Exit Wounds: Defending Our Vets
By Elizabeth Gettelman
Another Veterans' Day is upon us, and there's perhaps no more appropriate time to pause and consider the challenges facing our 23 million military vets. There's the obvious: wars on two fronts, which affect our troops-to-be-vets and the VA system at large, and the Ft. Hood massacre, which magnifies the severity of dual (and expanding) wars, being fought by a beleaguered and traumatized fighting force.
Today will be full of symbolism and remembrances, but there are also real policies being negotiated on Capitol Hill that can help support vets in the long-run. Two weeks ago, President Obama signed a bill to keep funding steady for veterans' health care services during protracted budget negotiations. Yesterday, Sen. Tom ("Dr. No") Coburn (R-Okla.) continued to be the roadblock on a $3.7 billion bill that would expand mental care and offer home assistance to wounded veterans, citing "wasteful spending" in his opposition to the bill. This was the same day that the VA settled a lawsuit pending over a two-tour Michigan vet with PTSD who died after an overdose; his family said the VA failed to hospitalize him or enter into a mental-health facility.
Mental- and other health-care funding, troop levels in Afghanistan, the state of our taxed VA system, these all have residual effects on vets today and vets tomorrow. And we can Support Our Troops with banners and bumper stickers all we want, but when it takes a domestic attack on a military base by one of our own for Texas to ramp up mental health funding for its veterans, we all must not be paying close enough attention. |
|
Coal Group Misrepresents Veterans
By Kate Sheppard
The coal front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity has been in hot water lately for employing an astroturf group that forged letters to Congress opposing the House climate bill—and then for possibly lying under oath about their position. Now ACCCE is in trouble again—for misrepresenting the views of two major veterans groups in an email hyping coal's role in energy security.
The email, sent in anticipation of Veterans' Day, argues that coal can play a vital role in reducing America's dependence on foreign oil and cites two groups—VoteVets and Operation Free. The problem: both of those groups are strong supporters of climate legislation—in part because of the national security threats posed by global warming—while ACCCE has been working energetically to undermine a bill. |
|
Blackwater Said to Pursue Bribes to Iraq After 17 Died
By MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. |
|
PEER: EPA orders employees to remove YouTube video critical of cap-and-trade climate policy
By (ClimateScienceWatch)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered two of its attorneys to remove a video they posted on YouTube about problems with climate change legislation backed by the Obama administration or face "disciplinary action", according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The couple had received clearance for posting the video but EPA took issue with its content following publication of an op-ed piece by the two in The Washington Post on October 31.
The video, entitled "The Huge Mistake," is by Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, two EPA enforcement attorneys speaking as private citizens. The video explains why the cap & trade plan endorsed by President Obama will not accomplish its goals, let alone effectively curb climate change.
|
|
Space Junk Forces ISS Astronauts to Enter Escape Pods
By Michael Barkoviak
A small piece of space debris flew near the International Space Station (ISS) late last week, with ground control flight operators instructing ISS astronauts to hide in escape crafts.
The six-person crew aboard the ISS first learned of the debris early on Friday morning. Since it proved so difficult to monitor it using satellite and ground-based technology, NASA said the piece of debris likely was extremely small.
Due to the space debris, the crew had to sleep in two Russian Soyuz craft designed to be escape pods -- the actual trajectory of the debris was unknown, causing even more alarm from mission operators. |
|
Shakespeare had no BlackBerry and Aristotle mananged without an iPhone
By Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Putting down some of our hi-tech gadgets and hi-octane pastimes might help us make a lot less impact...
I've often said that far more sensible than a 'make poverty history' campaign would be a 'make wealth history' campaign. It is, after all, the wealthy people who do all the damage. The less money you earn, the fewer resources you use up. The wandering Saddhu with a begging bowl is profoundly eco-friendly, while your Bonos and Geldofs, not to mention your yacht-owning oligarchs, consume enormous amounts of oil. City boys drive around in big cars and snort cocaine, neither of which activities is very planet-saving, and just imagine Tony Blair's carbon footprint.
. . .
However, it makes perfect rational sense to argue that the planet could be healed if we all lived more modestly. Trying to make everyone rich, and in a sense. All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life. Westernising the world by commodifying everything, will have the effect of increasing demand for oil, when everyone knows that the sensible thing is to reduce demand.
. ..
The world's richest half billion people – that's about seven per cent of the global population – are responsible for fifty per cent of the world's emissions. Meanwhile, the poorest fifty per cent are responsible for just seven per cent of emissions. One American or European is more often than not responsible for more emissions than an entire village of Africans.
It's pretty obvious that Western lifestyles which rely on gigantic amounts of electricity use up far more resources than a subsistence-based life. |
|
Kerry vows US climate outline for Copenhagen
By Shaun Tandon
Senator John Kerry has pledged to complete a framework of an elusive US climate change deal in time for next month's high-stakes summit in Copenhagen, vowing not to let the world down.
President Barack Obama's election returned the United States to active global efforts to fight climate change, but a year later Congress has yet to make good on promises to set the first-ever US caps on carbon emissions.
After a lobbying mission in the US Capitol by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Kerry said Tuesday the Senate, while unlikely to complete legislation, would give US negotiators an outline before the December 7-18 talks in the Danish capital.
"We are engaged in the process that will hopefully put us in a position to go to Copenhagen with a sort of framework, or outline, or where the Senate will be heading in its legislation," Kerry told a joint news conference. |
|
Finding the truth at Fort Hood
By Dan Kennedy
A senseless killing spree. A suspect with a troubled and troubling past whose extreme religious views may have played a role in his homicidal outburst. Questions as to why no one intervened before he went off, and what should be done to prevent it from happening again.
The foregoing describes Nidal Malik Hasan, the US army major accused of shooting 13 people to death at Fort Hood, Texas, last week. But it also describes other American killers who've slipped in and out of America's collective consciousness over the years.
The difference is that Hasan's religiously inspired (if that's what it was) murder spree is tied to Islam. The others were not. . .
. . .
But before we get all worked up about how many mosque-going Americans are receiving coded messages from Osama bin Laden's cave, it's worth recalling other religiously-inspired murders and thinking about why we get so much more worked up when it's a Muslim who pulls the trigger.
For instance, Scott Roeder, charged with the 31 May murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller, who performed late-term abortions, has reportedly suffered from mental illness and has been tied to radical Christian extremists, including the Army of God, which hails him as a hero on its website. (The site includes photographs so repulsive that I refuse to link there.) |
|
Investment in renewables falls by 20 per cent in 2009
By (Ecologist)
The renewable power sector has been hit by a significant fall in investment over the past year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Energy companies around the world have been cutting back on project spending as a result of falling energy demand faltering cash flows because of the global financial crisis.
However, renewables-based power generation has suffered far worse than any other sector, with investment expected to fall by almost one-fifth.
In its World Energy Outlook 2009, the IEA said that without the stimulus provided by government fiscal packages, investment would have fallen by almost 30 per cent. |
|
World needs Canada’s 'dirty oil', says IEA
By Peter O’Neil
The world needs Canada's so-called dirty oil, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday even as it called on leaders to make decisive moves to slash greenhouse gas emissions at a United Nations-sponsored negotiating session next month.
"World leaders gathering in Copenhagen next month for the UN Climate Summit have a historic opportunity to avert the worst effects of climate change," IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka said in a statement after releasing the agency's annual World Energy Outlook analysis.
The IEA, which is funded by and provides advice to Canada and 27 other industrialized countries, said lower emissions are needed not only to protect the environment but also to enhance energy security during a period of soaring demand.
Without concrete actions to limit emissions, primarily through efficiency measures and new technology, energy demand will jump by 40% between now and 2030, the IEA said in its report. |
|
Energy body rejects whistleblower allegations of oil cover up
By Hilary Whiteman
The International Energy Agency has rejected reported allegations from a whistleblower that world oil reserves have been exaggerated to avoid panic buying in the oil market.
A senior source within the IEA is reported to have told The Guardian newspaper that many within the agency believe the body's prediction for oil supplies "is much higher than can be justified."
In its annual outlook released on Tuesday, the IEA repeated its prediction that oil supplies would rise to 105 million barrels by 2030 under current government policy.
"We're the ones that are out there warning that the oil and gas is running out in the most authoritative manner. But we don't see it happening as quickly as some of the peak oil theorists," Richard Jones, deputy executive director of the IEA, told CNN. |
|
Food: Is Monsanto the answer or the problem?
By Carey Gillam
Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, had only months to live when he received a visit from an old friend, Rob Fraley, chief of technology for Monsanto Co.
Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work increasing food production in starving areas of the globe, welcomed Fraley to his Dallas home, where the two men sipped coffee and tea and discussed a subject dear to their hearts: the future of agriculture and the latest challenges of feeding the human race.
Fraley, who first met Borlaug 20 years earlier, when they served as founding board members for an agricultural group that works with developing nations, said he showed his friend photos of new types of corn that Monsanto was developing. Using biotechnology and genetic transfers, Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, hoped to create a corn variety that could grow well in dry conditions, even in drought-prone Africa, helping to alleviate hunger and poverty -- and fatten its bottom line. |
|
The fight over the future of food
By Claudia Parsons, Russell Blinch and Svetlana Kovalyova
At first glance, Giuseppe Oglio's farm near Milan looks like it's suffering from neglect. Weeds run rampant amid the rice fields and clover grows unchecked around his millet crop.
Oglio, a third generation farmer eschews modern farming techniques -- chemicals, fertilizers, heavy machinery -- in favor of a purely natural approach. It is not just ecological, he says, but profitable, and he believes his system can be replicated in starving regions of the globe.
Nearly 5,000 miles away, in laboratories in St. Louis, Missouri, hundreds of scientists at the world's biggest seed company, Monsanto, also want to feed the world, only their tools of choice are laser beams and petri dishes.
Monsanto, a leader in agricultural biotechnology, spends about $2 million a day on scientific research that aims to improve on Mother Nature, and is positioning itself as a key player in the fight against hunger.
The Italian farmer and the U.S. multinational represent the two extremes in an increasingly acrimonious debate over the future of food. |
|
Obama weighs four options in Afghanistan: White House
By Ross Colvin
President Barack Obama's deliberations over war strategy in Afghanistan have narrowed to four options but a decision is still weeks away, the White House said on Tuesday.
"The president will have an opportunity to discuss four options with his national security team tomorrow," Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters aboard Air Force One.
. . .
Record combat deaths have eroded U.S. public support for the war in Afghanistan, and a decision to expand troop levels could become a political liability for the president ahead of congressional elections next year.
In a letter to Obama dated Wednesday, when the United States will mark Veteran's Day, a group of senior Republican senators urged Obama to immediately authorize the deployment of the troops that the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, requested. |
|
|