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I have a law degree (Stanford, 66') but have never practiced. Instead, from 1967 through 1977, I tried to contribute to the revolution in America. As unsuccessful as everyone else over that decade, in 1978 I went to work for the U.S. Forest Service in San Francisco as a Clerk-Typist, GS-4. I was active in the USFS's union for several years, including a brief stint as editor of The Forest Service Monitor, the nationwide voice of the Forest Service in the National Federation of Federal Employees. Howsoever, I now believe my most important contribution while editor of the F.S.M. was bringing to the attention of F.S. employees the fact that the Black-Footed Ferret was not extinct; one had been found in 1980 on a national forest in the Colorado. In 2001 I retired from the USFS after attaining the age of 60 with 23 years of service. Stanford University was evidently unimpressed with my efforts to make USFS investigative reports of tort claim incidents available to tort claimants (ie, "the public"), alleging the negligence of a F.S. employee acting in the scope of his/her duties caused their damages, under the Freedom of Information Act. Oh well. What'cha gonna do?
Friday, February 10, 2012 Appeals court rejects California's Proposition 8, by the CNN Wire Staff
A federal appeals court ruled against California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage Tuesday, arguing the ban unconstitutionally singles out gays and lesbians for discrimination. {Pictured is a demonstrator outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco.}
Friday, February 10, 2012 Will Hispanic voters swing the 2012 race? - by Charles Garcia, special to CNN Online
Editor's note: Charles Garcia is the CEO of Garcia Trujillo, a business focused on the Hispanic market, and the author of "Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows." A native of the Republic of Panama, he now lives in Florida. Watch Garcia on Friday in the 9 a.m. hour on CNN Newsroom. {Pictured are California activists protesting Arizona's immigration law.}
Thursday, February 9, 2012 Ancient Seagrass Holds Secrets of the Oldest Living Organism On Earth (1 comments)
ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2012) -- It's big, it's old and it lives under the sea -- and now an international research collaboration with The University of Western Australia's Ocean's Institute has confirmed that an ancient seagrass holds the secrets of the oldest living organism on Earth.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 In Memoriam: Ben Gazzara, by Richard Brody at The New Yorker
Ben Gazzara died on Friday, at the age of eighty-one. He's one of the very greatest of film actors; he'll be remembered for just a handful of roles, out of the one hundred thirty-three listed in IMDb, but those are among the very summits of movie history. I'm thinking, in particular, of his three films with John Cassavetes: "Husbands," "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie," and "Opening Night. In them (especially the first two) he plays varieties of himself, as Cassavetes saw him: the moderate man who loses his head and takes immoderate action.
Thursday, February 2, 2012 Mouse to Elephant? Just Wait 24 Million Generations, by the Editors of ScienceDaily (1 comments)
Scientists have for the first time measured how fast large-scale evolution can occur in mammals, showing it takes 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve to the size of an elephant. {Pictured is Dr. Alistair Evans with the skulls of a mouse and an elephant.}
Thursday, February 2, 2012 Why Record Black Male Unemployment Remains Invisible to the First Black President
State of the Union speeches usually throw bones in every direction, to every constituency that matters to a president. But even though black male unemployment is at record levels, even higher than when the president declared the "recession" over, it remains beneath the notice of the First Black President.
Thursday, January 19, 2012 Moral Awakening of an11th-grader, by Gilad Atzmon at Dissident Voice (4 comments)
This week, Jesse Lieberfeld an11th-grade American Jewish teenager won the Dietrich College's 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Writing Awards for composing a beautiful piece about his own moral awakening and journey away from Judaism.
Saturday, January 14, 2012 Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: The Far-Apart Artists, by Christopher Benfey in The New York Review (2 comments)
By the end of her long life, Georgia Totto O'Keeffe, who died in 1986 at the age of ninety-eight, had become one of the most recognized of all American artists, eclipsing even such crowd-pleasing favorites as Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth. During her final years, when macular degeneration had partially blinded her and she painted with the help of an assistant guiding her hand, her popularity was equaled perhaps only by Andy Warhol, who admired her, interviewed her, and borrowed some of her favorite motifs, such as skulls and flowers. Just as Warhol's varied achievement has coalesced around a few frequently reproduced images--Marilyn, Mao, and cans of Campbell's Soup--O'Keeffe is best known today for her up-close vaginal flower petals and her austere evocations of a primeval New Mexico.
Friday, January 13, 2012 The Progressive Honor Roll of 2011, by John Nichols of The Nation Online (1 comments)
What a difference a year makes! Last year The Nation's Honor Roll recognized courageous, if often lonely, battlers against an austerity agenda, an ascendant Tea Party and a Republican electoral wave that had put Democrats, working folks and the unions that represent them on the defensive nationwide. This year we celebrate the remarkable movements that have arisen not just to stem the conservative tide but to build a new vision of progressivism for the twenty-first century.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 The Role of Black Intellectuals, by BAR's Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
Cornel West wrote in 1985 that the black intellectual was "caught between an insolent American society and an insouciant black community"....Twenty-seven years later, with a black president in office his words have the insistence of a drum roll. We see President Barack Obama battered by the harsh racism of a Republican right in Congress that is prepared to paralyze government and harm the nation if it means defying his attempts at reform. Insolence has never been more insulting.{Pictured is W.E.B. Dubois.}
Thursday, January 5, 2012 The Revolting Bob Parsons and His Toxic Internet Empire, by AlterNet's Lynn Parramour (2 comments)
In late December, domain registrar Go Daddy spat on the notion of the open society by announcing support for the evil Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Technology firms and human rights activists quickly cried foul, revealing that the "copyright-enforcing" bill, with its overly broad definitions, was less about stopping piracy and more about restricting the flow of information to citizens. The firm caved to public pressure and withdrew support for for the bill, which the US House Judiciary Committee will be voting on soon. The furor caused many Web sites (including AlterNet) to decide to pull their registrations from Go Daddy. And it shined a light on the notorious Go Daddy founder, cheekily and rather fondly profiled just days ago in the New York Times Magazine.
Friday, December 30, 2011 About Rick Perry: Today's GOP makes Mississippi look liberal
Perry has already announced his support for the "personhood" movement, which declares that life begins the moment an egg is fertilized, a measure that was rejected by the deep-red state of Mississippi as too extreme. But Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum also back the personhood crusade. That's your modern Republican Party: It makes Mississippi look liberal. They'd like women to have more rights before they're born than after.
Thursday, December 29, 2011 New Theory Emerges for Where Some Fish Became Four-Limbed Creatures
ScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2011) -- A small fish crawling on stumpy limbs from a shrinking desert pond is an icon of can-do spirit, emblematic of a leading theory for the evolutionary transition between fish and amphibians. This theorized image of such a drastic adaptation to changing environmental conditions, however, may, itself, be evolving into a new picture.
Monday, December 26, 2011 Why Alan Dershowitz is Wrong on Israel's "Rights' by Nima Shirazi
Renowned torture enthusiast and perennial Israel apologist Alan Dershowitz was in Tel Aviv this month attending an annual business conference sponsored by Globes and, as usual, took the opportunity to equivocate for Israeli espionage, defend war criminals, and warmonger about Iran....In April 2010, Dershowitz wrote, "I am asserting, in unqualified terms, that Israel has an absolute right -- legally, morally, politically -- to take such an action if it deems it necessary to protect its citizens from a threatened nuclear attack"....Like everything else The Dersh says, his statements are clearly out of step with the basic tenets of international law and, unsurprisingly, ignore both historical facts and current reality in order to draw his despicable and dubious conclusions.
Sunday, December 25, 2011 Is There a Limit to Black Tolerance of Obama's Police State, Assassinations and Wars?
In my political circles, we used to go through the rhetorical exercise of asking each other, What does President Obama have to do to irretrievably alienate his core of supporters? What horrific atrocity would Obama have to commit, that would cause him to lose his solid Black base? The problem with this little game of What If, was that Obama kept upping the ante, with one outrage after another, each more nightmarish than the last. {Pictured is a B.A.R montage featuring our thoughtful President and black prisoners.}
Wednesday, December 21, 2011 Christopher Hitchens: A Nationalist, Imperialist Bully, by Stephen Harper (1 comments)
So the author and journalist, Christopher Hitchens, has died aged 62....For the last quarter of a century, Hitchens' hard-drinking, tough-talking image has made him the poster-boy of the liberal intelligentsia in the UK and US....(But), despite his literary achievements, Hitchens should be remembered as a repugnant propagandist for the rich and powerful.
{Hitchens is pictured in 2010, courtesy of Wikipedia.}
Monday, December 19, 2011 North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il Dead at 69 (1 comments)
Mr Kim, who has led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994, died on a train while visiting an area outside the capital, the announcement said.
Sunday, December 18, 2011 The Dominican Republic Hates Black People, by BAR Columnist Jemima Pierre
The indefatigable Dominic-Haitian activist Sonia Pierre died recently, at age 48, outlived by the deep racism that poisons her homeland's society. "Anti-Haitianism is deeply embedded in Dominican society and has spawned continued mob attacks and lynchings, as well as other sanctioned acts of violence against Haitians or Black Dominicans assumed to be Haitian." Dominican national identity is entwined with anti-Blackness and anti-Haitianess -- which are the same thing. "To be Dominican, then, was to be Hispanic and Catholic, and anything but Black."
Sunday, December 18, 2011 How to Dispel Your Illusions, by Freeman Dyson in the NYRB (1 comments)
In 1955, when Daniel Kahneman was twenty-one years old, he was a lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces. He was given the job of setting up a new interview system for the entire army. The purpose was to evaluate each freshly drafted recruit and put him or her into the appropriate slot in the war machine. {Pictured is Daniel Kahneman in 2011, by Getty Images.}
Monday, December 12, 2011 "I bring to Trinidad & Tobago the eternal gratitude of our people"
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad & Tobago.--President Raúl Castro Ruz arrived in Trinidad and Tobago yesterday morning, December 7, to begin his first official visit to this sister Caribbean nation.
Sunday, December 11, 2011 Computer Simulations Shed Light On the Physics of Rainbows, by the Science News Staff (1 comments)
ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2011) -- Computer scientists at UC San Diego, who set out to simulate all rainbows found in nature, wound up answering questions about the physics of rainbows as well. The scientists recreated a wide variety of rainbows -- primary rainbows, secondary rainbows, redbows that form at sunset and cloudbows that form on foggy days -- by using an improved method for simulating how light interacts with water drops of various shapes and sizes. Their new approach even yielded realistic simulations of difficult-to-replicate "twinned" rainbows that split their primary bow in two.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011 Some thoughts that OCCUPY my mind, by William Blum (2 comments)
When the Vietnam War became history, and the protest signs and the bullhorns were put away, so too was the serious side of most protestors' alienation and hostility toward the government. They returned, with minimal resistance, to the restless pursuit of success, and the belief that the choice facing the world was either "capitalist democracy" or "communist dictatorship". The war had been an aberration, was the implicit verdict, a blemish on an otherwise humane American record. The fear felt by the powers-that-be that society's fabric was unraveling and that the Republic was hanging by a thread turned out to be little more than media hype; it had been great copy.
Monday, December 5, 2011 The Great Antidepressant Hypocrisy, by AlterNet's Maia Szalavitz
When the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that one in ten Americans now takes an antidepressant--a 400% increase since 1988--there was a predictable media hand-wringing about "pill popping" and a rush to "quick fixes." What I always wonder when I hear these complaints is this: Have these people ever experienced depression themselves, or known someone who suffers from it?
Monday, December 5, 2011 Center of Penn State Scandal, Sandusky Tells His Own Story, by Jo Becker
The former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, in his first extended interview since his indictment on sexual abuse charges last month, said Coach Joe Paterno never spoke to him about any suspected misconduct with minors. Mr. Sandusky also said the charity he worked for never restricted his access to children until he became the subject of a criminal investigation in 2008.
Thursday, December 1, 2011 Africa Lies Naked to Euro-American Military Offensive, by B.A.R. Executive Editor Glen Ford (1 comments)
The United States and its allies, principally the French, are positioned to "take' much of the continent with the collaboration of most of its governments....Although drawing on longstanding schemes for overt and covert regime change in selected countries, and fully consistent with global capital's historic imperative to bludgeon the planet into one malleable market subordinate to Washington, London and Paris, the current offensive had a particular genesis in time: the nightmare vision of an Arab awakening.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011 Exposing the One Percent: Freeport McMoRan Exploits Workers and the Environment
Freeport McMoRan (FCX) is the world's largest extractor of copper and gold and controls huge deposits in Papua, Indonesia. The Gasberg Mine in Papua employs some 8,000 workers at wages of $1.50 to $3.00 an hour. The workers have been on stike since September of 2011 for an increase in wages. In an attempt to block busloads of replacement workers, several strikers have been killed and several wounded by security forces financed by Freeport.
Thursday, November 24, 2011 New MRI Technique to Diagnose or Rule out Alzheimer's Disease (3 comments)
ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2011) -- On the quest for safe, reliable and accessible tools to accurately diagnose Alzheimer's disease, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found a new way of diagnosing and tracking Alzheimer's disease, using an innovative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique called arterial spin labeling (ASL) to measure changes in brain function. The team determined that the ASL-MRI test is a promising alternative to the current standard, a specific PET scan that requires exposure to small amounts of a radioactive glucose analog and costs approximately four-times more than an ASL-MRI.
Thursday, November 24, 2011 Propagandized America, by Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report
The United States is a nation of lies: corporate media lies - in the service of State Department, Pentagon and White House lies -- (form) a congealed, fictional mass that only Americans believe....Israel is chomping at the bit to attack Iran, and its lackey state, the United States of America, will not stand in its way. The corporate media never tell us that Israel, a country which is not a signatory of the NPT, has an arsenal of an unknown number of nuclear weapons....
(And the) court scribes who tell us that a statistical blip is proof of economic recovery or that the president had no choice but to accept the "Satan sandwich" budget deal are no better than propagandists in dictatorial states.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 "Stick Together" Obama Talks to a Black Leadership Conference, by BAR's Bruce Dixon
The US president is the most powerful man in the world. Black unemployment was already at an all time high the day Barack Obama was sworn in. Three years into his term, there are few signs that record black unemployment, growing poverty, the wave of foreclosures centered in minority neighborhoods are concerns for this administration. {Pictured is Obama lecturing, as usual.}
Sunday, November 20, 2011 A Rare Look at a Career's Missing Link, by Michael Fitzgerald (1 comments)
If we drew an arc across the great years of Picasso's career during the first half of the 20th century, there would be two paramount achievements: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" in 1907 and "Guernica" in 1937. The first was Picasso's breakthrough as he shattered the artistic conventions of the 19th century; the second became the most powerful work capturing the humanitarian crises and political violence of the 20th century. Within the 30-year period separating these two masterpieces lies another: "Painter and Model." In my view, "Painter and Model" is not only Picasso's most important painting since "Les Demoiselles" but also the essential precedent for "Guernica." It is the missing link in the career of the greatest artist of the 20th century.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 IAEA Credibility and Its Latest Report on Iran's Nuclear Program
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its latest periodic report on Iran's nuclear program last Tuesday after weeks of mainstream Western media fanfare around it. Wide debates have been going on since then in media circles about the significance and implications of this report for Iran's nuclear issue.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 Maurizio Cattelan, by Jerry Saltz of Artnet Magazine
I had imagined that Maurizio Cattelan's "All" -- a retrospective that consists of nearly every work he's ever made, suspended via cables and a truss from the Guggenheim's ceiling -- would look like a total clusterfuck, a supernova sparked when Madame Tussauds crashed into a Calder factory and exploded. In fact, when I first saw these 128 sculptures, framed photos, paintings, stuffed horses, sleeping dogs, a sitting cow, a dead squirrel, mannequins, numerous self-portraits and assorted gewgaws, all floating in the atrium, my fan heart sank. It seemed sedate, sparse and anticlimactic, less clusterfuck and more inchoate limbo. {Pictured is Cattelan's central piece at the Guggeheim Museum.}
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 Maureen Dowd on "J.Edgar": Dirty Harry Meets Dirtier Edgar (2 comments)
I ask Clint Eastwood, the star who defined macho in 20th-century movies, what it was like to direct a scene with two men kissing. Especially when it's Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer playing a rule-bending and gender-bending version of J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 Joe Paterno and the Sick Logic of College Football, by Dave Zirin (1 comments)
After 46 seasons coaching at Penn State University, Coach Joe Paterno now faces a crisis....For those who haven't heard, longtime assistant Jerry Sandusky, 67, who coached the vaunted Nittany Lions defense for 23 years, has been charged with 40 sex crimes against boys dating from 1994 to 2005....On one level, it's a horror story we've heard before: vulnerable children become targets for the very people trusted with their care. But this case is far, far worse, because it could have been stopped in time to spare future victims. It could have been stopped, but it wasn't because the image of Joe Paterno Nittany Lion Football was deemed more important than the children at risk. {Pictured is Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno.}
Monday, November 7, 2011 Annals Of Evolution: Sleeping With The Enemy, By Elizabeth Kolbert
For the past twenty-five years or so, the study of human evolution has been dominated by the theory known in the popular press as "Out of Africa"....
This theory holds that all modern humans are descended from a small population that lived in Africa roughly two hundred thousand years ago....As they moved north and east, modern humans encountered Neanderthals and other so-called "archaic humans," who already inhabited those regions. The modern humans "replaced" the archaic humans, which is a nice way of saying they drove them into extinction. This model of migration and "replacement" implies that the relationship between Neanderthals and humans should be the same for all people alive today, regardless of where they come from. {Pictured is an early hominid.}
Sunday, November 6, 2011 What Happened When Overzealous Terrorist-Hunters Took Off With My Money
Where did I go wrong? Was it playing percussion with an Occupy Wall Street band in Times Square when I was in New York recently? Or was it when I returned to my peaceful new home in Oslo and deleted an email invitation to hear Newt Gingrich lecture Norwegians on the American election? (Yes, even here.) {Pictured is an Idunno What.}
Sunday, November 6, 2011 City Lights Could Reveal E.t. Civilization, By Sciencedaily (1 comments)
Dateline: Nov. 3, 2011 -- In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights. "Looking for alien cities would be a long shot, but wouldn't require extra resources. And if we succeed, it would change our perception of our place in the universe," said Loeb. {Pictured is an artist's rendering of a possible exo-planet's city lights.}
Saturday, November 5, 2011 Bnc To Participate In South Africa Session Of Russell Tribunal On Palestine
Representatives of the Palestinian BDS National Committtee (BNC), the broad Palestinian civil society coalition that leads the BDS movement, will participate in the Third International Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in South Africa November 5-7. Rafeef Ziadah, Jamal Juma' and Ingrid Jaradat will appear as expert witnesses testifying about Israel's apartheid policies against the Palestinian people.
Thursday, November 3, 2011 Dark Matter Mystery Deepens, By Sciencedaily (2 comments)
Dateline October 17, 2011: "After completing this study, we know less about dark matter than we did before," said Matt Walker, a Hubble Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 Update On San Francisco Bay Area Occupations, By Shepherd Bliss (3 comments)
Occupy Oakland won a resounding October 26 victory by mobilizing 3000 people to respond to a police riot. They took down the police fence that exiled them from the plaza in front of city hall, set up tents again, and returned to dancing and receiving massage and acupuncture treatments. {Pictured is the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin headlands with San Francisco on the horizon.}
Saturday, October 29, 2011 Cuba Will Change Everything That Has To Be Changed, By Bruno Parrilla (6 comments)
Statement by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla on the resolution "The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba." New York, October 25, 2011: Mr. President, On November 13, 1991, this General Assembly made the decision of including in the program of its next period of sessions, an examination of the issue, "The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba."
Friday, October 28, 2011 Why Hippie Culture Is Still Important To Our Protests, By Danny Goldberg At Alternet (2 comments)
Progressives and mainstream Democratic pundits disagree with each other about many issues at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street protests, but with few exceptions they are joined in their contempt for drum circles, free hugs, and other behavior in Zuccotti Park that smacks of hippie culture. {Pictured is a hippie drummer - in Zucottii Park?}
Thursday, October 27, 2011 Tony Fitzpatrick (Pilgrim's Progress), By Charlie Finch Of Artnet Magazine (1 comments)
All you need to know about the toll a working life takes on an artist, as opposed to those who market art, was evident at the New York premiere of my Artnet Magazine colleague Tony Fitzpatrick's Stations Lost, the second play in his trilogy about the real America, at The Boiler in Williamsburg on Thursday night. {Pictured is Tony, possibly pointing to one of his numerous tatoos.}
Thursday, October 27, 2011 Basketball Players Still Represent Labor, By David Macaray At Dissident Voice
The on-going labor dispute between NBA (National Basketball Association) owners and the players union is continuing to draw national attention, as each passing day without an agreement puts the league closer to not having a season at all. As in all such disputes, the main issue is money. And that seems bizarre, given that neither side is exactly hurting for dough. Indeed, the players and owners are in the highest income brackets known to man. Most of the players are millionaires and most of the owners are billionaires. {Pictured is Kobe Bryant in 2008.}
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 Yes, I Am Experienced, By Charlie Finch Of Artnet Magazine (1 comments)
I haven't done psychedelics since 1974, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could trip again by reading veteran New York Times art critic Ken Johnson's newly released volume, Are You Experienced? How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 ...market Machinations Of People With More Money Than God, By Emily Nathan
Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, people everywhere are turning against the super-rich in a dramatic demonstration of public conscience. The last thing the art world needs, then, is headlines tying it to the oligarchic 1% (whose gut feeling for symbols of sophistication, i.e. artworks, fuels our vigorous art economy). So what the hell is up with Sotheby's idiotic lock-out of its art handlers union, now entering its third month? {Pictured is Lucien Freud's Boy's Head (1951).}
Friday, October 21, 2011 How Did The Jews Get Over The Holocaust? By Saul Bellow (2 comments)
The following, the second part of a two-part series, is excerpted from a talk originally given by Saul Bellow in 1988 and now published here {at the New York Review of Books} for the first time. A footnote has been added by the editors. {Pictured is Saul Bellow in 1973.}
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 Archaeologists Find Blade 'Production Lines' Existed as Much as 400,000 Years Ago (4 comments)
Archaeology has long associated advanced blade production with the Upper Palaeolithic period, about 30,000-40,000 years ago, linked with the emergence of Homo Sapiens and cultural features such as cave art. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have uncovered evidence which shows that "modern" blade production was also an element of Amudian industry during the late Lower Paleolithic period, 200,000-400,000 years ago as part of the Acheulo-Yabrudian cultural complex, a geographically limited group of hominins who lived in modern-day Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. {Pictured are cutting tools discovered in a cave near Tel Aviv, courtersy of AFTAU.}
Monday, October 17, 2011 Dateline 10/11/2011 | The Brazilian movement for BDS against Israel has begun, by The Brazilian Movement (1 comments)
...the Front in Defense of the Palestinian People of São Paulo and the Palestinian Front in the University of São Paulo celebrated on September 20, at the Students Hall in the Law School of the University of São Paulo, a meeting inaugurating the national campaign for BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions) against the apartheid policy of Israel.
Monday, October 17, 2011 Two, Three, Many Wall Streets, by Amy Davidson of The New Yorker Magazine
Where is Wall Street? Occupy Wall Street's skeptics--and there are a lot of those, though far fewer than there were a week ago--like to note the protesters are not actually occupying a street named Wall, but a park named Zuccotti; and that "Wall Street" is an archaic term, anyway, since many financial firms aren't resident there. The protesters, in other words, were misdirected and naïve.... but....Where isn't Wall Street, after all? It's in one's mortgage terms and student loans and legislatures. And where isn't there anger?
Thursday, October 13, 2011 Occupy Wall Street, Denounce the Democrats
If the Occupation Wall Street is to be truly independent of both banker-funded political parties, they will have to include the Democrats in their denunciations. There has been precious little direct criticism of the "other" pro-Wall Street party at Liberty/Zuccotti Park. "Words like breaking up the concentration of wealth and power will be meaningless without a more pointed critique of the political system, a critique which should be no respecter of persons or party."
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Most Vertebrates -- Including Humans -- Descended from Ancestor With Sixth Sense (3 comments)
Certain...aquatic vertebrates have a sixth sense: they can detect weak electrical fields in the water and use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves. A study in the Oct. 11 issue of Nature Communications that caps more than 25 years of work finds that the vast majority of vertebrates - some 30,000 species of land animals (including humans) and a roughly equal number of ray-finned fishes - descended from a common ancestor that had a well-developed electroreceptive system. {Pictured is a shark - with her six senses.}
Saturday, October 8, 2011 From the F*ck Hollywood Archives, by Michael J. Smith at Stop Me Before I vote Again (1 comments)
You can tell a book by its cover, I've always said, and all you really need to know about a movie is how people respond to it. I am not being ironical here. Reception is not just the main thing, it's the only thing.
I personally made this discovery years ago, in connection with the movie The Deer Hunter, which I still haven't seen. I found that all I had to do was get people to tell me what they liked about the movie, and I had plenty of grist for my mill. Sentimentality is chief lady-in-waiting to militarism -- sloppily weeping and waving her sodden handkerchief as Moloch marches off to the fields of slaughter.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 Yes, the boycott of Israel is legal: 17 Sep 11, by CAPJPO-EuroPalestine
The tribunal of the 17th magistrate's court of the Paris law courts, which specialises in matters regarding press rights, the defamation of public figures and the freedom of expression, has given a most important and clear ruling on the right of citizens and consumers to call for a boycott of Israel and its products. It concerns all of us. Here are below the grounds for the decision. Please circulate widely.
Monday, October 3, 2011 Arctic ozone loss at record level, by Richard Black of BBC News
Ozone loss over the Arctic this year was so severe that for the first time it could be called an "ozone hole" like the Antarctic one, scientists report. {In the picture, North America is at 12 o'clock.)
Monday, September 26, 2011 Coming Apart, by George Packer at the New Yorker Magazine (1 comments)
On March 31, 2004, four Americans working as guards for the private security company Blackwater were ambushed and killed by insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja, the charred remains of two of them dragged away by a mob and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The incident, which led to a monthlong battle between the Marines and insurgents, marked the start of Iraq's descent into nationwide chaos, and added an iconic image of horror to the gallery that has been created in the decade since September 11, 2001: the collapse of the burning Twin Towers; the shipping containers in Mazar-i-Sharif crammed with hundreds of dead Taliban fighters; the videotaped beheadings of the journalist Daniel Pearl and the contractor Nick Berg; the demented eyes of the "shoe bomber," Richard Reid, after his arrest; the dental exam performed on the mouth of a captured Saddam Hussein....
Sunday, September 25, 2011 Cain upsets Perry as winner of Florida straw poll, by CNN's Peter Hamby (4 comments)
Orlando, Florida (CNN) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential campaign was dealt a worrying blow Saturday when he finished in a distant second place to businessman Herman Cain in a closely watched straw poll in Florida. {Pictured - if I'm not mistaken - are Rick Perry and Herman Cain.}
Saturday, September 24, 2011 Medical Identity Theft a Growing Problem, by Emily P. Walker (1 comments)
Medical identify theft is the fastest-growing form of identity theft, affecting 1.42 million Americans in 2010 and costing more than $28 billion, the report said.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 Happy Birthday, Paul Erdos
The great mathematician Paul Erdos was born on September 20, 1913; he posed and solved problems in number theory and other areas and founded the field of discrete mathematics. {The picture, the text of the article, and the links within the text are all at MacTutor's History of Mathematics, physically located at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.}
Monday, September 19, 2011 Predators and Robots at War
(T)he US Air Force now trains more UAV operators each year than traditional pilots....(and) the US aerospace industry has for all practical purposes ceased research and development work on manned aircraft. {Pictured is an unmanned Predator drone with laser-guided Hellfire missiles mounted on its wings, (being lauched from) Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan, November 2009; copyright Max Becherer/Polaris.}
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 NATO: Iraq Mission to Continue Through End of 2013, by Jason Ditz of AntiWar.Com
In an announcement that doesn't directly impact the US troop presence, but which some see as a hint toward openness by the Maliki government, NATO today announced that Iraq has approved keeping NATO "trainers" in the country through the end of 2013.
Sunday, September 11, 2011 People of the Lie, by Thomas H. Naylor of Counterpunch
We live in the world of make-believe, a world controlled by ciphers such as Wall Street, Corporate America, the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon. These ciphers enjoy the enthusiastic support of the media, the academy, and the shamans to whom we entrust the care of body, mind, and soul. They reside in cipherspace, a euphemism for what French writer Albert Camus called the absurd. {Pictured is a dog at the Famine Memorial in Dublin, by Infomatique (2008) at Flickr Commons.}
Friday, September 9, 2011 (An Appreciation of) Gatsby at 86, by Charlie Finch (4 comments)
To read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, first published in 1925, again, in the teeth of another American economic collapse, is to understand that the essence and flaw of America is that everything changes and nothing changes. Certainly the ostentation of the super-rich, the fundament of Gatsby, its core of sin, is worse than ever.
Thursday, September 8, 2011 NATO's Glorious Race War in Libya, by B.A.R. Executive Editor Glen Ford (3 comments)
Dateline Sept 7, 2011: The western media find it more difficult to deny a pattern of murderous ethnic cleansing by the racist Libyan rebels they have treated as saints and heroes for the past six months. Thousands of black Libyans and sub-Saharan immigrants have been murdered by NATO-financed, heavily Islamist fighters who, as African Union chairman Jean Ping says, seem to "confuse black people with mercenaries." In truth, the Libyan rebels are no more confused about the identity of their victims than South Carolina lynch mobs or German Nazis; they're racist killers, pure and simple. {Pictured is a montage, courtesy of Black Agenda Report.}
Tuesday, September 6, 2011 Libya and The World We Live In, by William Blum
Not very long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Mideast/North Africa world with perhaps the highest standards of living in the region. Then the United States of America came along and saw fit to make a basket case of each one. The desire to get rid of Gaddafi had been building for years; the Libyan leader had never been a reliable pawn; then the Arab Spring provided the excellent opportunity and cover. {Pictured is the MQ-9 drone Reaper in flight.}
Monday, September 5, 2011 Remembering Attica, 40 years Later, by B.A.R.'s Bruce Dixon
It has been more than a generation since the historic prison uprising at New York's Attica penitentiary. Since then, both much and little have changed, not all for the better. If there is one lasting lesson of the Attica uprising for our day, what is it?
Friday, September 2, 2011 Green Anole Lizard's Genome Sheds Light On Vertebrate Evolution, by Science News
The green anole lizard is an agile and active creature, and so are elements of its genome. This genomic agility and other new clues have emerged from the full sequencing of the lizard's genome and may offer insights into how the genomes of humans, mammals, and their reptilian counterparts have evolved since mammals and reptiles parted ways 320 million years ago. The researchers who completed this sequencing project reported their findings August 31 online in the journal Nature. The green anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis) -- a native of the Southeastern United States -- is the first non-bird species of reptile to have its genome sequenced and assembled. Broad (Institute) researchers have assembled and analyzed more than 20 mammalian genomes -- including those of some of our closest relatives -- but the genetic landscape of reptiles remains relatively unexplored.
Thursday, September 1, 2011 Public Debt, by Al Schumann of Stop Me Before I Vote Again
When I was a young lefty, the ideal form of public debt, sometimes called national debt, was explained to me as labor contributed, today, in excess of immediate compensation, with deferred compensation down the line. In other words, it's not a threatening obligation. It's an investment. That's a simplification, but it makes a lot more sense than deficit terrorists' death-dealing Debt Bomb of Doom scenarios and the lazy Micawberisms of the sensible liberals. {See the 'Popular Culture' heading under Wilkins Micawber at Wiki.} AND {Pictured is Obama, by Martin Schoeller.}
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 Decision Pending on Mass Firing of New Orleans Public School Teachers after Hurricane Katrina, by Andrew Vanacore of the (1 comments)
It was January of 2006, not long after Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters swallowed her home in the Lower 9th Ward, when the news reached Gwendolyn Adams by word of mouth: after nearly three decades of teaching, she'd been dismissed along with 7,500 other Orleans Parish public school system employees. She never got a severance package or a hearing with a union rep. Just the axe. "They had thrown us away like last week's trash," Adams said. "People who had given 30, 40 years of their lives."
Sunday, August 28, 2011 Monsanto GM Corn in Peril: Beetle Develops Bt-resistance, by Rady Ananda (1 comments)
Nature herself may be the best opponent of genetically modified crops and pesticides. Not only plants, but insects are also developing resistance. The Western rootworm beetle -- one of the most serious threats to corn -- has developed resistance to Monsanto's Bt-corn, and entire crops are being lost....Two-thirds of all US corn is genetically modified per the USDA, and the bulk of that is Bt-corn. Monsanto has the biggest market share in the US, reporting about 35% in 2009. {Pictured is the beetle Diabrotica virgifera virgifera - the Western rootworm beetle - which has developed resistance to the Bt protein.}
Thursday, August 25, 2011 Obama's Responsibility to Protect is a License to Kill - In Libya, Haiti and Beyond, by B.A.R. Executive Editor Glen For (2 comments)
If the NATO aggressors finally do seize effective control of Libya, after five months of heroic resistance by the Libyan army, the world will enter an even more dangerous period. The Obama administration now believes it has found the formula that will allow it to pick up where George Bush was interrupted in the unconstrained use of American force in the world. This is the mission Barack Obama auditioned for as a candidate, when he vowed to build international coalitions that would endorse U.S. war policies, rather than go it alone. Obama did not promise to be a more peaceful president. Rather, he assured the Pentagon he would be more effective in getting U.S. allies to go along with Washington's wars, as willing accomplices.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 Visitors moved by first look at MLK Jr. memorial, by Melanie Eversley of USA Today
WASHINGTON D.C. -- The first look at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial brought some visitors to tears Monday. The memorial, on 4 acres overlooking the Tidal Basin, will be dedicated Sunday. It opened to the public for the first time (yesterday). {Pictured is King, at Wikipedia.}
Monday, August 22, 2011 New Theory On Origin of Birds: Enlarged Skeletal Muscles (1 comments)
A developmental biologist at New York Medical College is proposing a new theory of the origin of birds, which traditionally has been thought to be driven by the evolution of flight. Instead, Stuart A. Newman, Ph.D., credits the emergence of enlarged skeletal muscles as the basis for their upright two-leggedness, which led to the opportunity for other adaptive changes like flying or swimming. And it is all based on the loss of a gene that is critical to the ability of other warm-blooded animals to generate heat for survival.
Monday, August 22, 2011 Dateline, Aug 22, 2011: Time to End NATO's War in Libya, by Dennis Kucinich
In March of this year, the US, France, Britain and their North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) allies launched military operations in Libya under the guise of a "humanitarian intervention". US diplomats and world leaders carelessly voiced unsubstantiated claims of an impending massacre in Benghazi. You hear no such appeals to humanity while Nato, in the name of the rebels (whoever they are), prepares to lay siege to Tripoli, a city of nearly 2 million people. {Pictured is Congressman Dennis Kucinich.}
Sunday, August 21, 2011 Get ready for more stupid Mideast violence, by Stephen M. Walt (1 comments)
Yesterday's attack was morally wrong and strategically foolish. But until more people start thinking outside the box on this one -- and demanding that political leaders think differently too -- you can be confident that we'll see more of the same -- by both sides -- in the future. And the danger of a larger explosion will grow.
Friday, August 19, 2011 Kenny Schachter presents: Bill Wyman, Photographer
London art dealer Kenny Schachter recently contacted Artnet Magazine columnist Charlie Finch with an invitation to attend his forthcoming exhibition of photographs, culled from the personal archives of and taken by former Rolling Stones' bass guitarist Bill Wyman and slated to go on view at London's Kenny Schachter/ROVE in October, 2011. The invitation was accompanied by ten photos selected from the archive's estimated 20,000 -- most of them never before shown to the public.
Herewith, a preview. {Pictured, of course, is Mick Jagger.}
Friday, August 19, 2011 Cuba in the Crosshairs, by Noam Chomsky (1 comments)
The following excerpt from Noam Chomsky's book "Hegemony or Survival" was originally published on TomDispatch in October of 2003. As Tom Engelhardt says "In these dog days of summer 2011, a little reminder of the history of American-style terror might indeed be just what the doctor ordered."
Thursday, August 18, 2011 Dateline: Aug 17, 2011: San Francisco Area's BART Pulls a Muburak, by Amy Goodman (3 comments)
Charles Blair Hill was shot and killed on the platform of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system's Civic Center platform on July 3, by BART police officer James Crowell. BART police reportedly responded to calls about a man drinking on the underground subway platform. According to police, Hill threw a vodka bottle at the two officers and then threatened them with a knife, at which point Crowell shot him. Hill was pronounced dead at the hospital.
On July 11, major protests shut down the Civic Center BART station.... As another planned protest neared on Aug. 11, BART officials took a measure unprecedented in U.S. history: They shut down cellphone towers in the subway system.
Thursday, August 18, 2011 Freedom Rider: Look! Over There! It's President Michelle Bachmann! - by BAR's Margaret Kimberley (1 comments)
Most Democrats are so fixated on the prospect of another Republican in the White House, they are oblivious to the actual crimes of the current resident. "It is true that [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry called Social Security a ponzi scheme, but it is Barack Obama who has made common cause with Republicans to cut the program." As for the Neanderthalian Rep. Michelle Bachman. Democrats "only care that Bachmann confuses Massachusetts with New Hampshire or Elvis Presley's birthday with his death day" -- not that Obama confuses the difference, in Libya, between war and not-war.
Monday, August 15, 2011 New Film 'The Help' Whitewashes the Civil Rights Struggle into a Heartstring-tugging Hallmark Card, by J.E. Shepherd of (10 comments)
Hollywood's compulsion for feel-good movies is annoying at best, but when applied to storylines that are ostensibly historical - particularly when they involve issues that people still don't seem to understand - they can be toxic. In The Help's case, the history of civil rights in the virulently racist Southern town of Jackson, Mississippi, is neatly packaged into a heartstring-tugging Hallmark card, set to a rousing Mary J. Blige soundtrack, and completely trivializes the suffering and hard work that went into making civil rights a reality. It also infers, perhaps inadvertently, that after the "60s everything was fine and dandy for non-whites in America, not to mention domestic workers.
Thursday, August 11, 2011 Team Is Just Another 4-Letter Word, by David Macaray (3 comments)
As part of a team-building initiative, a manufacturing company offered $100 for the best money-saving idea submitted by an employee. First prize went to the employee who suggested the award be reduced to $50.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 Dateline Today: Another Bailout Joins the Goofball Economy, by Robert Scheer
The president's pathetic performance on Monday, as the market crashed, was the low point of his career....(His)failure to challenge the idiocy demanded by S&P, along with the Republicans -- that government spending be dramatically cut in the face of an economic crisis -- cast his remarks as terminally tepid. {Pictured is Robert Scheer.}
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 The U.S. Deserved Its Downgrade, by Stephen L. Carter (1 comments)
Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the downgrade of America's long-term debt has been the ferocious assaults launched on the downgrader, Standard and Poor.
Monday, August 8, 2011 The Ongoing Costs of the Iraq War, by Fatima Al-Zeheri (1 comments)
When you destroy someone's property, you usually have to pay compensation. The United States is responsible for much of the destruction that has taken place in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. But instead of offering compensation to the Iraqis, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) has demanded that the Iraqi government pay the United States compensation in dollars for the cost of U.S.-led war.
Friday, August 5, 2011 New Orleans officers convicted over Katrina shootings, by BBC News
A US federal jury has convicted five police officers in New Orleans over fatal shootings in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Two unarmed residents were killed and four others wounded in the incident on the Danziger Bridge after the 2005 storm. {Pictured are huddled survivors clinging to a floating house.}
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 Does Football Have a Future? by Ben McGrath (2 comments)
I still remember my first football game. It was 1983. I was six. My father took me to our local high school, in northern New Jersey, and we sat on the home team's side, but it wasn't long before my allegiance began to waver. The opponents, from a town called Passaic, were clearly superior -- or, rather, they had a superior player whose simple talents were easy to identify in a game so complex and jumbled-seeming that even lifelong fans do not fully understand it. He wasn't the biggest person on the field, and probably not the fastest, but he was strangely fast for a big person and unusually big for a fast person. He played both sides of the ball: running back and linebacker. He was also the kicker, and he returned punts....As my father and I searched for his name in the program, a man seated a couple of rows in front of us spun around and said, "They call him Ironhead."
Saturday, July 30, 2011 WikiLeaks Cables Show Haiti as Pawn in U.S. Foreign Policy, By Katie Soltis of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA)
(T)his is the first time we've seen an internationally-recognized body such as COHA acknowledge the extent...of US imperialist designs and actions against the sovereign nation of Haiti.... Instead of helping Haiti develop economically and politically, Washington's foreign policy seems completely dominated by influential and well-connected U.S. economic interests. {Pictured is President Obama, by Martin Schoeller.}
Thursday, July 28, 2011 Dateline: July 28, 2011: Will U.S. Default? $4.8 Billion Investment Says Yes, by ABC News
Investors are spending $4.8 billion to hedge against the possibility that credit rating agencies will downgrade U.S. debt--or worse, that the U.S. actually will default. Doomsayers predict these and other dire consequences if Congress fails to act by August 2 to raise the nation's debt ceiling. {Pictured is the National Debt Clock.}
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 Art & Money Workers Unite? by Eleanor Heartney
The notion of the "Working Man," once a staple of populist political rhetoric and Hollywood social drama, has become almost quaint -- as much a vestige of earlier times as is the apparently antiquated concept of class. In the era of outsourcing, crowd-sourcing, digitization and the triumph of global markets, labor is just something you save with ever more sophisticated electronic devices. {The picture was taken in 2007 and exhibited at Mass MoCA.}
Saturday, July 16, 2011 Dateline, July 15, 2011: It's Friday, and Iraq Still Isn't Asking the Military to Stay, by Spencer Ackerman
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has tried everything, including using very mild quasi-profanity. But Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki still isn't requesting U.S. troops to stay past their scheduled December 2011 withdrawal. And a new, sneakier gambit by the Iraqis to extend their stay isn't going to work. {Pictured is a photograph by t he U.S. Army.}
Thursday, July 14, 2011 Dateline 07.14.011: Israeli BDS supporters say - We Will Not Be Silent, by Activists with Boycott ! (1 comments)
We, Israeli citizens, members of Boycott![2], hereby reiterate our support and promotion of the Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights[3]. We declare this in spite of the new legislation by the Israeli Knesset, which aims to penalize our and our partners' activities, curbing freedom of speech and political organizing and most importantly -- banning Israeli citizens from acting according to their conscience when it conflicts with the deplorable policies of the state.
Friday, July 8, 2011 More than 25% of Cuba is forested, by Lino Luben Pérez of Granma International
Forested areas cover 26.2% of Cuban territory, the result of a national policy of sustainable development, noted Gisela Alonso Domínguez, president of island's Environmental Agency. At the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, barely 14% of Cuba's land surface was forest covered, extensive agricultural production was dominant; the country's waters, relief and vegetation were characterized by their degradation, and waste was not treated. {Pictured is a Cuban forest.}
Thursday, July 7, 2011 The 4th of July, Hip-Hop and National "Inattentional Blindness", By Jared Bell (2 comments)
National Public Radio gave new meaning to the term "whitewash" when it portrayed the merciless beating of a Black Boston cop by white officers as a case of "inattentional blindness." Any fool could see it was a violent case of racist profiling -- but not the white fools or their Black proxies at NPR. It takes hip-hop perceptions and skills to illuminate the willful national "blindness" that everyone sees through except the perpetrators.
Thursday, July 7, 2011 Democrats and Labor: A Murder-Suicide Pact, by B.A.R. Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
The nation's largest union, the NEA just endorsed President Obama's re-election campaign, despite the fact that under its Race To The Top program, the Obama administration has waged a relentless jihad to purge organized teachers from their workplaces. Does the NEA suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, in which the abused sympathize with their abusers instead of themselves? What does this say about the real relationship between Democrats and organized labor?
Monday, July 4, 2011 Segregation in the land of limousine liberalism, by Daniel Denvir (1 comments)
Westchester County is far from the streets of Birmingham and the lunch counters of Greensboro, but the super-affluent suburban swath just north of New York City may be the premier civil rights battleground of 2011.
Friday, July 1, 2011 The Bestiary: Native Fauna of the Democratic Party, by Stop Me Before I Vote Again
Al From is the founder of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a hatchery of particularly right-wing Democrats, including the Clintons. The DLC has spawned a number of like-minded satellite organizations (the "Fromsphere"), e.g. the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and Third Way. Al From is often credited with the idea and term "triangulation". Fromspherians like to call themselves "Progressives," since this term suggests they're somehow not reactionaries but doesn't commit them to anything that isn't reactionary. {Pictured is Al From.}
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 The Congressional Black Caucus on Libya War: The Good, the Confused, and the Hopeless, by Glen Ford (3 comments)
At this critical juncture in history, the Congressional Black Caucus is near useless to the cause of peace. The recent congressional vote on Libya shows that there are more Confused members than Good and The Good are outnumbered four to one by The Hopeless, in the CBC. When the crunch came on June 24, only six members of the Congressional Black Caucus showed themselves to be of any use whatsoever to humanity and the cause of peace. We shall call them The Good. These three ladies and three gentlemen voted to cut off funds to President Obama's war against Libya -- which he bizarrely insists is not really a war.
