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Good Morning!
Earthrise. Photo credit: NASA
Nature's Way
by Robert William Service
To tribulations of mankind
Dame Nature is indifferent;
To human sorrow she is blind,
And deaf to human discontent.
Mid fear and fratricidal fray,
Mid woe and tyranny of toil,
She goes her unregarding way
Of sky and sun and soil.
In leaf and blade, in bud and bloom
Exultantly her gladness glows,
And careless of Man's dreary doom
Around the palm she wreathes the rose;
Creating beauty everywhere,
With happy bird in holy song . . .
Please God, let us be unaware
Like her of wrath and wrong.
Let us too be indifferent,
And in her hands our fate resign;
Aye, though the world with rage is rent
Let us be placid as the pine.
For if we turn from greed and guile
Maybe Dame Nature will relent,
And bless us with her lovely smile
Of comfort and content.
News
Miles Barr: Printing Solar Cells on Paper and Clothes
Forget about putting solar panels on the roof. Miles Barr wants to make curtains, cell-phone cases, and even shirtsleeves that generate electricity from the sun.
Barr, who earned a chemical engineering Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an expert in chemical vapor deposition. That’s a process in which two vapors are piped into a sealed chamber, where they react, creating a thin, solid film around an object inside. The technique isn’t new; it’s been used to add a waterproof layer to fabric, for example. Barr successfully adapted the technology to “print” an electrically active solar cell coating onto ordinary materials, starting with a sheet of paper in 2010. “When we first did that, it really sparked a lot of imagination,” says Barr, 28. “If you can put a solar cell on paper, what else can you put it on?”
My Earth Day wish: A better human brain
For Earth Day, Treehugger asked several green types what one wish they had that might make the world a better place. The answers were interesting and diverse — you can read them all here.
Here’s mine:
I would change the human brain. Thanks to millions of years evolving in small groups on the savannah, our brains are rather maladapted to being part of a single human tribe of billions, most of whom we will never see or know, with collective effects on our global habitat that play out incrementally over centuries and are irreversible and possibly unadaptable.
Green Jobs Help The Planet And Communities Of Color
These jobs are on the rise. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Green Goods and Services—defined as jobs in businesses that produce goods and provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources—accounted for 3.1 million U.S. jobs in 2010, or 2.4 percent of total employment that year. These jobs span a wide variety of sectors—including construction, manufacturing, professional services, and science- and research-related fields.
Nowhere has this growth been more striking than in America’s urban centers. According to a recent Brookings Institution report, green job growth outpaced traditional job growth at a rate of nearly 2-to-1 in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan centers from 2008 to 2010. Another study from the Apollo Alliance, the Initiative for a Competitive City, and Green for All found that inner-city green jobs grew at 10 times the rate of jobs overall in the last decade. It’s no surprise, then, that urban centers account for roughly two-thirds of green-job-sector employment.
Okay you green people...
A Ban on Some Seafood Has Fishermen Fuming
GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Standing on the deck of his rusted steel trawler, Naz Sanfilippo fumed about the latest bad news for New England fishermen: a decision by Whole Foods to stop selling any seafood it does not consider sustainable.
Starting Sunday, gray sole and skate, common catches in the region, will no longer appear in the grocery chain’s artfully arranged fish cases. Atlantic cod, a New England staple, will be sold only if it is not caught by trawlers, which drag nets across the ocean floor, a much-used method here.
“It’s totally maddening,” Mr. Sanfilippo said. “They’re just doing it to make all the green people happy.”
How Pete Peterson is driving the fiscal consensus
Trudy Lieberman has a good post at CJR on the “surprisingly broad consensus” around the need to reduce the fiscal deficit in general, and to take aim at Social Security in particular. “Social Security,” she writes, “is the one issue on which the electorate is not divided” — but that hasn’t stopped a bipartisan group of Washington grandees from preaching doom whenever it is brought up.
More generally, the idea of “fiscal responsibility” seems to have become as American as motherhood and apple pie — both parties preach it, and say the other guys are the profligate ones. The group of people saying “hey, we print our own money, interest rates are at zero, inflation is not an issue, the corporate sector isn’t borrowing, there are a thousand more important things to worry about right now, why on earth is everybody worried about the deficit all of a sudden” is in a decided minority.
The obsession about fiscal prudence is a new phenomenon, and can be dated, pretty much, to 2008, when Blackstone went public and Pete Peterson took his billion dollars in proceeds and decided to use it to found the Peter G Peterson Foundation. Wherever fiscal prudence is preached, Peterson’s money can nearly always be found.
And they just figured this out? Somebody needs to examine his own role too.
National Journal reports: Things are bad out in Real America
The crumbling of once-great institutions isn't to blame for middle-class decline and anger. Politicians are
Ron Fournier, the editor in chief of the National Journal, and reporter Sophie Quinton have a story on hard times in Muncie, Ind., as a microcosm of the failure of American institutions as a whole.
It’s a good piece. It’s even an “important” piece, in the sense that the cloistered elites who run the country could learn something of the reality of life out in the country at large if this piece makes it to their desks. D.C.-based news organizations should report from “the rest of America” more often, because in Washington mass foreclosures and double-digit unemployment are usually seen as abstract problems slightly less pressing than the fact that Social Security will, decades from now, pay out slightly more than it takes in. (Joe Klein, who is basically a buffoon, returned from his stunt “2010 road trip” sounding suddenly much less buffoonish. Getting outside the bubble is often instructive.)
Sometimes, When "All the Facts are In," It's Worse: The UC-Davis Pepper-Spray Report
You know how every time somebody in law enforcement does something that looks bad, we're told that we should "wait until the facts are in" before passing judgment? Well, after Lieutenant Pike of the UC Davis Police Department became an internet meme by using high-pressure pepper-spray on peaceful resisters, the campus hired an independent consulting firm to interview everybody they could find, review all the videos and other evidence, review the relevant policies and laws, and issue a final fact-finding report to the university. The university just released that report, along with their summary (PDF link), and the final report is even worse than the news accounts made it seem.
Surveillance State evils
“Th[e National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.“
[ ... ]
At the time of the Church Committee, it was the FBI that conducted most domestic surveillance. Since its inception, the NSA was strictly barred from spying on American citizens or on American soil. That prohibition was centrally ingrained in the mindset of the agency. Church issued that above-quoted warning out of fear that, one day, the NSA’s massive, unparalleled surveillance capabilities would be directed inward, at the American people. Until the Church Committee’s investigation, most Americans, including its highest elected officials, knew almost nothing about the NSA (it was referred to as No Such Agency by its employees). As James Bamford wrote about Church’s reaction to his own findings about the NSA’s capabilities, “he came away stunned.” At the time, Church also said: “I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
Of course, that bridge has long ago been crossed, without even much discussion, let alone controversy. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, George Bush ordered the NSA to spy on the communications of Americans on American soil, and they’ve been doing it ever since, with increasing aggression and fewer and fewer constraints. That development is but one arm in the creation of an American Surveillance State that is, literally, ubiquitous — one that makes it close to impossible for American citizens to communicate or act without detection from the U.S. Government — a state of affairs Americans have long been taught since childhood is a hallmark of tyranny. Such are the times — in both America generally and the Democratic Party in particular — that those who now echo the warnings issued 35 years ago by Sen. Church (when surveillance was much more restrained, legally and technologically) are scorned by all Serious People as radical hysterics.
The world is not enough for Google bosses
Not content with the domination of cyberspace, Google's billionaire founders have set their sights on outer space – and the mining of natural resources from asteroids
Planetary Resources was co-founded by Eric Anderson, a former Nasa Mars-mission manager, and Peter Diamandis, the commercial space entrepreneur behind the X-Prize competition,which offered £6m to a group that launched a reusable manned spacecraft.
The venture will be the latest foray into the far-flung for Cameron, who last month dived in a mini-submarine to the deepest spot in the Mariana Trench. It also has echoes of his 2009 science fiction blockbuster Avatar, which concerned mining on alien planets.
Planetary Resources will be the second billionaire-backed private space company to be announced within the past six months. In December, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen unveiled his new firm, Stratolaunch Systems, which plans to build the world's largest aircraft and use it as an air-based launch pad to send people into orbit.
Italian museum burns artworks in protest at cuts
A museum in Italy has started burning its artworks in protest at budget cuts which it says have left cultural institutions out of pocket.
Antonio Manfredi, of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples, set fire to the first painting on Tuesday.
"Our 1,000 artworks are headed for destruction anyway because of the government's indifference," he said.
The work was by French artist Severine Bourguignon, who was in favour of the protest and watched it online.
Video: Former astronauts welcome space shuttle Discovery to Smithsonian
Former astronauts, including John Glenn, reflected on their time in space as the shuttle Discovery arrived at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center. (Video by Elise Brown, Medill News Service)
I put these stories together because I think they are closely related. It looks like Obama has a problem with young voters (compared to 2008) and that he will of course work the college campuses. But is also looks like Van Jones' job is to try to get those votes back, and that the student loans issue will be central to that.
Is Obama in Trouble With Young Voters?
President Obama could be in big trouble when it comes to the youth vote, according to a new poll.
Less than half of 18-to-24-year-old voters want Obama to win reelection, and he leads a generic Republican candidate by just 7 percentage points, according to a survey of youth voter attitudes released Thursday by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.
That single-digit lead represents a dramatic drop from 2008, when Obama won the votes of that age group by a 34-point margin over John McCain -- 66 percent to 32 percent -- according to exit polls.
Obama to visit top college campuses in 3 battleground states
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will visit college campuses in the election battleground states of North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa next week, where he’ll call for Congress to stop interest rates on student loans from skyrocketing this summer.
The White House says that more than 7.4 million students will see interest rates double as of July 1 unless Congress acts. Obama will visit with college students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Iowa in a two-day swing that also will help him court the youthful voters whose support was crucial to his victory in 2008. As part of the student-loan campaign, the White House is employing social media to press the president’s case, using Twitter, Facebook and Google+ with the hashtag of #DontDoubleMyRate.
Van Jones interview with Rolling Stone:
Van Jones: 'Progressives Have Another Century to Win!'
I talked to Jones recently at the University of Chicago's International House, where he was speaking to students about the necessity to turn back Washington’s austerity agenda, just down the street from where Barack Obama used to teach law. [ ... ]
You were one of the first prominent national Democrats to embrace the Occupy movement. Tell me about that.
I was just appalled that so many progressives were criticizing them (this was behind the scenes, on listservs)—their lack of messaging, how they looked, that kind of thing. [ ... ]
"Occupy had the anger," you recently told me. "We have answers and solutions." Say more about that.
Occupy obliterated the conversation so that even Republicans had to start talking about economic inequality. But we’ve got to go from changing the conversation to changing the conditions. [ ... ]
So how is Rebuild the Dream working towards that goal?
Two ways. [ ... ] So the biggest way we can help working class and middle class people in the near term is by one, getting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reduce the principle on these underwater mortgages and, two, preventing the interest rates from the most important student loans from doubling on July 1.
The Burgeoning Student Debt Problem
Even though other consumer debt-bombs have done more damage, student debt is producing significant social and economic distortions. One is so useful to the authority structure that it seems certain that they will keep this type of bondage in place. Heavy debt loads pressure young people into making conservative choices. If you carry a lot in the way of student loans, you have to worry about employability. That doesn’t simply push graduates into bigger ticket (hence more conventional) career choices; more important, it makes them far less likely to step out of line. In particular, an arrest record, which is often a by product of protesting, is an automatic out with a lot of employers.
UN Security Council Approves Sending Observers to Syria
The United Nations Security Council unanimously backed sending 300 unarmed observers to Syria to monitor a cease-fire agreement between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebel groups fighting to oust him as violence continued.
The resolution 2043, sponsored by Russia and China, nations that objected to tougher U.S. backed measures against Syria, will allow monitors to be deployed for an initial period of 90 days, according to a text of the resolution.
Robert Fisk: Counter-revolution – the next deadly chapter
And there you have it. As Khouri notes, there's now a new group called the "Security Cooperation Forum" linking the US with the Gulf Cooperation Council. La Clinton turned up to assure the oil states of Washington's "rock solid and unwavering commitment" to the GCC. Now where have we heard that before? Why, isn't that what Obama is always saying to the Israelis? And weren't Bibi Netanyahu of Israel and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia the two guys who called Obama to ask him to save Mubarak?
And in Syria – where the Qataris and the Saudis are all too keen to send weapons for the rebels – things are not going very well for the revolution. After claiming for weeks a year ago that "armed bands" were attacking government forces, the bands now exist and are well and truly attacking Assad's legions. For many tens of thousands who were prepared to demonstrate peacefully – albeit at the cost of their lives – this has become a disaster. Syrian friends of mine call it a "tragedy". They blame the Gulf states for encouraging the armed uprising. "Our revolution was pure and clean and now it's a war," one of them said to me last week. I believe them
And the violence is creeping ever closer to Lebanon. [ ... ]
'Huge' water resource exists under Africa
Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater.
[ ... ]
Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, they stress that large scale drilling might not be the best way of increasing water supplies.
Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water.
[ ... ]
"Where there's greatest ground water storage is in northern Africa, in the large sedimentary basins, in Libya, Algeria and Chad," she said.
In pictures: Taliban 'spring offensive' in Afghanistan
Bug-splat.
America’s drone sickness
There are many evils in the world, but extinguishing people’s lives with targeted, extra-judicial killings, when you don’t even know their names, based on “patterns” of behavior judged from thousands of miles away, definitely ranks high on the list. Although the Obama White House has not approved of this request from CIA Director David Petraeus, these so-called “signature strikes” that “allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior” are already robustly used in Pakistan — having been started by George Bush in 2008 and aggressively escalated by Barack Obama. There is much to say on this new report, but in order for me to focus on three discrete points, permit me to highly recommend two superb articles that highlight other vital aspects of this policy: (1) this article from my Salon colleague Jefferson Morley this morning on why this form of drone-targeting is pure American Terrorism, and (2) this essay from Chris Floyd about a recently published Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings on Obama’s love of drones and secret wars and how the military’s slang for drone victims — “bug splat” — reflects the sociopathic mindset that drive them.
Best course for Iranian nuclear talks: Take it slow, say experts http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/20/146170/best-course-for-iranian-nuclear.html
Instead, Catherine Ashton, representing six major powers and the European Union, and Saeed Jalili, representing Iran, spoke about their hometowns, religion, the Arab Spring, democracy and the role of women, said an EU diplomat, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the details of the private meeting publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The icebreaker at the private residence of the Iranian consul led one day later to the most serious and businesslike meeting in recent memory between Iran and the other countries, in which the sides agreed to pursue a “comprehensive negotiated solution” to one of the world’s most vexing security problems at another round of talks next month.
[ ... ]
One of the key actors in the drama, Israel, is not at the table. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear program if the West can’t bring the Islamic Republic to heel. Netanyahu already has called the scheduling of new talks in Baghdad for May 23 a “freebie” that allowed Iran five additional weeks to enrich uranium.
“They are the elephant in the parlor,” said Mark Hibbs a Berlin-based scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Everyone sitting at the table will be aware that if we don’t have an outcome that looks like a roadmap that can inspire confidence, we’re courting
Petraeus and the signature of U.S. terror
It seems Petraeus and his allies in the current inter-agency debate do not want to be constrained by a list. They calculate if the U.S. slaughters a particular crowd of people at an al-Qaida funeral, they are sure to kill men plotting to attack the United States. The logic, if not the morality, is persuasive: If you kill the certainly innocent, you will also get some of the presumably guilty.
This is also the logic of terrorism, which is one reason why the defenders of “signature strikes” prefer that their names not be published in the Washington Post.
Presumably Karzai and the Afghan Parliament are already on board? I'm not sure if this is a done deal or not. Also, the article says that many of the terms are outlined but not specific which to me is concerning.
U.S. and Afghanistan Reach Partnership Agreement
KABUL, Afghanistan — After months of negotiations, the United States and Afghanistan on Sunday finalized drafts of the strategic partnership agreement that pledges American support for Afghanistan for 10 years after the withdrawal of troops at the end of 2014.
The United States Ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and Afghanistan’s national security adviser, Rangin Spanta, agreed on the wording of the draft, which will now be sent to President Hamid Karzai and to the Afghan Parliament for review and approval before it is signed by the presidents of the both countries, according to American and Afghan officials.
[ ... ]
“It covers the broad spectrum of the existing, broad-based, comprehensive partnership between the two countries with the view towards sustaining that for at least another decade beyond the end of transition in 2014,” the official said.
The document outlines the two countries future relationship rather than specifying exact amounts of support or programs, but officials from both countries have said they hope that it will send a signal to insurgents and other destabilizing forces here that the United States is not going to abandon Afghanistan as it did in the 1990s after the Soviets were driven out. Rather American will continue to support the country in many areas.