AS THE ARCTIC MELTS: WORRIED ABOUT RISING SEA LEVELS? BETTER WORRY TOO ABOUT RAPID ACIDIFICATION OF ARCTIC WATERS. New scientific report, reviewed by BBC, documents the rise in pH levels in Arctic region as CO-2 emissions are absorbed in the cold waters of a polar meltdown. The degree of the environmental threat from this [...]
“OUR GOAL WAS TO SHUT DOWN A PORTION OF AMERICA FOR A WHOLE DAY.” Producer of a new TV series, “House of Cards,” says this with a “laugh,” but it is no laughing matter to TV producers who are catering to a new kind of “binge-watching” among fans of particular TV programs. Rather than [...]
BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A TEMP JOB? While unemployment rates in the U.S. have shown some improvement, with less than 9% of the work-force unemployed on a “given day,” this measure of unemployment masks the fact that over 13% of workers and their families will face a period of non-employment during some part of [...]
U.S. AND WORLD MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE CONNECTICUT SHOOTING IS DRIVEN BY A POLICE STATE “AGENDA.” So argues former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts, following his interview on the subject for Moscow RT television. Roberts notes that this media, like most others, is focused on the issue of a ban on “assault weapons,” whereas the most [...]
IS “HOMOSEXUALITY” REALLY COMPARABLE TO “MURDER”? This is the logically strained case made by one of the men who will likely decide the fate of the marriage equality movement in America. The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases directly relating to same-sex marriage rights; the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s [...]
The maker of Twinkies, perhaps the senior statesman of American junk food, along with other sweet snacks and breads halted production last week and announced that it would seek liquidation through bankruptcy and lay off all of its more than 18,000 employees. Despite years of dismal sales and being virtually forgotten by most of the [...]
THE U.S. IS ENGAGED IN PLENTY OF “NATION BUILDING”; IT’S JUST NOT THE AMERICAN NATION THAT ITS GOVERNMENT IS BUILDING. Nick Turse notes the stark contrast between rhetoric and reality in President Obama’s words that the U.S. is not interested in “nation building” abroad but in “freeing resources” from investment in foreign development to [...]
DOES ISRAEL HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST? Let’s put that another way, says Patrick Higgins; does “murderous settler-colonialism” have a right to exist? The current Israeli raids on Gaza provoke this question. Higgins compares the Jewish settler movement in the middle east to the process of white settlers “winning the west” from native Americans. [...]
“THERE ARE ALWAYS WAYS TO WORK FOR PEACE.“ So says Kathy Kelly, describing some of her work with Afghan Peace Volunteers. Besides urging international action to demand and enforce a cessation of hostilities in the country, APV supports a collective of Afghan women who work to create vital supplies of bedding and warm clothing [...]
“IT DOESN’T MATTER WHETHER A CAT IS BLACK OR WHITE PROVIDED IT CATCHES MICE.” This statement, attributed to former Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping, reflects the pragmatic combination of private enterprise capitalism and state-controlled communism that set China on its continuing course of rapid economic development. Now, as Ronald Reagan might say about the [...]
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