11.25.10
Posted in you've got mail at 11:38 am by nemo
RG mail
Why Madagascar Matters
Susan Zakin
Posted: November 24, 2010
“Sorry, Suzanne, but I can’t drive you to the airport. I would be too
afraid to drive back alone at night,” my friend Marie-Chantal said.
I looked at her, doing a quick calculation in my head before realizing
Marie-Chantal* wasn’t making an excuse; she was truly scared. I had
lived in Madagascar for three months in 2001, and, like many writers and
artists before me, I left convinced that Madagascar was as close as one
could come to Paradise. This was not only because the island’s landscape
was phenomenally beautiful, filled with unique plants and animals that
made the world’s fourth-largest island a biologist’s fantasy land. It
was Madagascar’s culture that floored me.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-zakin/post_1327_b_788119.html
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:35 am by nemo
RG mail
GRANMA
November 23th, 2010
Evo Morales Calls for End of Coups d’Etat
SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia,
November 22. – Bolivian President Evo Morales calledtoday for an end to coups d’etat in Latin America and the world, most of them carried out with the protection of the United States.
Morales set out his convincing arguments while inaugurating the 9th Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, among whom was Robert Gates, from the United States, and recalled that in 2008 his government was the victim of these plans, organized by Washington’s representative, Philip Goldberg, whom he expelled from the country.
The Bolivian President asserted that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) supported conspiring groups, so they terminated their operations in the Andean nation.
The head of state recalled that so far these attempted coups have taken place in Venezuela (2002), Bolivia (2008), Honduras (2009) and more recently in Ecuador.
They succeeded only in Tegucigalpa, he clarified, when the US empire imposed anillegal and anti-popular government.
One of the challenges of this 9th Conference, he underlined, is to be able to contribute to put an end to coups d’etat in Latin America and the world. Thesemaneuvers, he added, are now aimed at destabilizing revolutionary governments.
Morales condemned the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1962 for the socialist nature of its Revolution, a measure that the new enemies of similar processes in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua are urging to adopt today.
In his opinion, the current doctrine of imperialism is against the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), a mechanism for integration favoring membernations to complement each other in solidarity, rather than competitiveness.
(PL)
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11.24.10
Posted in 1848+, Ultra Far Left at 2:01 pm by nemo
I knock off early today, but will post tommorrow at length (maybe) since many arrive here on their days off.
I am working on the Green Tea Party membership card (fill out your own), and party line.
Think Ultra Far Left (left of Karl Marx) and you won’t be far off. It’s even more visionary than ‘end times Zarathustrianities’ of all brands.
Actually in a less serious vein it is important to know where the government is located. If it is Langley, Virginia, and not Washington, that’s important information.
That’s all folks (til tommorrow)
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Posted in Evolution at 1:53 pm by nemo
Secrets of Sharks’ Success: Flexible Scales Enable Fast Turning
ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2010) — New research from the University of South Florida suggests that one of the evolutionary secrets of the shark’s success hides in one of its tiniest traits — flexible scales on the bodies of these peerless predators that make them better hunters by allowing them to change directions while moving at full speed.
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Posted in General at 1:51 pm by nemo
http://darwiniana.com/2010/11/24/im-founding-the-new-green-tea-party-repost/
The failure of the left to cop to the ‘invisible government’, visible in the
CIA actions from JFK to 9/11 shows the bankruptcy, and possible cooptation of the left. Noone is asking for a mindset embracing conspiracy theories, but a simple evidentiary openness should have warned figures on the left to be wary here.
We are left wondering who has been bought off on the left.
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Posted in Evolution at 1:47 pm by nemo
The Legacy of Darwinism
Arguments don’t always work with Darwinism, since propagandists don’t care about truth, protecting their market share. Otherwise Darwinism should have passed away long ago.
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Posted in General at 1:44 pm by nemo
Repost from yesterday, due to surprisingly large number of readers. I wrote this as a passing thought, but I can see that people are desperate for some angle on the Tea Partiers, so maybe I will pursue this later, but perhaps not on Thanksgiving.
I’m founding the new Green Tea Party (the ultra far left wing of the Tea Party) More on this tommorrow. But the inspiring example of the Tea Partiers is marred by a few confusions, viz. it is rightwing when it should be left wing, etc…
But the Green Tea Party will share part of the platform of the passe Tea Party.
Thus, if we are going to dump tea in Boston Harbor it should be against the American Empire, rather than the British. And the initiative against Big Government is Right ON, but: the Whitehouse and congress/senate are small potatoes, hardly big government. We need to expose the real ‘big government’, viz. the hidden fascist core that controls American politics via the CIA, and other secret orgs, using black ops, such as those few known, from the JKF assassination (CIA?) to the 9/11 inside job, etc…
Many issues here us to phase out the Tea Party muddle by moving the party to the left.
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Posted in General at 1:36 pm by nemo
Should we let science do our moral thinking?
Let’s hope not! Scientists secretly hate ethical questions because they know science can’t answer them.
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Posted in Evolution at 1:32 pm by nemo
Evolution Timelapse
— By Julia Whitty
| Mon Nov. 22, 2010 2:51 PM PSTSome very cool research coming out of Binghamton University from researchers who’ve revived bacteria trapped for thousands of years in water droplets embedded in salt crystals. The video explains the scope of their work:
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/11/evolution-timelapse
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Posted in Evolution at 1:30 pm by nemo
Thoughts on unemployment
By Guthrie “Guff” Worth
http://www.record-bee.com/ci_16697628
Updated: 11/23/2010 10:11:10 PM PST
The vast majority of Americans believe in capitalism, competition, free enterprise driven by profit motive, economic Darwinism and minimum regulation. Most everyone shies away from actions they feel are socialist even though they may be the most effective solutions to problems. The problem is that the American people do not want to live with the consequences. A lot of people worry about unemployment, but tend to forget that one of the rights the Constitution guarantees is not employment. The same people forget, too, that a healthy unemployment is one of the keys to capitalism. It allows labor competition.
Note the wording here: the use of Darwinism to challenge socialism
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Posted in General at 1:28 pm by nemo
A WORLD AHEAD: the Influence of Wells’ novel through the years
HG Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds in 1898 was a metaphor for imperialism, religious mania and Darwinism. December 31, 1899.
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Posted in Evolution at 1:26 pm by nemo
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/11/how_discover_magazine_carefull040791.html: How Discover Magazine Carefully Keeps Readers in the Dark About Intelligent Design
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Posted in General at 1:23 pm by nemo
Bacteria Help Infants Digest Milk More Effectively Than AdultsScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2010) — Infants are more efficient at digesting and utilizing nutritional components of milk than adults due to a difference in the strains of bacteria that dominate their digestive tracts.
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Posted in General at 1:22 pm by nemo
Human Creativity May Have Evolved as a Way for Parents to Bond With Their ChildrenScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2010) — Evidence from Disneyland suggests that human creativity may have evolved not in response to sexual selection as some scientists believe but as a way to help parents bond with their children and to pass on traditions and cultural knowledge, a new study published in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Tourism Anthropology suggests.
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Posted in General at 1:20 pm by nemo
Early Universe Was a Liquid, Nuclei Collisions at the Large Hadron Collider Show
ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2010) — In an experiment to collide lead nuclei together at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider physicists from the ALICE detector team including researchers from the University of Birmingham have discovered that the very early Universe was not only very hot and dense but behaved like a hot liquid.
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:18 pm by nemo
Published on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 by The Independent/UK
UN Issues Severe Climate Warning Ahead of Summit
by Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/24-5
The world is now firmly on the path for dangerous climate change in the coming century, a major new assessment reveals today on the eve of the forthcoming UN climate conference which opens next week in Mexico.
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:15 pm by nemo
CLIMATE AND CAPITALISM
An online journal focusing on capitalism, climate change, and the
ecosocialist alternative.
http://climateandcapitalism.com
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/CandC-FaceBook
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:13 pm by nemo
Freedoms of Press, Speech & Assembly Under Attack in US
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3269?akid=288.96588.-NhAzM&t=18
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:12 pm by nemo
Michael Moore, Wendell Potter, and the Plot to Discredit ‘Sicko’
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3268?akid=288.96588.-NhAzM&t=16
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:11 pm by nemo
Illness, Medical Bills ‘Plunge Millions Into Poverty’
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3266?akid=288.96588.-NhAzM&t=12
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:10 pm by nemo
New York City Prepares for Nation’s Largest Bike Share System
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3265?akid=288.96588.-NhAzM&t=10
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:09 pm by nemo
Report: Body Scanner Makers Doubled Lobbying Cash Over 5 Years
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3263?akid=288.96588.-NhAzM&t=6
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Posted in global warming, you've got mail at 1:08 pm by nemo
UN Scientists say Emission Pledges Fall Well Short of Halting Climate Change
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3262?akid=288.96588.-NhAzM&t=4
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:07 pm by nemo
More Profits at Corporate Top, More Pain on Jobless Bottom
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3261?akid=288.96588.-NhAzM&t=2
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:04 pm by nemo
RG mail
This really explains the economy! It’s a classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k&feature=player_embedded
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:03 pm by nemo
… a Nightmare for Obama
by Richard Gwyn
Toronto Star (November 21 2010)
As was bound to happen, an article has just appeared, in the Washington
Post and so in a respected, mainstream newspaper, calling on President
Barack Obama to declare he will not run for re-election in 2012.
According to political commentators Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell,
“America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety” that Obama
is magnifying because he “has largely lost the confidence of the governed”.
In order to “galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be
made”, they urge that Obama make an “explicit” announcement that he will
be “a one-term president”.
To pick holes in Schoen and Caddell’s analysis is easy. A president who
turns himself into a lame duck is scarcely likely to be able to mobilize
the American people for the kind of decisions – not just hard ones but
brutally hard ones – that lie ahead of them.
On the substantive point, though, they are right. Americans are facing a
wrenching change of life that in an odd way Tea Party supporters, for all
their superficiality, have expressed better than anyone else.
The core of the change of life America is undergoing is that it is ceasing
to be an exceptional nation.
It will remain for a long time more powerful and richer than anyone else,
and continue to exert immense cultural appeal, for a long time.
But it’s in a phase of inescapable decline. This sense of contraction, of
children’s lives no longer being better than those of the parents, was,
surely, as much the cause of the anxiety and anger expressed in the
mid-term elections as the specifics of unemployment, mortgage foreclosures
and wage cutbacks.
Decline has happened before to Rome and Britain and France and Spain. And,
as is worth noting, to China also.
As was the case with these national empires, and others, this phenomenon
has mostly been self-inflicted.
America tried to do everything – to police the world, to run the world’s
financial system, to maintain its people’s standard of living far beyond
its economic and financial ability to pay for their bills.
And now it’s broke and exhausted. In Afghanistan, its military options
have narrowed down to finding an exit strategy that avoids humiliation.
At home, it is entering, an era of austerity. No longer – any more than
can Ireland or Greece or Portugal – can it avoid paying the pile up of
bills, even by devices such as that of the Federal Reserve in temporarily
shrinking the value of its outstanding bills by printing money.
There is of course the staggering budget deficit. Yet proposals by a
bipartisan commission set up by Obama to suggest ways to squeeze the
deficit down by $4 trillion over four years have provoked, from the
Democrats, “simply unacceptable” and, from the Republicans, a refusal to
even talk about closing tax loopholes.
This is only the best-known deficit. As considerable is the deficit in the
form of the liabilities of so-called entitlement programs. The employee
pension plans of the states are underfunded to the tune of $3.4 trillion.
And there’s the cruellest deficit of all, that of the gap between rich and
poor. America’s top one percent now get one-quarter of the national
income. Their gain has come mostly from the middle class. Again, it was
the Tea Partiers who best understood the American Dream has passed them by.
Obama has not in fact “lost the confidence of the governed”. Indeed, 47
percent told exit pollsters they wanted him to run again in 2012. He has,
though, lost his voice.
If Obama spends the next two years telling his people the truth, he may
well pay the ultimate political price.
But he would have fulfilled his own dictum, as he told TV interviewer
Diane Sawyer, that “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a
mediocre two-term president”.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/4016-end-of-american-dream-a-nightmare-for-obama
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Posted in you've got mail at 1:01 pm by nemo
Can Destroy Your Future Fast
How to Avoid it
RG mail
mercola.com (November 15 2010)
We could be facing the worst economic times in recorded American history -
worse than the Great Depression. Many of the signs are already all around
you. All you have to do is look …
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in you've got mail at 12:59 pm by nemo
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=703262&f=31
Chalmers Johnson Dies at 79; Criticized U.S. Role in World
RG mail
By DENNIS HEVESI
Read the rest of this entry »
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11.23.10
Posted in 1848+, Ultra Far Left at 2:25 pm by nemo
More on this tommorrow. But the inspiring example of the Tea Partiers is marred by a few confusions, viz. it is rightwing when it should be left wing, etc…
But the Green Tea Party will share part of the platform of the passe Tea Party.
Thus, if we are going to dump tea in Boston Harbor it should be against the American Empire, rather than the British. And the initiative against Big Government is Right ON, but: the Whitehouse and congress/senate are small potatoes, hardly big government. We need to expose the real ‘big government’, viz. the hidden fascist core that controls American politics via the CIA, and other secret orgs, using black ops, such as those few known, from the JKF assassination (CIA?) to the 9/11 inside job, etc…
Many issues here us to phase out the Tea Party muddle by moving the party to the left.
Permalink
Posted in General at 2:17 pm by nemo
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap6_6_3.htm
The collision of secularism and religion is a ‘mistake’. The real secularism embraces both religion and its opposite, and finds the ‘sacred’ in the ordinary distinction of consciousness/self-consciousness, in the expression of the ‘will’.
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