off soaring prices.

March 28, 2011

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/cosmic-wonder-human-opportunity

by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack
Yale Press, 2011

This book is in every sense of the word, a prophetic book. Its message ranks right up there with those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel. Like the prophets, it is at times poetic, demanding, grounded, soaring, empowering, and always awe-inspiring.

Rabbi Heschel says the essence of the prophet’s work is to interfere, and Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams are doing nothing if they are not interfering. They are interfering with apathy, couch-potato-itis, anthropocentrism, and despair by inspiring us with the newly found reasons we have for waking up, getting involved, and resisting dumb media, amoral education, and frozen religious ideologies. They inspire us to do what prophets do: give birth to justice from a newly born heart, a newly born consciousness. And to shout the dangerous paths, the ways of folly, we are on. This book does all that and more.