Joe Bob Parties With the Atheists

By Joe Bob Briggs

The biggest security guard I've ever seen in my life–this guy could work for Blackwater, and he's got the coiled listening device spilling out of his left ear to prove it–has parked his burly self squarely in front of me, making it clear that I'd best slink back against the wall while the Rock Star of Atheism makes her entrance and a hundred entranced admirers take a collective breath, not quite believing they're in her presence.

The exotically beautiful Ayaan Hirsi Ali travels with not one but two Blackwater types, part of a security contract supplied by the government of the Netherlands at the rate of two-point-five mill a year, and she's clearly the main attraction at the opening-night fundraiser for the Atheist Alliance International, an umbrella group of 59 atheist organizations in 10 countries that have all come together in a spooky section of Arlington, Virginia, called Crystal City, which looks like some Nordic vision of the perfectly planned society–hermetically sealed high-rise apartment buildings, underground shopping malls, and claustrophobic hotels, with streets devoid of pedestrians but elaborately landscaped, like a Brobdingnagian potted plant.

We're all wedged into the Arlington Ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Hotel at an event that's been sold out for weeks, with hundreds more tuning in on the Internet, and we've been warned not to pet the bomb-sniffing dogs. The heavy security is specifically the result of a fatwa declaring open season on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but there's a little paranoia even when she's not around, perhaps because any well-placed explosive device in this low-ceilinged meeting hall could wipe out the entire sanhedrin of the atheist movement, and, after all, you never know what those abortion clinic bombers are likely to do next. Besides Ali, the assembled pantheon includes Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation), Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), which, if you've been paying attention, collectively amount to about 2 million New York Times best-selling copies during the past year with variations on the themes of "There is no God," "Belief in God is a plague on society," and "The religionists must be stopped." So I guess there's one other reason we need security: Any attack on the building would result in an extremely low afterlife quotient–we have to party now!

At last Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes her entrance–she's actually kind of bashful, so she sidles awkwardly toward her assigned table as Burly Two bumps off dawdlers like a human mine-sweeper, clearing a path through the cocktail jungle–and as her presence slowly dawns on people (there she is! she's so slender! don't pet the dog!), there's a little wave of spontaneous applause and then a jostling for position for what will be a solid hour of effusive outpourings ("Thank you for your courage," "I admire you so much," "My family is Muslim and you give me strength"), mostly from women, many of them clutching Ali's book Infidel, the story of her odyssey from Somalia to Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia to Kenya to the Netherlands as she evaded an arranged marriage, denounced the religion of her family, became a member of the Dutch Parliament, and made a film on the oppression of Muslim women with director Theo Van Gogh, who was knifed to death by an Islamic fanatic as a result. I notice a man in line who looks remarkably like Tom Wolfe–only to realize it is Tom Wolfe. He chats with her for about five minutes, and she looks alternately embarrassed and joyful. On this night, it's good to be an atheist in Crystal City.

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UCR research team sees climate threat under Arctic ice

By ELAINE REGUS

Global warming could release long-dormant stores of methane gas trapped beneath the Arctic permafrost, causing an abrupt and catastrophic climate change like one that occurred 635 million years ago, UC Riverside researchers have determined.

Back then, the sheets of ice that covered Earth started to collapse, releasing methane gas that warmed the planet and caused the ice to retreat over a period of 100 to 1,000 years, said Martin Kennedy, a geology professor in UCR's Department of Earth Sciences. Kennedy led the research team.

"It was the greatest global-warming event of Earth's history almost certainly," he said.

The researchers' findings are published in today's issue of Nature.

They suggest that methane ice sheets still exist beneath Arctic ice sheets that are being degraded by rising carbon-dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere.

Recent research indicates that the ice sheets are melting and methane gas is being released at a much higher rate than previously thought, he said.

"It doesn't make one feel a lot better about the future," Kennedy said.

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the art of Austin Shaw

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12 degrees

The Story

In the year 2012 there has been a backlash against Patriot Act era policies and a series of investigations reveal just how rampant surveillance on ordinary citizens had become.  After the Dept of Homeland Security is abolished, a hacker gets into databases from 2008 and discovers 1,000's of hours of surveillance footage which he decides to release online.  He narrates the short videos and sometimes even remixes them and they become the most watched show in the US.  His narration offers commentary on our times from the perspective of an optimistic future that sees our current society as troubled and bleak.  The videos will incorporate current events as they occur, including the Presidential election cycle as seen from the eyes of the future.  As more videos are released, we come to see that the seemingly unrelated characters from throughout the world are interconnected...

How it Works

12 degrees will be shot collaboratively in 12 different cities throughout the US on a monthly basis. We will post an outline ala Curb Your Enthusiasm on our website at the beginning of every month. Meetup groups will then be organized where actors, directors and anyone else will shoot their interpretations of the outline. Groups can shoot more than one version, and can regroup to shoot with different actors, etc. Submissions will be posted to www.12degrees.tv where anyone will be able to vote on their favorite. All of the narration will be written and added by neovids, allowing us to create a story with continuity, and then added to the collaborative video that receives the most votes. The following month will utilize the same format, but the Meetup group will happen in another locale. The first two episodes will be shot in NYC and LA, with future cities determined by interest on our website. We will also post behind the scenes videos from the Meetups, which will be live streamed when possible.

The final 12 minute episode will mash together the previous winning entries to complete the story for the first season. Audience members will also be able to mashup their own version of the final episode using any previously submitted clip to allow for infinite variations of the story.

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Interview With Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky

by Maya Schenwar

US Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky sat down with Truthout's Maya Schenwar.
(Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast / AP)

    Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky has had enough of the war in Iraq, and she's had enough of the military contractors that are making it possible.

    "These are the guys who carry guns - I would call them mercenaries - who are engaged in inherently governmental activities," she told me in a recent interview, noting that while contractors carry out many of the same functions as the military, they are held to much less stringent standards.
"One has to ask, 'Is it the policy of the United States of America that contractors can get away with murder?' And frankly, so far, it seems like the answer is 'yes.'"

    Schakowsky, the House's chief deputy whip, is leading the fight to rein in those mercenaries and face facts on the war - a fight that is not particularly popular, given the extent to which the military relies on contract labor. (Numbering more than 180,000, the list of private contract workers now exceeds the US troop count in Iraq.) But Schakowsky is no stranger to uphill battles. She opposed the Iraq war resolution in 2003 and helped found the Out-of-Iraq Caucus in 2005. She has voted against renewing war funding for the past four years, and has pushed for legislation to attach a timetable for withdrawal to any war monies going forward.

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Interview With Congressman Ron Paul

by William Rivers Pitt

Presidential Candidate Ron Paul campaigning in New Hampshire, sat down with Truthout's William Rivers Pitt.
(Photo: Cheryl Senter / Associated Press)

    Despite what the mainstream news media choose to report, Senator John McCain of Arizona is not the last remaining Republican candidate for president today. Congressman Ron Paul of Texas never abandoned his run for the GOP nomination, and he fully intends to present himself before the Republican National Convention in September as a true conservative alternative to McCain's status-quo candidacy. In fact, according to a recent blog report published by The Los Angeles Times, Paul looks to do more than merely show up at the door.

    "Largely under the radar of most people," reported the Times, "the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September. They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who's running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a long-term revolution for control of the Republican Party."

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Rate of Violence Skyrocketing in Afghanistan

by Brandon Friedman

While U.S. hostile fire fatalities in Iraq last month dropped to their lowest level since December, the news has been far grimmer coming out of Afghanistan.  In terms of enemy fire, May 2008 was the second deadliest month of the war since hostilities began in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11.  This also marked the end of the deadliest 12-month period for U.S. troops in combat in Afghanistan since the war began nearly seven years ago.

14 Americans were killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan last month (equal to the same number killed in June 2006).  The deadliest month of combat in Afghanistan for U.S. troops was in June 2005 when 25 died--16 in a single helicopter shoot-down.

While 14 hostile fire fatalities may not seem significant when compared to the fighting in Iraq, there are two facts that we must take into consideration:

1. We have just experienced the deadliest 12-month period of the war in Afghanistan in terms of hostile fire--by far.  

99 Americans have been killed in action since 1 June 2007.  The previous 12-month high was 70--between 1 June 2005 and 31 May 2006.

2. The hostile fire death rate for American troops in Afghanistan last month was four times that of Iraq.  

One out of every 2,500 (.04 percent) Americans in Afghanistan died last month at the hands of the enemy.  This is much higher than in Iraq, in which one out of every 10,000 (.01 percent) American troops died.

While hostile fire casualty rates in Iraq have been higher than .04 percent in about half of all months since the invasion, this shows us one fact that cannot be overlooked: The violence in Afghanistan only seems minimal to Americans because there are a mere 33,000 troops there.  But the rate of violence there is clearly comparable to that in Iraq--where 155,000 troops are now serving.  For those 33,000 troops in Afghanistan, for the first time now, life has become more dangerous than in Iraq.

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Shocking Bush 'Pep Talk' to His War Cabinet on Iraq: 'We Are Going to Wipe Them out!'

By Tom Engelhardt

Here's a memory for you. I was probably five or six and sitting with my father in a movie house off New York's Times Square -- one of the slightly seedy theaters of that dawn of the 1950s moment that tended to show double or triple feature B-westerns or war movies. We were catching some old oater which, as I recall, began with a stagecoach careening dramatically down the main street of a cow town. A wounded man is slumped in the driver's seat, the horses running wild. Suddenly -- perhaps from the town's newspaper office -- a cowboy dressed in white and in a white Stetson rushes out, leaps on the team of horses, stops the stagecoach, and says to the driver: "Sam, Sam, who dun it to ya?" (or the equivalent). At just that moment, the camera catches a man, dressed all in black in a black hat -- and undoubtedly mustachioed -- skulking into the saloon.

My dad promptly turns to me and whispers: "He's the one. He did it."

Believe me, I'm awed. All I can say in wonder and protest is: "Dad, how can you know? How can you know?"

But, of course, he did know and, within a year or two, I certainly had the same simple code of good and evil, hero and villain, under my belt. It wasn't a mistake I was likely to make twice.

Above all, of course, you couldn't mistake the bad guys of those old films. They looked evil. If they were "natives," they also made no bones about what they were going to do to the white hats, or, in the case of Gunga Din (1939), the pith helmets. "Rise, our new-made brothers," the evil "guru" of that film tells his followers. "Rise and kill. Kill, lest you be killed yourselves. Kill for the love of killing. Kill for the love of Kali. Kill! Kill! Kill!"

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The World Is Upside Down

By ROGER COHEN

 

For a while the world was flat. Now it's upside down.

To understand it, invert your thinking. See the developed world as depending on the developing world, rather than the other way round. Understand that two-thirds of global economic growth last year came from emerging countries, whose economies will expand about 6.7 percent in 2008, against 1.3 percent for the United States, Japan and euro zone states.

The sharp rise in prices for energy, commodities, metals and minerals produced mainly in the developing world explains part of this shift. That has created the balance of payments surpluses fueling dollar-dripping sovereign wealth funds in the gulf and East Asia. They amuse themselves picking up a stake in BP here, a chunk of Morgan Stanley there, and why not a sliver of Total.

We of the developed-world Paleolithic species are fair game for the upstarts now, our predator role exhausted. The U.S. and Europe may one day need all the charity they can get.

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Weird Science

 

In this issue of [the New Yorker], Elizabeth Kolbert writes about the life of Buckminster Fuller and about an exhibition about Fuller at the Whitney Museum of American Art. "By staging the retrospective, the Whitney raises—or, really, one should say, re-raises—the question of Fuller's relevance," Kolbert writes. "Was he an important cultural figure because he produced inventions of practical value or because he didn't?" Here is a portfolio of images from the magazine and the Whitney exhibition.

 

Fuller flying in a helicopter over Ohio in 1959. "Fuller's schemes often had the hallucinatory quality associated with science fiction (or mental hospitals)," Kolbert writes. "It concerned him not in the least that things had always been done a certain way in the past."

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Pringles can designer dies; remains buried in Pringles can

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, June 2, 2008 10:53 AM | permalink

 

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Dr. Fredric J. Baur was so proud of having designed the container for Pringles potato crisps that he asked his family to bury him in one.

His children honored his request. Part of his remains was buried in a Pringles can - along with a regular urn containing the rest - in his grave at Arlington Memorial Gardens in Springfield Township.

Dr. Baur, a retired organic chemist and food storage technician who specialized in research and development and quality control for Procter & Gamble, died May 4 at Vitas Hospice. The College Hill resident was 89.

Link (Thanks, Tomatillo!)

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Philips’ Window Shopper Gaze Tracking System

By Andrew Liszewski

If it wasn't bad enough that stores were already tracking the purchase decisions and buying patterns of their customers, it now seems that Philips is developing a way for stores to track the interests of people who haven't even come inside. Using a set of video cameras and eye tracking software the system will be able to tell what someone looking at a window display has been staring at the longest, and will then provide more detailed information about the product via a passive or even interactive video display in hopes it will push them towards making a purchase decision.

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The Mother of All Demos

A number of years ago, in 1988, my brother and I were showing our first product, The Manhole, at the HyperExpo in San Francisco. We built The Manhole with a hypermedia tool called HyperCard, similar in many ways to today's web (at a time when the web didn't yet exist). HyperCard served, not only as the first wide-scale implementation of hypermedia, but also as an important precursor to the web.

While we were doing our thing, mostly just enjoying the Expo (it was our first intro to a software show), we couldn't help but notice an enigmatic group, run by one Ted Nelson, calling themselves Project Xanadu. They made themselves known by roaming the floor in mysterious black t-shirts, each t-shirt silk-screened with a large "X". How curious... like rebels amidst a HyperCard majority. Who were these men in black?

It might have been the first time I heard of the words hyperlink, hypertext or hypermedia . It was definitely the first I learned that the "link" concepts, so central to HyperCard, were not original inventions of Bill Atkinson. And it was the first I learned that these concepts, so central to today's web, were older than I was! 1965 to be exact... and the brainchild of aforementioned Mr. Ted Nelson, the leader of these Xanadu crusaders.

What I didn't know until recently, is that a stunted version of hypertext had been demonstrated as early as 1968. This was no run-of-the-mill boring-vision-of-the-future demo. This was, simply put, "The Mother of All Demos". Steven Levy first gave it that name and it seems to have stuck: The Mother of All Demos (and oh I really love that name). Douglas Engelbart's whirling vision of the future; it was the first public use of a mouse, as well as examples of cutting, copying, pasting, teleconferencing, video conferencing, email, and... hypertext. It's just too damn much for 1968!

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U.N. Chief: World Needs 50% More Food

Addressing Global Food Summit, Ban Ki-moon, Pope Beseech Countries To Avert Hunger Crisis

The U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday world food production must rise by 50 percent by 2030 to meet increasing demand.

Ban Ki-moon told world leaders at a food summit in Rome that nations must minimize export restrictions and import tariffs during the crisis that has caused hunger and riots across the globe.

Participants at the U.N. summit are trying to figure out how to head off skyrocketing food prices before millions more join the multitudes across the globe who already lack enough to eat.

In a message to the conference Pope Benedict told the massed world leaders that hunger and malnutrition are "unacceptable" in a world that has enough resources.

Benedict said in the message, which was read aloud Tuesday, that millions of people are looking to them for solutions while their very survival and their countries' security are at risk.

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'I don't make things easy'

Some think she's the greatest singer-songwriter of her generation. So why haven't more people heard of Thea Gilmore? Stephanie Merritt talks to her about artistic credibility, her depression and the pressures on young women in music.

Thea Gilmore, singer. Photograph: David Sillitoe
 
Bruce Springsteen has her on his iPod, Joan Baez invited her on tour, and she has collaborated with members of the Zutons and the Waterboys as well as Martha Wainwright. She has been described as "the best singer/songwriter of the last 10 years", is not yet 29 and has just released her seventh album of self-penned songs (having written her first when she was 16). Yet there's a good chance you've never heard of Thea Gilmore.

"I constantly get people telling me I should be selling as much as Katie Melua," she says with a smile. "But there's a reason she sells that many and I don't - she makes music that's easy on the ear and even easier on the brain. She's the perfect good girl in the middle of the road. I'm not keen to make things too easy for anyone. I like to provoke a response, whether that's someone telling me they love what I do or throwing a bottle at me. The trouble is that the bottle-throwing faction won't buy the album. You've immediately limited your audience."

In an industry that so often treats women as product, it has taken character - and a degree of what Gilmore cheerfully describes as "arrogance" - to resist being moulded by A&R men. In her early 20s she was courted by all the major record labels, but turned them down; creative control has always been a greater priority for her than any financial incentive. "I hate the business I'm in," she says. "I was under a lot of pressure to make records that sounded the way other people wanted them to sound. That was intrinsically wrong to me." It is this artistic and intellectual integrity that has made her something of a role model for other musicians - that and her ear for a melody and her ability to adapt her voice to a variety of musical styles.

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Saving Our Herstory

by: Stephanie Schoeder, Laurie K. Schenden, Lily-Rygh Glen

It's time to remember our history, from the tragedies to the triumphs. It's a time when lesbians of all ages should look back and reflect on how far we have come as a movement, and how far we have to go in the goal to achieve equality. However, since the mere thought of addressing queer history in schools sends conservatives into a panic-induced seizure, it's up to us to preserve our past for future generations. The Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA), Brooklyn, N.Y. Inside 484 14th St., an unassuming brownstone on a residential block in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is the largest collection of lesbian-specific materials anywhere in the world. Memorabilia ranges from a box donated by an average lesbian and containing her life story, to the infamous Lavender Menace T-shirt said to be worn by Rita Mae Brown at NOW's Second Congress to Unite Women in 1970. The contents of lesbian history has been preserved by a legion of volunteers who began the archive way back in 1974 in the pantry of Joan Nestle and Deborah Edel's Upper West Side apartment. You can find out more about "the collection," as the LHA's massive inventory is referred to, in the LHA's handout A Brief History of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which you can pick up in the LHA entryway or on the organization's website, lesbianherstoryarchives.org.

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Teens Belong in Summer Jobs

by Froma Harrop

Put disadvantaged teens into summer jobs. Hook them into the world of work. They'll come home with new skills, discipline, contacts and, yes, money.

Seems pretty obvious — but apparently not in Washington, which in 2000 gutted the Summer Youth Employment Program. The program had been helping 600,000 mostly low-income young people find jobs.

The labor market is now caving for teens from all backgrounds. But for low-income, black and Hispanic kids, it's the "Great Depression," according to a new report by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies.

Andrew Sum, an economist who heads the center, recently testified before Congress that a jobs program for teens makes superb economic stimulus. "You can create jobs more cost-effectively for young people than for any other group," he told me, "and you're getting an output as opposed to paying something for doing nothing."

This may sound all backward, but kids from rich families are more likely to have summer jobs than their poor cohorts. Last summer, only 29 percent of teens in families with incomes under $20,000 found work, while 50 percent of young people in families making $75,000 to $100,000 did.

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Striking the Rock

Both sides in the Gaza crisis should reflect on what the Torah teaches about our responses under pressure.

By Haim Watzman

As the world watches the Israeli invasion of Gaza, international debate rages about the correctness of the military action and whether Palestinian provocation merited the intensity of the Israeli response. Can the Torah help us navigate the dilemmas Israel faces?

The portion of the Torah Jews read during the week of June 25, which began with a deadly Palestinian guerrilla attack on an Israeli army unit and the abduction of a young soldier, Gilad Shalit, into Gaza, was Parashat Hukkat (Numbers 19:1 - 22:1). At its center is one of the Bible's best-known stories. Moses strikes a rock to bring forth water for the thirsty children of Israel, for which God punishes him by denying him entry into the Promised Land.

Given the devastating nature of the punishment, one would think that the nature of our greatest prophet's sin would be clear and unequivocal. Here, if anywhere, one would expect the Torah to be explicit about what Moses did wrong and why the penalty was a fitting one.

Yet the text is ambiguous--so much so that the great 19th-century Italian commentator, Shmuel David Luzzatto, refused to elucidate the question. His predecessors, he said, had attributed no less than 13 sins to Moses, and he feared that if he thought about it, he'd burden the poor man with yet another transgression.

Moses had to provide his thirsty people with water. Israel must provide its citizens with security. Its incursion into Gaza is a clear case of self-defense. Our government has held back for months as Islamic militants used the Gaza Strip to attack Israeli towns with rockets. The range of the rockets is improving. Just this past week, one fell on a school in the center of Ashkelon, a city that is home to important infrastructure and facilities. After Islamic militants from Gaza staged a carefully planned and executed attack on a military target, leaving two soldiers dead and one a hostage, Israel's right to engage in military action was unquestionable.

However, having the right to invade and bomb Gaza doesn't mean that invading and bombing Gaza is necessarily the right thing to do. Military force is a blunt instrument for achieving diplomatic, political, and strategic goals. Even precision attacks too often miss their mark, killing the wrong people—as we have seen in recent weeks in the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, since even armies with the best possible intelligence operate in the face of many unknowns, the outcomes of military actions are notoriously hard to predict. A single misstep—striking camp too far away from the nearest source of water—lost the Crusaders their kingdom in a single, agonizing battle.

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a reminder

 

No on 98, Yes on 99 Campaign Update   June 2, 2008

We know you are very busy, so we won't keep you long.  Tomorrow is Election Day. That means that not only do you need to vote against Prop 98 tomorrow, but we all need to make sure that our friends remember to vote No on 98 and Yes on 99 tomorrow. Turnout in this election is very uncertain, so whether you call or email, canvass or table, all of your hard work is important for our victory.  If you need additional information, go to our website to find detailed reasons to vote against Prop 98, the Landlords' Scheme, and for Prop 99, Real eminent domain reform. Click Here to the over 70 editorials against Prop 98. You can find flyers and fact sheets in our Campaign Toolbox. http://www.noprop98.org/go/tools/campaign-toolbox/ Our Top Priority: Vote!  Before we can reach out to all of our voters, we all have to vote. If you didn't vote early, please make sure you vote on June 3.  Thank you so very much for everything you have done to fight the Landlords' Scheme. Let us know how we can help you get the message out about No on 98, Yes on 99. We are always available at info@no98yes99.com. Thanks, No on 98 / Yes on 99 Team P.s. You can also forward this email to a friend. If you are having problems viewing this email, click here to view it on the web.

 

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Incredible Sushi Art

Our Amazing Food Art post was very popular and received a lot of great feedback. Therefore, we decided to write another post showcasing food art. This time, we are featuring Incredible Sushi Art:

Japanese Sushi Sunflowers

Japanese sushi chef and show off, Ken Kawasumi, opted to recreate Van Gogh's Sunflowers with sushi. [tokyotimes]

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Mexico drug smugglers make Jesus statue of cocaine

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (Reuters) - U.S. customs officials have seized a statue of Jesus Christ made from plaster mixed with cocaine -- the latest sophisticated attempt to smuggle drugs from Mexico.

Sniffer dogs at the border crossing in Laredo, Texas, alerted officials to the smell of narcotics in the 6.6 pound (3 kilo) statue, which was in the trunk of a car being driven by a Mexican woman into the United States last week.

"The statue tested positive for cocaine," Nancy Herrera, an official at the U.S. Attorney's Office Southern District of Texas said on Friday.

U.S. border police arrested a 61-year-old Mexican man accused of offering the woman $80 to carry the statue to the bus station in downtown Laredo.

The woman escaped back to Mexico, Herrera said.

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Ron Paul Gets Best Primary Finish Yet

The gadfly candidate is still pulling heavy support away from McCain

by John Nichols

After Hillary Clinton wraps up her campaign and Barack Obama stakes his uncontested claim on the Democratic presidential nomination -- something that could happen as soon as next week -- John McCain will still have a race on his hands for the Republican nod.

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who is running an anti-war, libertarian-themed challenge to the GOP establishment,refuses to quit.

Indeed, Paul is running better now than when the media was paying attention to the race for the GOP nod.

In Idaho, which held its primary Tuesday, Paul won almost a quarter of the vote -- his best percentage so far this year.

Final returns give Arizona Senator McCain just 70 percent support from Idaho Republicans -- not a very impressive figure for a man who has been the presumptive party nominee since February.

Paul, who has made it clear that he does not intend to endorse McCain, took 24 percent.

Six percent picked "uncommitted" -- in other words, nobody -- over McCain.

Paul gains five delegates from Idaho, adding to the base his campaign hopes to use to force platform debates at this summer's Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

And Paul's not done yet.

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Cult of Deception

By MAUREEN DOWD

They say that every president gets the psychoanalyst he deserves. And every Hamlet gets his Rosencrantz.

So now comes Scott McClellan, once the most loyal of the Texas Bushies, to reveal "What Happened," as the title of his book promises, to turn W. from a genial, humble, bipartisan good ol' boy to a delusional, disconnected, arrogant, ideological flop.

Although his analytical skills are extremely limited, the former White House press secretary — Secret Service code name Matrix — takes a stab at illuminating Junior's bumpy and improbable boomerang journey from family black sheep and famous screw-up back to family black sheep and famous screw-up.

How did W. start out wanting to restore honor and dignity to the White House and end up scraping all the honor and dignity off the White House?

It turns out that our president is a one-man refutation of Malcolm Gladwell's best seller "Blink," about the value of trusting your gut.

Every gut instinct he had was wildly off the mark and hideously damaging to all concerned.

It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous.

We already know What Happened, but it feels good to hear Scott say it.

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American Idiots

 by Chez Pazienza

I've been trying for some time to find a way to include this in a broader, more substantive piece, but then I thought -- really, about what? What could I possibly say about the larger implications of NBC's hyper-hyped and comically panderous "All American Summer" schedule that hasn't already been considered by anyone with an IQ bigger than a hamster's?

Every time I see another bombastic commercial for Nashville Star -- now inexplicably moved from, ironically, cable's "USA" network to NBC proper -- I have to fight the urge to throw something heavy at my television. If you've been fortunate enough to miss the full ads because all that flashing red, white and blue has caused you to go into an immediate epileptic seizure, they foist the likes of brand new Nashville Star host Billy Ray Cyrus (now with stronger blonde highlights!) on you -- calling him "America's Dad," which would apparently make all 300 million of us overly-exploited teenage tarts. Beyond that, NBC's motley collection of smarts-deprived shows includes American Gladiator, America's Got Talent (see a pattern developing here?) The Baby Borrowers -- the premise of which reads like a pro-abstinence counselor's wet dream -- and of course, Celebrity Circus, which stretches the already tenuous definition of "celebrity" in our culture to new lengths by slapping the label on Antonio Sabato Jr., Stacey Dash from Clueless and that doofus Chris Knight (now in his second pop cultural resurrection, the reality of which officially and non-negotiably drops him back six or seven places into the realm of K-list has-beens).

If you're searching for someone to blame for the lowest-common-denominator Foxification of the peacock's once-great primetime lineup, look no further than Ben Silverman, the co-chair of NBC Entertainment and NBC/Universal and the world's most successful overgrown frat-boy douchebag (with the exception of maybe Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance). Silverman is actually the executive producer of Nashville Star, hence why it's being moved up from NBC/Uni's farm league at USA to the majors in what would appear to be a trade for Law & Order: Criminal Intent and, one would imagine, two really shitty shows to be named later. The fact that Silverman is not only successful but has become so via the control of so much NBC programming is all the proof you need of both the existence and virility of pacts with Satan.

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Scientists rally against creationist 'superstition'

To mark a double anniversary celebrating Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, his supporters are taking the fight to their opponents

By Ian Johnston

The rise of creationism in Britain to the point where four out of 10 Britons believe it to be the literal truth – as well as the idea being taught in state-approved schools – has spread alarm throughout the scientific community.

But this week sees the start of a concerted fightback, as an 18-month celebration of evolution and its greatest proponent, Charles Darwin, gets under way, marking the 150th anniversary of the unveiling of his theory and the 200th anniversary of his birth.

People all over Europe will take part in a mass experiment to discover evolutionary changes to a species of snail; a major series of programmes is to be shown by the BBC; several books are to be published; and the Open University plans a new course on the subject.

Entries for a competition to design "Darwin's Canopy" – a piece of art to cover a ceiling in the Natural History Museum – will be unveiled this week, and the museum will hold a major exhibition on Darwin beginning in November.

Dr. Bob Bloomfield, head of special projects at the museum and a key figure in the "Darwin200" project, said he was concerned by the prevalence of creationist ideas.

"The statistics in this country are quite frightening. If you add up the percentages that either believe in creationism or intelligent design, it is approaching 40 per cent," he said.

"I don't think society can be complacent when ideas which are unsound are perpetrated. We are trying not to compromise people's faith views, other than where they are absolutely inconsistent with science."

He said the teaching of creationism in schools was "very problematic".

Professor Jonathan Silvertown of the Open University, who is writing a book entitled 99% Ape: How Evolution Adds Up, said the OU would be running a course called Darwin and Evolution. "The idea is to give people a feel for the modern evidence," he said.

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Hillary Clinton to be offered dignified exit

By Tim Shipman

Hillary Clinton will be offered a dignified exit from the presidential race and the prospect of a place in Barack Obama's cabinet under plans for a "negotiated surrender" of her White House ambitions being drawn up by Senator Obama's aides.

The former First Lady would get the chance to pilot Mr. Obama's reforms of the American healthcare system if she agrees to clear the path to his nomination as Democratic presidential candidate.

Senior figures in the Obama camp have told Democrat colleagues that the offer to Mrs. Clinton of a cabinet post as health secretary or to steer new legislation through the Senate will be a central element of their peace overtures to the New York senator.

Mr. Obama said on Thursday that he believed he would have secured the support of enough delegates to make him the standard bearer of his party in November.

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FIVE TRANSVESTITE WIVES OF THE GAY MORMON POLYGAMIST

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Maine Jury Says It's Legal to Protest an Illegal War

By Penny Coleman,

The stink leaking out of Ira Katz's office at the Veterans Affairs just doesn't stop. Every day some callous new email shows how little he cares that the stunning statistics about soldier and veteran suicides he is trying to suppress represent real lives that were his responsibility; some flat-footed attempt is made to convince Congress -- again -- that he didn't mean to "mislead." As the widow of a Vietnam vet who took his own life after coming home, all the skullduggery and frightening indifference that agents of this government have exhibited in its attempt to keep it all out of sight has been particularly hard to take. But even given my deep personal connection to these stories, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to sustain an appropriately high-decibel level of outrage. I am so very tired of it all. A little good news would go a long way.

This must be the dreaded scandal fatigue.

But just when I was feeling tempted to settle for the paltry encouragement in something as entirely meaningless as the demise of yet another administration enabler like Katz, who, for all his weasely ways, is finally only the dull instrument of his boss's heartlessness, a story came my way that gave me a moment of hope.

But first, the bad news. The bad news is that this hopeful story -- one that illustrates a constructive and effective direct action for change -- was reported only in the Bangor Daily News. Period.

The good news, which that paper reported on April 30, is that six peace activists were acquitted on charges of criminal trespass for failing to obey a police request that they abandon their sit-in outside U.S. Sen. Susan Collins' office in the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building in Maine.

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What Does the Decay of Journalism Have to Do with My Huge Appetite for Celebrity Gossip?

Not much.

By Vanessa Richmond

"You're the problem," a male friend told me sternly a few weeks ago. I'm why the rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer, why political apathy abounds, why environmental catastrophe looms. Because I, and people like me, read pop culture stories -- celebrity ones in particular. And because that's what more and more media are covering instead of what they "should" be (i.e. politics, the economy and international affairs). Hence, society is going to hell in a hand basket.

His criticism is equivalent to what gets posted in the comments sections of The Tyee and other news sites after almost any pop culture story. After blogging celeb Emily Gould's article "Exposed" ran in this weekend's New York Times Magazine (about the emotional trauma she experienced as a result of sharing too much of her and her friends' and boyfriends' lives online) many comments were variations on these ones: "Why is this important to me???????" and "I expect more from the New York Times."

Sure, it's true that there's no shortage of real, crucial issues right now. And I do read "serious" stories about them every day. But I am proud to say my reading diet includes far more stories that are considered to be the journalistic equivalent of genetically modified, non-organic candy corn.

I'm hardly alone. The readership numbers for pop culture stories -- which I count as celebrity, social trend, TV, music and film pieces in both blogs and traditional media -- are skyrocketing as readership of traditional news and newspapers is on the decline.

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Fundraising Letters to Look Forward To

Oh - and we just might live forever by Andrew Tobias

STOP THE PRESSES!

From the New York Times yesterday:  "Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts . . . "

 This is very good news for those of us who want to live forever, or at least for a very long time.

 As I wrote half a year ago:

My conception has long been that technology is on such an astonishing exponential trajectory – we've begun mapping the human genome, for crying out loud!  Oh, look, we've finished! – that one day soon we'd be able to download our consciousnesses into a brain bank, basically, where we'd be able to do almost all the things we do now . . . email our friends, watch Seinfeld reruns, order movies on demand, play web boggle, go for virtual treks to Machu Pichu . . . a world in which the big addiction would be not cocaine or meth but the orgasm button.

(In a brain bank, you wouldn't literally press buttons.  But how far are we now from being able to send electrical impulses from our brains?  Not very far.)

Class warfare would be primarily between the virtual humans, like me, with 500 years of compound interest enhancing my vast fortune, and the physical humans, like some 25-year-old with an actual screw driver.  I'd have $50 trillion (a good chunk of it in Borealis stock); but he would have the ability to disconnect me.

F Well, it seems we are not so far at all from "being able to send electrical impulses from our brains," thereby to control our TiVos.  (And if Ray Kurzweil is right, as I wrote in that same column, we might not even need to surrender our bodies.)  I know this is a tiny bit creepy.  But consider the alternative. 

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U.S. Economy: The Worst is Yet to Come

Nobody can predict exactly where the bottom will be, but it's clear that we're not even close to hitting it.

By Mark Weisbrot, Huffington Post. Posted May 29, 2008

Since the U.S. economy showed positive growth for the last quarter, some commentators in the business press are saying that we are not necessarily going to have a recession, or that if there is one it will be mild. This is a bit like the proverbial story of the man who jumped out of a window 60 floors up, and then said "so far, so good," as he passed the 30th floor.

The United States accumulated a massive, $8 trillion housing bubble during the decade from 1996-2006. Only about 40 percent of that bubble has now deflated. House prices are still falling at a 20 percent annual rate (over the last quarter). This means that the worst is yet to come, including another wave of mortgage defaults and write-downs. Even homeowners who are not in trouble will borrow increasingly less against their homes, reducing their spending.

President Bush says we are not in a recession. One commonly-used definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of declining output (GDP). The first quarter of 2008 came in at 0.6 percent, although it would have been negative if not for inventory accumulation. So by this definition we cannot say with certainty that the recession has started, although it could well have started this quarter. Of course, for most Americans it has felt like a recession hit some time ago, with real wages flat since the end of 2002, and household income not growing for most of the six-and-a-half year economic expansion.

The National Bureau of Economic Research will eventually decide on the official onset of the recession, but even its definition is arbitrary. All the indicators of a serious recession are swirling around us. The economy has lost jobs for four months in a row, which has never happened without a recession. Consumer confidence has dropped to a 28 year low -- a level not seen since Jimmy Carter was president. Home foreclosure filings are up 65 percent over last year. And now commercial real estate prices are heading south, dropping 6.2 percent in the first quarter.

With oil prices hitting record highs, and the Fed beginning to worry more about inflation, more restrictive lending practices and other fallout from the credit crunch, the near-term economic future looks even dimmer.

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Clinton Only Needs 358% of Remaining Delegates

by David Swanson

Adios Hillary. Puerto Rico has voted, handing Senator Clinton 38 delegates and Senator Obama 17. That gives Clinton a grand total thus far of 1,618 pledged delegates, and Obama 1,728. While, technically that still leaves Obama with "the lead," there are 31 pledged delegates remaining to be awarded in Montana and South Dakota. This means that Clinton can still pull it out if she picks up 358 percent of the remaining delegates.

The above calculation doesn't count the 19 delegates whom John Edwards has encouraged to back Obama, or the delegates pledged to Clinton who have begun flipping for Obama. It also doesn't count the super delegates, with whom Obama holds a substantial lead, but who I do not believe should have any say in a democratic election.

You know who should have a say? Active citizens, including citizens who speak up for others at home and abroad, including the peace movement, the labor rights movement, and all of those whom Clinton effectively credited with her defeat back in April. She was speaking specifically about her losses in caucuses, when she disdainfully referred to us as "the activist base of the Democratic Party." According to Clinton, these activists "turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of [my] positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them."

You're damn right, and we defeated you, and we'd like you to leave now. We've had more than enough. Get out of the "race" now! Got an exit strategy? Use it.

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An Agony Foretold: Bitter Roots, Bitter Fruits in the Middle East

by Chris Floyd

 

Long before the Nabka, long before the Holocaust, the present-day agony in Israel and Palestine had already taken root. The ineradicable core of the conflict is brutally simple: the attempt by one people to take another people's land. In this respect, the turmoil in the Middle East is just another chapter in one of the world's oldest stories, for human beings have always been about the bloody business of conquest, dispossession and domination. The United States, for example, was built on this ancient principle. Its settling was cast largely in the same terms as those used later by the Zionists in Palestine: the claiming and cultivation of a land that was essentially empty -- save for a few savages who could only benefit from the imposition of a superior civilization. (And if they couldn't, so much the worse for them.)

 

The nascent Americans were fortunate, of course; they land they took was far less populated than it had been not long before. Large swathes of the native populations had been decimated by waves of epidemics, most sparked by contact with the earliest European explorers in the 16th century. By the time that large-scale settlement began in the 17th and 18th centuries, vast regions of North America had been emptied of its population, whole tribes had been wiped out, and most others left enfeebled, their social, cultural and demographic shattered. Even so, there were still millions of Indians left in the "New World," and it took centuries of war and deceit before they were finally driven off all of the lands that the Europeans wanted.

 

The Zionist movement was less fortunate in this respect. In relative terms, the Arab population of Palestine was much more numerous and more intact than the Indian tribes of North America. And the specifically Jewish character of the settlement project meant the number of settlers would always be small; it could not draw upon all the peoples of the world, as in North America, and thus would never overwhelm the natives by sheer weight of numbers. Indeed, the opposite is true: the demographic environment in Palestine is entirely in the natives' favor -- a stark fact, and a stark fear that underlies much of the brutality and harshness of present-day Israeli policy.

 

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No t-shirt, no flight

by The Edge Of Madness

Going out to Düsseldorf for work.

Flying British Airways, leaving from terminal 5.

Go through security, get pulled to the side. I'm wearing a French Connection Transformers t-shirt. Bloke starts joking with me is that Megatron. Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I'm not allowed to fly. WTF? It's a 40 foot tall cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. There is no way this shirt is offensive in any way, and what I'm going to use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?

Now here's the stupid part. I was only taking carry on luggage, so my clothes were in my bag, so I said I'd get changed. So I stripped off at security and changed t-shirts, putting the "offensive" t-shirt in my bag. Now I haven't been a dick so far, I've done what they've said. No point in arguing with the drones.

The supervisor comes over and is now a dick to me, telling me if I put the shirt on I'll be arrested. I then told him that I wasn't going to waste time arguing with him and he wasn't worth the effort and didn't have any power to change anything anyway. With hindsight I should have said, yeah arrest me, great publicity for you guys to arrest a bloke wearing a transformers t-shirt.

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Vincent Bugliosi says George W. is guilty of murder

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Israel Talks To Syria, Loses Jewish vote

By Richieville

Richieville News Service - BOYNTON BEACH, FL

  In retirement communities and delicatessens across this state, Jewish voters expressed grave reservations over the news of Israel's peace talks with Syria. The outpouring of criticism  raised the possibility that Israel might be losing the support of one of its core constituencies, Jews.

 "They're talking to terrorists!" said Bernie Kupferstein, 74, as he leaned on his shuffleboard stick at the Aberdeen Country Club. "I can't believe Israel would betray Israel like that."

 Maury Lefkowitz, 91, nodded in agreement. "I heard that Turbowitz is a Muslim," he said, grimacing over his plate of cheese blintzes, "like Obama."

He was referring to Yoram Turbowitz, one Israel's chief negotiators in the talks. Mr. Turbowitz is Jewish. Senator Barack Obama is a Christian.

 At Izzie's Genuine New York Deli, in Boca Raton, Shirley Goldenfarb, 83, shared Mr. Kuperferstein's sentiments. "It seems like Israel doesn't have Israel's interests at heart," she said, vigorously waving her bagel with a schmear. "And to think of all the trees I paid for over there. Appeasers! Feh!"

The reaction was much the same across Florida, where elderly Jews, usually stalwart supporters of the Jewish state, echoed the words of President Bush, who just last week made a speech to the Israeli parliament, comparing those who would talk to "terrorists and radicals" to the politicians who appeased Hitler before World War II. It is now clear that Mr. Bush knew of the peace talks at that time.

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Ecological Internet Welcomes ANZ Bank Withdrawal from Tasmanian Pulp Mill Disaster

By Ecological Internet, http://www.ecologicalinternet.org/ and Forests.org, http://forests.org/

Ecological Internet (EI) welcomes news that ANZ Bank of  Australia will not fund the Gunns Tasmanian pulp mill. In a  statement ANZ announced it will not provide finance for the  AU$ 2 billion project to pulp ancient forests for throw-away  paper products, but did not provide a reason for withdrawing.  International environmental protest spearheaded by Ecological  Internet, in support of local protests, certainly played a  major role. 

ANZ Bank, and the Australian and Tasmanian governments, have  been targets of environmental protest in country and from  Ecological Internet and other overseas groups for years. Most  recently, in early April, nearly 3,000 EI Earth Action Network  participants from 87 countries sent a quarter of a million  protest emails to ANZ and the Australian government asking  that ANZ withdraw funding. The Australian national government  was also called out for their hypocrisy in supporting  protection of forests overseas to address climate change, but  not in Tasmania. The archived successful alert can be found at: http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=australia_tasmania_climate

"Thankfully, ANZ Bank has finally listened to its customers  and global citizens sickened by their profiteering from  ancient forest slaughter. They should be commended for  withdrawing from the ecologically disaster Gunns pulp mill.  Now perhaps ANZ will reexamine their lending to notorious  rainforest destroyer Rimbunan Hijau in Papua New Guinea as  well. And Australia end its logging shame by pulling Gunns'  pulp mill environmental approvals, ending this ghoulish  project once and for all," says Ecological Internet President  Dr. Glen Barry.

"It is amazing what global citizens, through participation in  a strong network anchored by a reliable hub, can achieve  together for ecological sustainability. As Ecological Internet  continues to raise funds to meet basic costs for our unique  brand of biocentric activism on the net, we hope this latest  in a string of victories will lead to increased individual and  foundation support for our campaign to end ancient forest  logging." 

Ecological Internet stands alone as the only major  international forest campaigning group working to end ancient  forest logging and all industrial destruction of relatively  intact natural ecosystems. We seek permanent protections for  all remaining primary and old-growth forests (with appropriate  compensation and continued small scale use for local peoples),  advocate for ecological restoration and certified management  of regenerating and planted natural forest ecosystems, and  promote local peoples' pursuit of small-scale, community-based  eco-forestry projects based upon regenerating secondary and  standing ancient forests. This is the true path to global  forest sustainability.

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RIP Harvey Korman

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Screengrab from donut sleeper cell training video surfaces

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Annals of Self-Experiment - Seth Roberts is His Own Mouse

 

by Gary Wolf

I'm becoming a devoted fan of Seth Roberts, one of the great champion of self-experimentation. Roberts, an emeritus professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has spent many year studying himself, and, even better, offering many practical clues about how to construct your own "experiments of one." I first found out about his work in the most obvious way: searching on "self-experimentation" in Google.

This lead me to Roberts paper: "Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: Ten examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight." The problems he describes are so common, and his solutions so counter-intuitive, that you can't help being intrigued. One of the great things about reading Roberts is getting a feeling for how different self-experimentation is from other forms of self-knowledge. While Roberts often begins his experiments with a hypothesis, using his stock of common knowledge, suggestions from friends, and categories of analysis typical of a well-trained college professor, this first idea is usually proven, through experiment, to be wrong. Not superficial, or too narrow, or distorted by delusion or prejudice; simply incorrect, provably irrelevant. So then Roberts has to come up with new ideas. The data, expressed as charts, no longer merely test his hypotheses; the data becomes the source of his theories. And the theories bear the mark have having emerged from data. Often, they seem very, very odd. They seem to have no link to received wisdom, to folk knowledge, to intuitive "rightness." To me, they seem like the kinds of theories a computer might have about a person. (A confession: this biases me in their favor.)

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Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area

Stealth growers seed or plant on land that doesn't belong to them. The result? Plants that beautify or yield crops in otherwise neglected or vacant spaces.

By Joe Robinson

Scott planted the garden on the median early in the morning to avoid detection. He continues to weed and clean. Residents encourage his work.

 

BRIMMING with lime-hued succulents and a lush collection of agaves, one shooting spiky leaves 10 feet into the air, it's a head-turning garden smack in the middle of Long Beach's asphalt jungle. But the gardener who designed it doesn't want you to know his last name, since his handiwork isn't exactly legit. It's on a traffic island he commandeered.

"The city wasn't doing anything with it, and I had a bunch of extra plants," says Scott, as we tour the garden, cars whooshing by on both sides of Loynes Drive.

• 

  Photos: Guerrilla gardeners take root

• 

  Photos: How to make seed bombs

 

Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo "seed bombing" runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts.

Part beautification, part eco-activism, part social outlet, the activity has been fueled by Internet gardening blogs and sites such as GuerrillaGardening.org, where before-and-after photos of the latest "troop digs" inspire 45,000 visitors a month to make derelict soil bloom.

"We can make much more out of the land than how it's being used, whether it's about creating food or beautifying it," says the movement's ringleader and GuerrillaGardening.org founder, Richard Reynolds, by phone from his London home. His tribe includes freelance landscapers like Scott, urban farmers, floral fans and artists.

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YSL RIP

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100 years of the first sale doctrine

by John Mark Ockerbloom

On June 1, 1908, 100 years ago today, the US Supreme Court decided Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus, a case that established what would become known as the "first sale doctrine". This doctrine, now codified as part of the US Copyright Act, says that in general the owners of books or other copyrighted works have the right to dispose of them as they see fit (such as by reselling them, giving them away, or lending them out). The copyright holder can still control the right to make copies, make public performances, or other derivative works. But once a reader has bought a book, they can pass it along as they see fit. (Or keep it, or fold it into little origami shapes for their own amusement. They own it, after all.)

This right exists even in the presence of notices to the buyer that claim to conditionally license the work, rather than sell it. Indeed, those kinds of licenses, familiar now to most computer users, were also at issue in the Bobbs-Merrill case. (For historical background, including some examples of old-time "end user license agreements", see a post of mine from a few months ago, "The right to read, circa 1906.")

Despite attempts by many software, music, and ebook publishers to extend control over their products to their buyers, the first sale doctrine is still salient today. Just last month, for example, a federal judge cited the first sale doctrine to uphold the right of an eBay merchant to resell used software. An article in Ars Technica has a link to the decision, and an excellent explanation of the case and the importance of the principles it upholds. Ultimately, as the article points out, the first sale doctrine is what "makes libraries and used book stores possible" without needing the permission of publishers to exist or carry out their missions.

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ALERT: Unilever Threatens Côte d'Ivoire's Primary Rainforests, Showing Promises of "Sustainable" Palm Oil Meaningless

TAKE ACTION! Leading global consumer products company poised to destroy Ivory Coast's rainforests as both investor and customer, just after its commitment to rainforest protection and certified oil palm was much heralded by some.

One of Côte d'Ivoire's most important primary rainforests [search] is to be cleared by global consumer product company Unilever and others, despite Unilever's recent promises to buy only "sustainable" palm oil [search] from lands not cleared of rainforests for their production. Tanoé Swamps Forest in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is one of the last remaining old growth forests in the country and the last refuge for three highly endangered primates -- the Miss Waldron Colobus, the Geoffroy's colobus and the Diana roloway -- as well as home to many endangered plant species. The palm oil company PALM-CI has just begun destroying this 6,000 hectare forest to convert it to oil palm plantations, despite local and international protests. Unilever is one of the main companies behind PALM-CI and the destruction of the Tanoé Swamps Forest. After sending the first protest email to Unilever, you will be forwared to a second protest email asking the government of Côte d'Ivoire to ensure that the forest and the communities that depend on it are fully protected. TAKE ACTION!

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White House issues climate report 4 years late

By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON - Under a court order and four years late, the White House Thursday produced what it called a science-based "one-stop shop" of specific threats to the United States from man-made global warming.

While the report has no new science in it, it pulls together different U.S. studies and localizes international reports into one comprehensive document required by law. The 271-page report is notable because it is something the Bush administration has fought in the past.

Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist who was not involved in the effort, called it "a litany of bad news in store for the U.S."

And biologist Thomas Lovejoy, one of the scientists who reviewed the report for the federal government, said: "It basically says the America we've known we can no longer count on. It's a pretty dramatic picture of all kinds of change rippling through natural systems across the country. And all of that has implications for people."

White House associate science director Sharon Hays, in a teleconference with reporters, declined to characterize the findings as bad, but said it is an issue the administration takes seriously. She said the report was comprehensive and "communicates what the scientists are telling us."

That includes:

• Increased heat deaths and deaths from climate-worsened smog. In Los Angeles alone yearly heat fatalities could increase by more than 1,000 by 2080, and the Midwest and Northeast are most vulnerable to increased heat deaths.

• Worsening water shortages for agriculture and urban users. From California to New York, lack of water will be an issue.

• A need for billions of dollars in more power plants (one major cause of global warming gases) to cool a hotter country. The report says summer cooling will mean Seattle's energy consumption would increase by 146 percent with the warming that could come by the end of the century.

• More death and damage from wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters and extreme weather. In the last three decades, wildfire season in the West has increased by 78 days.

• Increased insect infestations and food- and waterborne microbes and diseases. Insect and pathogen outbreaks to the forests are causing $1.5 billion in annual losses.

"Finally, climate change is very likely to accentuate the disparities already evident in the American health care system," the report said. "Many of the expected health effects are likely to fall disproportionately on the poor, the elderly, the disabled and the uninsured."

The report was required by a 1990 law which says that every four years the government must produce a comprehensive science assessment of global warming. It had not been done since 2000.

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