[Biofuel] Newly Discovered 'Plastic Island' Shows Global Epidemic Worsening
They found something else too: minute shreds of plastic. In fact, they found more plastic than plankton - especially in the Antarctic. CBS http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57521226/tara-oceans-project-discovers-preponderance-of-plankton-and-plastic/ Journey to the Antarctic Ocean A 70,000 mile expedition by a tiny research ship gives us a snapshot of life in the depths of the world's seas CHARLIE COOPER WEDNESDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2012 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/journey-to-the-antarctic-ocean-8176011.html --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/18-3 Published on Friday, January 18, 2013 by Common Dreams Newly Discovered 'Plastic Island' Shows Global Epidemic Worsening 'Even if everyone stopped putting garbage in the ocean today, giant garbage patches would continue to grow for hundreds of years' - Lauren McCauley, staff writer Floating patches of humanity's garbage have become a permanent feature in the world's oceans and a new discovery in the South Pacific shows that this woeful trend has worsened, not improved, since the phenomenon was first discovered nearly two decades ago. As new research by the 5 Gyres Institute shows, the existence of a new plastic island has been found swirling with junk in ocean currents running near Easter Island in the South Pacific, marking the first documented garbage patch in the Southern Hemisphere. The new study, published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, documents the first evidence of a defined oceanic garbage patch, an accumulation zone of plastic pollution, floating in the area designated as the South Pacific subtropical gyre. Conducting the first ever sampling of the southern gyre, the research team, led by 5 Gyres Institute Executive Director Dr. Marcus Eriksen, recorded increased density of plastic pollution with an average of 26,898 particles per square kilometer, and a high of 396,342 km/m2 in the center of the predicted accumulation zone [based on ocean current models]. Without a doubt, we have discovered a previously unknown garbage patch in the South Pacific Subtropical Gyre, said Dr. Eriksen. Also, a recent investigation by a team of Australia researchers found that humans have put so much plastic into our planet's oceans that even if everyone in the world stopped putting garbage in the ocean today, giant garbage patches would continue to grow for hundreds of years. No matter where plastic garbage enters the ocean, the group said, it will inevitably end up in any of the five ocean basins. These findings were the result of research done by the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Climate System Science who employed drifter buoys to determine how these giant ocean garbage patches form as a result of ocean currents. There are five known garbage patches in the subtropical oceans between each of the continents. Each contains so much plastic that if you were to drag a net through these areas you would pull up more plastic than biomass, said lead author Dr. Erik van Sebille. The 1997 discovery of the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch,' brought initial attention to the severe problem of plastic and plastic waste, particularly in how it affects our ocean ecosystems, but these findings show that plastic pollution isn't just a North Pacific phenomenon but rather a global problem with global implications for fisheries, tourism, marine ecosystems and human health. In the video below, Dr. Erik van Sebille discusses his research on oceanic plastic polllution with animations that illustrate the movement of plastic through the oceans: ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Water Grabbing to Follow Food Speculation?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/19-3 Published on Saturday, January 19, 2013 by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Water Grabbing to Follow Food Speculation? Where are the checks and balances? by Shiney Varghese Writing in National Geographic in December 2012 about small-scale irrigation techniques with simple buckets, affordable pumps, drip lines, and other equipment that are enabling farm families to weather dry seasons, raise yields, diversify their crops, and lift themselves out of poverty water expert Sandra Postel of the Global Water Policy Project cautioned against reckless land and water-related investments in Africa. [U]nless African governments and foreign interests lend support to these farmer-driven initiatives, rather than undermine them through land and water deals that benefit large-scale, commercial schemes, the best opportunity in decades for societal advancement in the region will be squandered. That same month, the online publication Market Oracle reported that [t]he new 'water barons'-the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires-are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.The report reveals two phenomena that have been gathering speed, and that could potentially lead to profit accumulation at the cost of communities and commons -the expansion of market instruments beyond the water supply and sanitation to other areas of water governance, and the increasingly prominent role of financial institutions. In several instances this has meant that the government itself has set up public corporations that run like a business, contracting out water supply and sanitation operations to those with expertise, or entering into public-private-partnerships, often with water multinationals. This happened recently in Nagpur and New Delhi, India. In most rural areas, ensuring a clean drinking water supply and sanitation continues to be a challenge. For-profit companies such as Sarvajal have begun setting up pre-paid water kiosks (or water ATMs) that would dispense units of water upon the insertion of a pre-paid card. It is no surprise that these are popular among people who otherwise have no access to clean drinking water. With climate change, however, the water crisis is no longer perceived as confined to developing countries or even primarily a concern related to water supply and sanitation. Fresh water commons are becoming degraded and depleted in both developed and developing countries. In the United States, diversion of water for expanded commodity crop production, biofuels and gas hydro-fracking is compounding the crisis in rural areas. In areas ranging from the Ogallala aquifer to the Great Lakes in North America, water has been referred to as liquid gold. Billionaires such as T. Boone Pickens have been buying up land overlying the Ogallala aquifer, acquiring water rights; companies such as Dow Chemicals, with a long history of water pollution, are investing in the business of water purification, making pollution itself a cash-cow. But chemical companies are not alone: GE and its competitor Siemens have extensive portfolios that include an array of water technologies to serve the needs of industrial customers, municipal water suppliers or governments. (In the last year and a half two Minnesota based companies have become large players in this business-Ecolab, by acquiring Nalco and Pentair by merging with Tyco's Flow Control unit-both now belonging to SP's 500.) The financial industry has also zeroed in on water. In the summer of 2011, Citigroup issued a report on water investments. The much quoted statement by Willem Buiter (chief economist at Citigroup) gives an inkling of Citigroup's conclusion: Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals. Once again, several others had already seen water as an important investment opportunity, including GE's Energy Financial Services, Goldman Sachs and several asset management firms that are involved investing in farmland in Asia, Africa, South America and Eastern Europe. Given these recent trends, initiatives that track the water use of companies or map information regarding water related risks could be double edged. Some examples include the 'water disclosure project' and the 'water-mapping project'. Both are initiated by non-profits/ think-tanks, the former by UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project and the latter by the US-based World Resources Institute. While distinct, they are linked by their shared constituency: global investors concerned about water-related risks. These initiatives could help companies identify and reduce their water footprint, or could lead to company investments that follow water and grab it. The Carbon Disclosure Project's water disclosure project seeks to help
[Biofuel] Making Green A Threat Again
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/20 Published on Sunday, January 20, 2013 by Common Dreams Making Green A Threat Again by Scott Parkin The climate movement needs to have one hell of a comeback. -Naomi Klein The energy was there. It was an overcast spring morning in April 2011 in the nation's capital. Thousands had shown up to take action on climate change. The earlier march led us to the Chamber of Commerce, BP's Washington D.C. offices, the American Petroleum Institute and other office buildings associated with oil spills, coal mining, carbon emissions and more. We heard speakers. We saw street theater. It was all very tame and managed. It lacked confrontation. It was almost a year to the day after the Gulf oil spill, yet offshore drilling continued as usual with little consequence for oil giant British Petroleum. Out west, the Obama administration had just opened up thousands of acres for coal mining in the Powder River Basin. Appalachia's mountains were still under attack by the coal industry. Natural gas extraction, also known as fracking, was spreading like an epidemic through the countryside. Over 15,000 youth, students and climate activists had gathered at Powershift for weekend of education, networking and keynote speakers. There were keynote speeches by Al Gore and Bill McKibben, yet little was offered in the way of taking action against Big Oil and Big Coal. We are faced with the greatest crisis in the history of the world, so we were told, yet the Beltway green groups had only produced failure in Copenhagen and Washington. Globally, we had watched the Arab Spring throw out dictators; anti-austerity movements in Iceland and Greece rise up against corrupted regimes and massive protests in the Wisconsin state house fighting for labor rights. We were only a few months away from Occupy Wall Street. Needless to say, the North American climate movements wanted in on the action. As the morning march ended that day at Lafayette Park, the unofficial march, spearheaded by Rising Tide North America, formed and headed into the streets of Washington D.C. Tim DeChristopher of Salt Lake City, who had become something of a folk hero to climate activists after derailing a federal land auction and protecting thousands of acres of southern Utah wilderness, announced on the microphone that it was time for more drastic action. Anyone that wanted to take that step should join the Rising Tide march that was heading down 17th St NW to the Dept. of Interior. The crowd quickly swelled to over a thousand, both singing We Shall Overcome and chanting Keep It in the Ground and Our Climate is Under Attack, What'll We Do? Act Up, Fight Back! As we approached the Dept. of Interior, the small group of twenty that had been pre-organized to occupy the lobby began to more towards the doors. Then to much our surprise and shock, a crowd of over 300 stormed in after them and joined the sit-in. As they sat in, they chanted We've got power! We've got power! It was scary. It was exhilarating. It was powerful. Direct action is supposed to push a person's comfort zone, but even veteran direct action organizers felt their comfort zones pushed when many in the march joined the occupation. In the end, 21 were arrested as part of the sit-in. The Dept. of Interior action began a shift for the youth and grassroots activists with the North American climate movements. Soon, they would become a force to be reckoned with. Corporations and Politicians Stall, Nature Doesn't The clock is ticking and the science is not just a theory, its science. Yet, corporate and political decision-makers continue to ignore these warnings for short term profit. A new scientific report put out by the United Nations on the second day of the 18th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP18) in Doha this week reports that thawing of the Arctic permafrost will significantly amplify global warming. Permafrost emission spurred by rising global temperature will contribute up to 39% of global emissions. On the third day of COP18 negotiations, the World Meteorological Organization warned the delegates that the Arctic ice melt had reached an alarming rate and that far-reaching changes would from climate change would impact the Earth. Despite these dire warnings from the scientific community, wealthy industrialized nations continue to stall any sort of climate progress in Doha. The top topic at COP18 has been an extension of the Kyoto Protocol -up for renewal this year-to 2020. The Associated Press reports, a number of wealthy nations including Japan, Russia and Canada have joined the ranks of the U.S. and refused to endorse the extension. The U.S. has never endorsed Kyoto and continues to block any progress on agreements to reduce global emissions or pass legislation to regulate its own emissions. Not surprisingly, the fossil fuel holds a chokehold on the American political
[Biofuel] The Extremist Cult of Capitalism
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/21 Published on Monday, January 21, 2013 by Common Dreams The Extremist Cult of Capitalism by Paul Buchheit A 'cult,' according to Merriam-Webster, can be defined as Great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work..(and)..a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion. Capitalism has been defined by adherents and detractors: Milton Friedman said, The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system. John Maynard Keynes said, Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. Perhaps it's best to turn to someone who actually practiced the art: Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class. Al Capone said that. Capitalism is a cult. It is devoted to the ideals of privatization over the common good, profit over social needs, and control by a small group of people who defy the public's will. The tenets of the cult lead to extremes rather than to compromise. Examples are not hard to find. 1. Extremes of Income By sitting on their growing investments, the richest five Americans made almost $7 billion each in one year. That's $3,500,000.00 per hour. The minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour. Our unregulated capitalist financial system allows a few well-positioned individuals to divert billions of dollars from the needs of society. If the 400 richest Americans lumped together their investment profits from last year, the total would pay in-state tuition and fees for EVERY college student in the United States. 2. Extremes of Wealth The combined net worth of the world's 250 richest individuals is more than the total annual living expenses of almost half the world - three billion people. Within our own borders the disparity is no less shocking. For every one dollar of assets owned by a single black or Hispanic woman, a member of the Forbes 400 has over forty million dollars. That's equivalent to a can of soup versus a mansion, a yacht, and a private jet. Most of the Forbes 400 wealth has accrued from nonproductive capital gains. It's little wonder that with the exception of Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon, the U.S. has the highest degree of wealth inequality in the world. 3. Extremes of Debt Up until the 1970s U.S. households had virtually no debt. Now the total is $13 trillion, which averages out to $100,000 per American family. Debt appears to be the only recourse for 21- to 35-year-olds, who have lost, on average, 68% of their median net worth since 1984, leaving each of them about $4,000. 4. Extremes of Health Care A butler in black vest and tie passed the atrium waterfall and entered the $2,400 suite, where the linens were provided by the high-end bedding designer Frette of Italy and the bathroom glimmered with polished marble. Inside a senior financial executive awaited his 'concierge' doctor for private treatment. He was waiting in the penthouse suite of the New York Presbyterian Hospital. On the streets outside were some of the 26,000 Americans who will die this year because they are without health care. In 2010, 50 million Americans had no health insurance coverage. 5. Extremes of Justice William James Rummel stole $80 with a credit card, then passed a bad check for $24, then refused to return $120 for a repair job gone bad. He got life in prison. Christopher Williams is facing over 80 years in prison for selling medical marijuana in Montana, a state which allows medical marijuana. Patricia Spottedcrow got 12 years for a $31 marijuana sale, and has seen her children only twice in the past two years. Numerous elderly Americans are in prison for life for non-violent marijuana offenses. Banking giant HSBC, whose mission statement urges employees to act with courageous integrity in all they do, was described by a U.S. Senate report as having exposed the U.S. financial system to 'a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing' in their dealings with Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, which is considered the deadliest drug gang in the world. HSBC received a fine equivalent to four weeks' profits. The bank's CEO said, we are profoundly sorry. In the words of Bertrand Russell, Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. Accurate to the extreme. ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Sky-High Radiation Found in Fukushima Fish
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/18-2 Published on Friday, January 18, 2013 by Common Dreams Sky-High Radiation Found in Fukushima Fish Glaring contamination from nuclear disaster persists - Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer In the latest discovery revealing the ongoing and devastating effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, a fish contaminated with over 2,500 times the legal amount of radiation has been caught off the coast of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, officials announced Friday. Plant operator TEPCO stated that the radioactive element caesium was detected in a murasoi fish at levels equivalent to 254,000 becquerels per kilogramme -- or 2,540 times more than the government seafood limit, Agence France-Press reports. Radioactive contamination has remained consistent in the after-life of the crippled nuclear plant. In October, a group of scientists discovered that the plant was likely still leaking radiation into the sea, with up to 40% of bottom feeding fish near the site of the nuclear disaster still showing elevated levels of radiation. The fact that many fish are just as contaminated today with caesium 134 and caesium 137 as they were more than one year ago implies that caesium is still being released to the food chain, Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution of the United States reported at that time. The (radioactivity) numbers aren't going down. Oceans usually cause the concentrations to decrease if the spigot is turned off, he added. There has to be somewhere they're picking up the cesium. This week's alarming discovery reveals that the situation for the ecosystems surrounding the plant remain dire. TEPCO has come under fire for neglecting essential safety measures ahead of the disastrous nuclear meltdown, and the Japanese government has been cited for malfeasance regarding issues of public safety and contamination surrounding the nuclear disaster. Critics have continually highlighted 'unreliable' radiation monitoring, under-reported leakage, and other transgressions. ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Waking Up in Tehran
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14027-waking-up-in-tehran Waking Up in Tehran Sunday, 20 January 2013 13:39 By David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org | News Analysis According to one theory, U.S.-Iranian relations began around November 1979 when a crowd of irrational religious nutcases violently seized the U.S. embassy in Iran, took the employees hostage, tortured them, and held them until scared into freeing them by the arrival of a new sheriff in Washington, a man named Ronald Reagan. From that day to this, according to this popular theory, Iran has been run by a bunch of subhuman lunatics with whom rational people couldn't really talk if they wanted to. These monsters only understand force. And they have been moments away from developing and using nuclear weapons against us for decades now. Moments away, I tell you! According to another theory -- a quaint little notion that I like to refer to as verifiable history -- the CIA, operating out of that U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1953, maliciously and illegally overthrew a relatively democratic and liberal parliamentary government, and with it the 1951 Time magazine man of the year Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, because Mossadegh insisted that Iran's oil wealth enrich Iranians rather than foreign corporations. The CIA installed a dictatorship run by the Shah of Iran who quickly became a major source of profits for U.S. weapons makers, and his nation a testing ground for surveillance techniques and human rights abuses. The U.S. government encouraged the Shah's development of a nuclear energy program. But the Shah impoverished and alienated the people of Iran, including hundreds of thousands educated abroad. A secular pro-democracy revolution nonviolently overthrew the Shah in January 1979, but it was a revolution without a leader or a plan for governing. It was co-opted by rightwing religious forces led by a man who pretended briefly to favor democratic reform. The U.S. government, operating out of the same embassy despised by many in Iran since 1953, explored possible means of keeping the Shah in power, but some in the CIA worked to facilitate what they saw as the second best option: a theocracy that would substitute religious fanaticism and oppression for populist and nationalist demands. When the U.S. embassy was taken over by an unarmed crowd the next November, immediately following the public announcement of the Shah's arrival in the United States, and with fears of another U.S.-led coup widespread in Tehran, a sit-in planned for two or three days was co-opted, as the whole revolution had been, by mullahs with connections to the CIA and an extremely anti-democratic agenda. They later made a deal with U.S. Republicans, as Robert Parry and others have well documented, to keep the hostage crisis going until Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan. Reagan's government secretly renewed weapons sales to the new Iranian dictatorship despite its public anti-American stance and with no more concern for its religious fervor than for that of future al Qaeda leaders who would spend the 1980s fighting the Soviets with U.S. weapons in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Reagan administration made similarly profitable deals with Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, which had launched a war on Iran and continued it with U.S. support through the length of the Reagan presidency. The mad military investment in the United States that took off with Reagan and again with George W. Bush, and which continues to this day, has made the nation of Iran -- which asserts its serious independence from U.S. rule -- a target of threatened war and actual sanctions and terrorism. Ben Affleck was asked by Rolling Stone magazine, What do you think the Iranians' reaction is gonna be? to Affleck's movie Argo, which depicts a side-story about six embassy employees who, in 1979, avoided being taken hostage. Affleck, mixing bits of truth and mythology, just as in the movie itself, replied: Who the FUCK knows - who knows if their reaction is going to be anything? This is still the same Stalinist, oppressive regime that was in place when the hostages were taken. There was no rhyme or reason to this action. What's interesting is that people later figured out that Khomeini just used the hostages to consolidate power internally and marginalize the moderates and everyone in America was going, 'What the fuck's wrong with these people?' You know, 'What do they want from us?' It was because it wasn't about us. It was about Khomeini holding on to power and being able to say to his political opponents, of which he had many, 'You're either with us or you're with the Americans' - which is, of course, a tactic that works really well. That revolution was a students' revolution. There were students and communists and secularists and merchants and Islamists, it's just that Khomeini fucking slowly took it for himself.
[Biofuel] Director Kathryn Bigelow defends her indefensible Zero Dark Thirty
http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/18/bige-j18.html Director Kathryn Bigelow defends her indefensible Zero Dark Thirty By David Walsh 18 January 2013 Director Kathryn Bigelow took to the pages of the Los Angeles Times Tuesday to defend her pro-CIA film Zero Dark Thirty which has provoked opposition inside and outside the film industry. Bigelow's column, which reveals her as a slavish admirer of the US intelligence and military apparatus, only sinks her-deservedly-deeper in the mire. The filmmaker and her screenwriter Mark Boal, in their political blindness and misreading of the current state of American public opinion, thought they could get away with murder, as it were. They assumed that wide layers of the population would be as excited as they were by contact with torturers and assassins and would be enthused about a version of events essentially told by the latter. They were mistaken in this. Bigelow now finds herself in the unenviable position of claiming that her film, which clearly offers a justification for torture and other war crimes, does not advocate torture. One can only conclude from her ludicrous and incoherent LA Times piece that Bigelow was unprepared for criticism and protest. The filmmaker begins by noting that her goal had been to make a modern, rigorous film about counter-terrorism, centered on one of the most important and classified missions in American history. She acknowledges that she started, in other words, by accepting everything that any serious artist would have subjected to criticism and questioning. Bigelow betrays no interest (in the LA Times or in her movie) in the history of US intervention in the Middle East and Central Asia over the course of decades, of the CIA's relations with Osama bin Laden and other Islamist elements in Afghanistan and elsewhere from the late 1970s onward, of the first war on Iraq in 1990-91, of Washington's support for the oppression of the Palestinians, or, for that matter, of the murky events leading up to and surrounding the 9/11 attacks. In general, Bigelow indicates a lack of concern with anything that might disrupt her tale of counterterrorism and its courageous warriors. The award-winning director presents herself in the following manner: As a lifelong pacifist, I support all protests against the use of torture, and, quite simply, inhumane treatment of any kind. As a devotee of counterterrorism and classified military-intelligence missions, Bigelow has already indicated that she is a unique sort of pacifist, but there is more to come. She then notes disingenuously, But I do wonder if some of the sentiments alternately [?] expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen. As it turns out, although Bigelow apparently hasn't noticed it, such sentiments have been directed at those who instituted and ordered these criminal US policies for more than a decade. Bigelow eventually gets to the heart of her argument, which has been echoed by such apologists as filmmaker Michael Moore: Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time. Driving home the point, she asserts that confusing depiction with endorsement is the first step toward chilling any American artist's ability and right to shine a light on dark deeds, especially when those deeds are cloaked in layers of secrecy and government obfuscation. Something important is revealed here about a generation or generations of artists and semi-intellectuals nourished on post-structuralism and postmodernism, cold, empty conceptual art and social indifference, and made affluent as a by-product of the stock and art market booms and related economic trends of the past several decades. No, depiction is not endorsement, as though anyone with a brain would ever suggest that it was. However, whether the representation of torture and other inhumane acts amounts to endorsement, on the one hand, or criticism and outrage, on the other, depends on the artistic treatment (context, juxtaposition of images, the artist's attitude) in the given instance. In the case of Zero Dark Thirty, the evidence is clear. The film begins, as the WSWS review noted, with a dark screen and a sound track of fire fighters' radio calls and frantic cries for help from the upper floors of the Twin Towers on 9/11 The juxtaposition of the 9/11 soundtrack and the harrowing scenes of torture are presented as cause and effect, with one justifying the other. Zero Dark Thirty was created with the intimate collaboration of the CIA, the Defense Department and the Obama White House (including the personal intervention of John Brennan,
[Biofuel] Fightback needed to defend the UK's National Health Service
European Union demands further attacks on Ireland's public sector By Jordan Shilton 21 January 2013 http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/21/irel-j21.html This deliberate running down of staffing and resources is reaping a terrible human cost. Last year 43 NHS hospital patients starved to death. Eleven people died of thirst, while 78 died from bedsores. A report earlier this year found that 1 in 3 nurses claimed they did not have enough time to help elderly patients eat or even go to the lavatory due to dwindling staffing levels. - Massive job losses in UK's National Health Service 26 November 2012 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/nhs-n26.shtml --0-- http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/21/figh-j21.html Fightback needed to defend the UK's National Health Service 21 January 2013 The Socialist Equality Party is broadening its campaign to mobilise National Health Service (NHS) workers across the UK to form action committees, independent of the trade unions, to oppose the unprecedented attacks on pay and conditions and prevent the dismantling and privatisation of health care. The nationwide NHS Fightback Campaign draws on the experiences of the South West NHS Fightback Campaign, formed last year to oppose the pay cartel set up by 19 NHS trusts seeking to slash wages and worsen employment conditions for 60,000 NHS workers. We warned that the pay cartel's plans were a test case aimed at undermining the wages and working conditions for all 1.5 million NHS workers. We urged NHS workers not to put their faith in the unions-Unison, Unite, the Royal College of Nurses (RCN), GMB and others. When the Agenda for Change agreement was signed in 2004 under the last Labour government, the unions argued that the radical reorganisation of job descriptions and work patterns it introduced would protect wages and conditions. In reality, at its core were provisions-downplayed by the unions-for the end of national pay scales and an increased dependency on discretionary pay based on productivity gains: exactly the provisions used by the pay cartel to attack pay and conditions. Since the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government came to power, the unions have agreed a two-year wage freeze (scheduled to continue for a further two years) and reduced pension benefits at the same time as the retirement age has been increased. It is inconceivable that such organisations will lead a struggle against any new round of attacks, the South West NHS Fightback Campaign insisted. These warnings have been vindicated. The unions protested that the pay cartel was a Trojan horse constructed by government and trust executives, but did nothing to oppose it. Instead they used the formation of the cartel as an excuse to agree a national deal without a fight in November. Cuts to wages and conditions include many of those demanded by the pay cartel-the introduction of performance-based incremental progression, an end to sickness absence enhancements and the removal of accelerated pay progression for some workers. The capitulation of the unions has only encouraged the government and employers to demand additional cuts and the speed-up of the privatisation of health care. Job cuts are already having a destructive impact, with many hospitals unable to provide a basic level of care. Claims by both the previous Labour government-which initiated the £20 billion in efficiency savings-and the coalition-which is implementing them-that frontline services would be protected are lies. Nurses and health care assistants make up 34 percent of posts earmarked to be cut, according to the RCN. This is only the start, as the NHS faces death by a thousand cuts. The Kings Fund has outlined five scenarios of what £20 billion of cuts look like in practice: a 30 percent real pay cut for all staff; no medication; the abolition of the NHS in London; the abolition of the NHS in Scotland and Wales or the sacking of all consultants and general practitioners. The NHS, fought for, developed and maintained by generations of health workers and funded by working people, is being hived off to private equity companies whose sole preoccupation is the accumulation of profit. The Health and Social Care Act, effective from April, overturns the government's legal duty to provide a comprehensive health service and replaces it with a duty to arrange health care. From now on the NHS is to be merely the purchaser of care from the private sector, which will cherry-pick the most profitable areas. Clinical Commissioning Groups, run mainly by GPs, will take control of the bulk of the NHS budget and oversee a major outsourcing process. Public hospitals will be allowed to make available almost half their beds and theatre time to private patients. Those unable to pay will be forced to the back of the queue. The deadly consequences of these policies are made clear by the closure of Accident and Emergency (AE) units
[Biofuel] The Moral Torment of Leon Panetta
CIA drone strikes will get pass in counterterrorism 'playbook,' officials say By Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Karen DeYoung, Published: January 19 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-drone-strikes-will-get-pass-in-counterterrorism-playbook-officials-say/2013/01/19/ca169a20-618d-11e2-9940-6fc488f3fecd_story.html?hpid=z1 Obama to approve drone assassination manual By Patrick Martin 21 January 2013 http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/21/dron-j21.html --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/20-0 Published on Sunday, January 20, 2013 by Common Dreams The Moral Torment of Leon Panetta Leon Panetta returned to government in 2009 amid hopes he could cleanse the CIA where torture and politicized intelligence had brought the U.S. to new lows in world respect. Yet, after four years at CIA and Defense, it is Panetta who departs morally compromised by Ray McGovern Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a practicing Catholic, sought a blessing on Wednesday from Pope Benedict XVI. Afterward Panetta reported that the Pope said, Thank you for helping to keep the world safe to which Panetta replied, Pray for me. In seeking those prayers, Panetta knows better than the Pope what moral compromises have surrounded him during his four years inside the Obama administration, as CIA director overseeing the covert war against al-Qaeda and as Defense Secretary deploying the largest military on earth. For me and others who initially had high hopes for Panetta, his performance in both jobs has been a bitter disappointment. Before accepting the CIA post, Panetta had criticized the moral and constitutional violations in George W. Bush's war on terror, especially the use of torture. Taking note of Panetta's outspoken comments, I hailed Panetta's selection on Jan. 8, 2009, writing: At long last. Change we can believe in. In choosing Leon Panetta to take charge of the CIA, President-elect Barack Obama has shown he is determined to put an abrupt end to the lawlessness and deceit with which the administration of George W. Bush has corrupted intelligence operations and analysis. Character counts. And so does integrity. With those qualities, and the backing of a new President, Panetta is equipped to lead the CIA out of the wilderness into which it was taken by sycophantic directors with very flexible attitudes toward truth, honesty and the law - directors who deemed it their duty to do the President's bidding - legal or illegal; honest or dishonest. In a city in which lapel-flags have been seen as adequate substitutes for the Constitution, Panetta will bring a rigid adherence to the rule of law. For Panetta this is no battlefield conversion. On torture, for example, this is what he wrote a year ago: 'We cannot simply suspend [American ideals of human rights] in the name of national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground. We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.' While it may be true that Panetta did end the CIA's torture of detainees, he didn't exactly live up to his broader commitment to observe higher standards of human rights. At the CIA, Panetta presided over an expansion of a lethal drone program that targeted al-Qaeda operatives (and whoever happened to be near them at the time) with sudden, violent death. Even some neocons from the Bush administration - their own hands stained with blood from Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq and their consciences untouched by their rationalizations for waterboarding and other forms of torture - chided the Obama administration for replacing enhanced interrogation techniques with expanded drone strikes. Panetta's Defense Of course, we may not know for many years exactly what Panetta's private counsel to Obama was in connection with the drones and other counterterrorism strategies. He may have been in the classic predicament of a person who has accepted a position of extraordinary power and then faced the need to compromise on moral principles for what he might justify as the greater good. None of us who have been in or close to such situations take those choices lightly. As easy as it is to be cynical, I have known many dedicated public servants who have tried to steer policies toward less destructive ends, something they only could do by working inside the government. Others have struggled over balancing the choice of resigning in protest against staying and continuing to fight the good fight. Some Panetta defenders say that he saw his role as ratcheting down the levels of violence from the indiscriminate slaughter associated with Bush's invasions of
[Biofuel] Obama's second inauguration
http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/21/pers-j21.html Obama's second inauguration 21 January 2013 Four years ago, close to 2 million people converged on Washington DC to witness the swearing in of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. There were widespread illusions, not only in the US but around the world, that the elevation of an African American to the highest office in America would signal a break with the policies of war and social reaction of the hated Bush administration and the adoption of a program of progressive reform. Today, as Obama officially begins his second term, the popular mood is vastly changed. Despite the efforts of the media, there is little public enthusiasm for the event. The general sentiment is disillusionment and alienation. To the extent that Obama retains a constituency among working class voters, his support is of a passive character, composed far more of resignation than conviction. What accounts for the popular mood of disappointment and frustration? The candidate of hope and change, during his first term in office, stifled the former and offered little of the second. As president, Obama presided over bank bailouts, wage cuts and austerity at home, and expanded war, torture and state killings abroad. The former professor of constitutional law oversaw a systematic assault on core constitutional rights, including the expansion of the drone assassination program and authorization of indefinite military detention. These measures have been employed against American citizens, effectively abrogating the constitutional protection against the deprivation of life or liberty without due process of law. It came as a surprise to many of Obama's supporters, especially those who had taken his campaign rhetoric seriously, that the new president transformed himself almost effortlessly from a critic of Bush's invasion of Iraq and his predecessor's violations of human rights into a ruthless prosecutor of imperialist wars and devotee of Washington's new weapon of choice: the drone missile. The overnight transformation of candidate Jekyll into President Hyde is the expression of a political process. Whoever the occupant may be, the White House is the center of a global empire of repression, reaction and murder. Upon entering the White House, the individual becomes, wholly and completely, the instrument and property of the state. Any traces of humanity that may have somehow survived the self-debasing years-long process of electioneering are entirely destroyed the moment the new president enters the Oval Office. Obama seemed to make the transition from an obscure and inexperienced politician to the head of a global murder machine without any evident internal struggle. It appears that spending a good deal of his time drawing up kill lists and authorizing drone killings comes almost naturally to this president. He is reported to have called his decision to authorize the drone assassination of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki a no brainer. Obama's particular contribution to the US assassination program has been to institutionalize and bureaucratize it, introducing more precise systems, routines and procedures so as to make the process of killing people more effective. His callousness when it comes to killing is of a piece with the strangely bloodless character of his public persona. This is a man who seems incapable of expressing any genuine emotion or uttering a sincere sentence. Touted both before his first election and since as a master orator, he has in four years in office failed to deliver a single memorable line. His speeches have all the poetry of a CIA briefing book. They are, from the standpoint of vocabulary and grammar, somewhat more polished than those of George Bush. But as far as their content is concerned, they are no less banal. In Obama we see the complete fusion of the presidential personality with the real constituencies served by his administration: the corporate-financial elite and the military-intelligence apparatus. To install and maintain Obama in office, these forces have employed the political tropes of racial and identity politics developed by the upper-middle-class liberal and left layers who provide the ideological framework for American ruling class politics. The reactionary mixture of liberal Democrats, pseudo-left political groupings and trade union bureaucrats continues to provide political cover for Obama. It is already clear that the second term will mark an intensification of the right-wing policies of the first. The byword in domestic policy is austerity, targeting the core programs remaining from the 1930s and 1960s-Social Security and Medicare. The appointment of former Wall Street banker and point man in budget talks with the Republicans, Jacob Lew, as treasury secretary is an unmistakable signal. In foreign policy, the elevation of Obama's administrator of
[Biofuel] The Iraq War Surge Myth Returns
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14020-the-iraq-war-surge-myth-returns The Iraq War Surge Myth Returns Sunday, 20 January 2013 10:23 By Robert Parry, Consortium News | News Analysis At confirmation hearings for Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel, Official Washington will reprise one of its favorite myths, the story of the successful surge in Iraq. Politicians and pundits have made clear that the Senate Armed Services Committee should hector Hagel over his opposition to President George W. Bush's 2007 surge of 30,000 troops into that failed war. These surge lovers, who insist that Hagel be taken to task for his supposedly bad judgment over the surge, include MSNBC's favorite neocon, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, and conservative columnist George F. Will, who said Hagel should be asked, If the surge had not happened, what would have happened in Iraq? Most likely, former Sen. Hagel, R-Nebraska, will judge that discretion is the better part of valor and admit his mistake - rather than challenge such a deeply entrenched Washington myth. However, an honest answer to Will's question would be that the surge sacrificed nearly 1,000 additional U.S. military dead (and killed countless innocent Iraqis) while contributing very little to the war's outcome. Any serious analysis of what happened in Iraq in 2007-08 would trace the decline in Iraqi sectarian violence mostly to strategies that predated the surge and were implemented by the U.S. commanding generals in 2006, George Casey and John Abizaid, who wanted as small a U.S. footprint as possible to tamp down Iraqi nationalism. Among their initiatives, Casey and Abizaid ran a highly classified operation to eliminate key al-Qaeda leaders, most notably the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006. Casey and Abizaid also exploited growing Sunni animosities toward al-Qaeda extremists by paying off Sunni militants to join the so-called Awakening in Anbar Province. And, as the Sunni-Shiite sectarian killings reached horrendous levels in 2006, the U.S. military assisted in the de facto ethnic cleansing of mixed neighborhoods by helping Sunnis and Shiites move into separate enclaves - protected by concrete barriers - thus making the targeting of ethnic enemies more difficult. In other words, the flames of violence were likely to have abated whether Bush ordered the surge or not. Radical Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr also helped by issuing a unilateral cease-fire, reportedly at the urging of his patrons in Iran who were interested in cooling down regional tensions and speeding up the U.S. withdrawal. By 2008, another factor in the declining violence was the growing awareness among Iraqis that the U.S. military's occupation indeed was coming to an end. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was demanding a firm timetable for American withdrawal from Bush, who finally capitulated. Woodward's Analysis Even author Bob Woodward, who had published best-sellers that praised Bush's early war judgments, concluded that the surge was only one factor and possibly not even a major one in the declining violence. In his book, The War Within, Woodward wrote, In Washington, conventional wisdom translated these events into a simple view: The surge had worked. But the full story was more complicated. At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge. Woodward, whose book drew heavily from Pentagon insiders, listed the Sunni rejection of al-Qaeda extremists in Anbar Province and the surprise decision of al-Sadr to order a cease-fire as two important factors. A third factor, which Woodward argued may have been the most significant, was the use of new highly classified U.S. intelligence tactics that allowed for rapid targeting and killing of insurgent leaders. Beyond the dubious impact of the surge on the gradual reduction in violence, Bush's escalation failed to achieve its other stated goals, particularly creating political space so the Sunni-Shiite divisions over issues like oil profits could be resolved. Despite the sacrifice of additional American and Iraqi blood, those compromises did not materialize. And, if you're wondering what the surge and its loosened rules of engagement meant for Iraqis, you should watch the WikiLeaks' Collateral Murder video, which depicts a scene during the surge when U.S. firepower mowed down a group of Iraqi men, including two Reuters journalists, as they walked down a street in Baghdad. The U.S. attack helicopters then killed a father and wounded his two children when the man stopped his van in an effort to take survivors to the hospital. However, in Washington, the still-influential neocons saw an opportunity in 2008 when the numbers of Iraq War casualties declined. The neocons credited themselves and the successful surge with the improvement as they polished up their tarnished reputations, badly stained by the
[Biofuel] Algeria hostage crisis ends in bloodbath
Algeria: The Slaughter of the Good and Bad The real rulers in this country are a military who were blooded in a civil war that taught them to care as little for the innocent as they do for the guilty By Robert Fisk January 20, 2013 The Independent http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33661.htm On To Timbuktu II by Eric Margolis Published on Saturday, January 19, 2013 by Eric Margolis http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/19-0 Terrorism is just one of many scourges to beset the people of Mali for decades Blaming al-Qaida or neo-colonialism is too simple in a country where many have been marginalised for too long Peter Beaumont The Observer, Sunday 20 January 2013 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/20/mali-needs-true-democracy?CMP=twt_gu Mali's army suspected of abuses and unlawful killings as war rages Amnesty International says it has evidence of civilian executions and indiscriminate shelling of nomadic Tuaregs' camp Afua Hirsch in Mopti, Mali The Observer, Saturday 19 January 2013 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/19/mali-army-suspected-abuses-killings --0-- http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/21/alge-j21.html Algeria hostage crisis ends in bloodbath By Alex Lantier 21 January 2013 On Saturday evening, Algerian military forces stormed the Tinguentourine natural gas facility in In Amenas, where over 30 Al Qaeda-linked fighters were holding hostages. Last night, reports indicated that the operation claimed the lives of 48 hostages and up to 32 of the fighters of the Al Qaeda-linked Signed-in-Blood Battalion. They were demanding a prisoner exchange and the end of the ongoing French war in Mali. American, British, French, Japanese, Norwegian, and Romanian workers were among those dead or missing. Signed-in-Blood Battalion leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who as a youth fought in the final days of the US-led war against the Soviet-backed Afghan regime in Kabul, claimed responsibility for the attack in a video released yesterday. He said, We in Al Qaeda announce this blessed operation, adding that roughly 40 attackers had participated in the raid. Available information about casualties was still provisional and self-contradictory. The Algerian army's operation was so violent that it was reportedly difficult for rescuers to tell from the human remains how many people were killed or who they were. On Saturday Algerian Special Forces found 15 unidentified burned bodies at the plant. Algerian Communication Minister Mohamed Saïd said, I strongly fear that the death toll will be revised upward. He also supported the French war in Mali. He announced that Algeria would continue to authorize France, the former colonial power in Algeria and neighboring Mali, to use Algerian airspace to bomb targets in Mali. Saïd added that Algiers would tighten security at the country's industrial facilities: This is an issue that will be addressed in accordance with the supreme interests of Algeria. In this kind of situation, national interest takes precedence and it is the country's supreme authorities who will judge whether to authorize or not to authorize such action. It appears, however, that the hostage-takers had help from inside the Tinguentourine facility, raising further questions about Algerian security forces. Five of the Islamists reportedly were workers at the plant, including one French citizen. Another spoke English with a North American accent and may have been Canadian. British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President François Hollande both defended Algiers' violent response to the hostage situation, which was initially criticized by Japan, as well as Britain and the United States. Cameron commented, Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists. The bloody ending of the hostage crisis in Algeria underscores the devastating consequences of the multiple imperialist interventions in Africa and the Middle East, going back to the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s in which Belmokhtar reportedly received his training. The 2011 NATO war to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya undermined the tenuous equilibrium Gaddafi helped keep among Tuareg and other tribal groups in the Sahara. Together with the influence of regional Islamist groups, which was boosted by NATO's decision to place numerous Al Qaeda-linked Libyans in positions of power in Libya, this undermined the Malian military's control over the country's restive north. Just over a week ago, as the unpopular Malian military junta was threatened with collapse, France began bombing Mali. The violence has now spilled into Algeria, exposing its vulnerability to the violence that is rapidly spreading throughout the region. Amenas is in the Sahara desert near the border with Libya, in southern Algeria-the area through which
[Biofuel] Aaron Was a Criminal and So Are You
US attorney downplays vendetta against Internet pioneer Aaron Swartz By Eric London 21 January 2013 http://wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/21/orti-j21.html The Institutionalization of Tyranny By Paul Craig Roberts January 20, 2013 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33670.htm What the FBI Doesn't Want You To Know About Its Secret Surveillance Techniques JANUARY 17, 2013 | BY PARKER HIGGINS AND TREVOR TIMM https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/what-fbi-doesnt-want-you-know-about-its-surveillance-techniques --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/19-2 Published on Saturday, January 19, 2013 by Common Dreams Aaron Was a Criminal and So Are You by Abi Hassen The prosecution of Aaron Swartz and his subsequent suicide is heartbreaking. Aaron's life and work was an inspiring example of how the Internet can elevate humanity beyond the dregs of rote commerce and cheap thrills. Aaron's contributions to our society were not the shiny widgets of tech icons like Steve Jobs. Rather, they were ideas and technologies that enriched lives and empowered ordinary people. RSS, Reddit, and Creative Commons are all projects in which Aaron was a key participant; they are also free for anyone to use and represent the essence of the free (as in freedom) Internet movement. It was these very ideas that were the cause of Aaron's prosecution. The DOJ wanted to make an example of him precisely because he was effective at expressing and propagating his dissenting views against the corporate control of our lives. If Aaron's fans, mourners, and supporters fail to see that what happened to him was not a fluke event, but instead was de rigueur, Aaron's death will be all the more tragic. Make no mistake, Aaron was a criminal and, despite popular belief, there was no prosecutorial overreach. The US Attorney who oversaw his prosecution described her office's actions as appropriate and, according to the law, she was telling the truth. The job of prosecutors is to bully and intimidate suspects, using the threat of some of the world's harshest sentencing laws into plea bargaining for a shorter sentence in exchange for an admission of guilt. This is American justice; our current system of severe sentencing and mandatory minimums gives prosecutors overwhelming power - power that was once in the hands of judges and juries - to the point that today less than 5% of criminal cases are resolved by a jury (3% in federal cases). Prosecutorial discretion is not a mandate for prosecutors to apply fairness or common decency; it is simply the heuristic that determines who gets exposed to the system. There are no real restraints on our government's ability to prosecute and jail. We have enough laws on the books and prosecutors and judges have enough discretion interpreting them, that anyone can be locked up for any reason or no reason. Take, for example, the case of Tarek Mehanna who, after refusing to become an FBI informant, was arrested, held for years in solitary confinement, and ultimately convicted as a terrorist. The substance of his crimes: sharing YouTube videos, and translating texts that were freely available on the Internet. Or look to Tim DeChrisopher or the Central Park Five; the list is unending and the point is clear: if prosecutors want to put you in jail, they can. It is also clear that there is no limit on our country's ability to incarcerate. The USA runs the largest penal system in world (our only competition in world history is the GULAG system of the USSR). Thus, we are all criminals in waiting - a fact that is dramatic in the world of cyber-crime, where a typical Internet user is potentially liable for millions of dollars per day in copyright violations http://c4sif.org/2011/08/we-are-all-copyright-criminals-john-tehranians-infringement-nation/. The question then becomes, who is chosen for prosecution and why? If the feds just randomly prosecuted typical Internet users for violating terms of service agreements, which is what Aaron did, the popular backlash would be too great. So instead, they pick their targets carefully. Minorities, the poor, and unpopular political factions are the traditional targets for prosecution and incarceration. If you are black and live in New York City, it is routine to be stopped by police and arrested for simply walking down the street in your neighborhood or even in the hallway of your own building. If you are Muslim, even a kindergartener, you are a threat and are subject to arbitrary police surveillance. If you are an animal rights activist, you are considered a terrorist even if you're explicitly committed to non-violence. Conversely, if you are a rich, white banker, you can participate in the most egregious activity and never be jailed or even have to admit wrongdoing. Internet freedom hacktivists have recently joined the ranks of Muslims, African Americans, the poor, and eco-terrorists as an acceptable
