Zhang Lan, founder of restaurant chain South Beauty, is one of China’s richest women and a symbol of the country’s booming economic success. Thus it is not surprising that the recent news that the billionaire has renounced her Chinese citizenship to take on a foreign nationality has been met with some significant national soul-searching. …
2012 is nearly certain to be the warmest year ever for the US, according to the latest figures from the NOAA. It would take December being more than 1.0°F colder than the coldest December recorded in 1983 in order for 2012 not to be the nation’s warmest year ever, the …
In East Texas, members of the Tar Sands Blockade started their eleventh week of opposition to construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline with a new act of civil disobedience against the onrush of global warming, sealing themselves inside a mile-long segment of the pipeline itself. In Doha, Qatar, other protestors at the U.N. World Climate Conference found themselves in just as dark and …
McGovern is a retired CIA officer (1963 – 1990), turned activist and political critic. He addresses major world and national issues in lectures and frequent articles. Major world and national issues will be discussed. – Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.0MB) | Embed
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.0MB) | Embed
Unsure how your private security firm makes money as the U.S. war in Afghanistan winds down? One option: Go into the drug trade — more specifically, the lucrative business of fighting narcotics. The State Department needs a business partner to keep its fleet of drug-hunting helicopters and planes flying worldwide. …
Despite its pathetic propaganda encouraging us to practice doublethink, the Federal Reserve freely admits that it is privately owned, is a monopoly empowered by Congress, and that it operates independently from — above? — Congress and the president. Yet it pays its private undisclosed shareholders/owners huge rewards . . that …
What is one of the first things Hamas does when it is fresh off standing up against an Israeli assault and widely perceived to have gained ground politically at the expense of its intramural rival, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority? It voices support for Abbas’s effort to get his organization’s status at the …
Governments are falling far short of their commitment to keep global average temperature rise below the accepted 2°C goal, putting the world on the brink of climate catastrophe. The UN Environment Program’s Emissions Gap Report 2012, released Nov. 21, identifies a huge gap between current pledges to cut polluting greenhouse gas …
The mantra of this round was Once And For All. “We must put an end to this (the rockets, Hamas, the Palestinians, the Arabs?) Once and For All!” – this cry from the heart was heard dozens of times daily on TV from the harassed inhabitants of Israel’s battered towns …
The recent storms that have battered settlements on the east coast of America may have been much more frequent in the region 450 million years ago, according to scientists. New research pinpointing the positions of the Equator and the landmasses of the USA, Canada and Greenland, during the Ordovician Period …
Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil analyzed the cerebral blood flow (CBF) of Brazilian mediums during the practice of psychography, described as a form of writing whereby a deceased person or spirit is believed to write through the medium’s hand. The new research …
When Major General David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division met Lieutenant General William Wallace, commander of the U.S. Army’s V Corps on 27 March 2003 at a site near Najaf, only five days after American forces began the attack to Baghdad Petraeus and Wallace were deeply pessimistic. They concluded, “The …
Gaza is a window on our coming dystopia. The growing divide between the world’s elite and its miserable masses of humanity is maintained through spiraling violence. Many impoverished regions of the world, which have fallen off the economic cliff, are beginning to resemble Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in …
Wind energy could provide up to a fifth of all global electricity needs by 2030, according to a new report by the Global Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace International. Examining different scenarios for the development of the industry and projected levels of electricity demand, “Global Wind Energy Outlook 2012″ (pdf) predicts “installed …
They don’t call it the “cliff” for nothing. It’s the fiscal spot where a nation’s representatives can gather and cry doom. It’s the place — if Washington is to be believed — where, with a single leap into the Abyss of Sequestration, those representatives can end it all for …