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Decline and fall – Drop dead date pushed up, new Pharaoh in town

Drop dead date pushed up – Man made pollution, mostly CO2, is accelerating at a rate that has a definite endpoint for world civilization as we know it. Since accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere sticks around for hundreds of years, we won’t be able to change the cycle of oblivion once it gets rolling. (Image: Takver)

In 2004, Lawrence Smith of UCLA pointed out that vast reservoirs of methane gas stored under Siberian permafrost could enter the atmosphere as global warming accelerated ice melts holding the tundra together. By 2008, the beginning of the permafrost melt was imminent and warnings were sounded. Now, we hear that the methane release, 20 times the pollution effect of CO2, will cost $60 trillion in adaptions to the damage to the environment (yes, $60 trillion).

What profound denial. Why characterize catastrophic global climate change in terms of dollars? Why not just say: there is no chance to mitigate this emerging cycle of oblivion because world leaders won’t even mention the topic and by the time they do, it will be too late. We’re done. Stick a fork in us.

Yemen, Guantanamo Bay, drones and the war on journalists

When we think about a secret drone strikes, we often imagine remote and mountainous North West Pakistan, where Taliban fighters flee from neighboring Afghanistan in order to rest, recruit and regroup. Although the majority of America’s robotic death rains down there, other parts of the world are on the receiving end of this superpower’s displeasure.

Yemen is one such place. There the US supported government struggles against rebels and, according to diplomatic cables, allegedly acquired by Bradley Manning and released by Wikileaks, the Yemeni government pretends US drone strikes are its own. The puppet state imprisons journalists at the direct request of President Obama, and the military actions are approved by him at a weekly meeting that the White House staff and others call “Terror Tuesday.”

Urge Your Senator to Champion Safer Nuclear Power Waste Disposal

For decades, the federal government has failed to properly manage and dispose of the nation's radioactive nuclear waste. As a result, the waste has remained on site at nuclear power plants across the country. The waste poses significant risks to millions of Americans' health and safety because most of it is stored in overcrowded pools.

Tomorrow, a critical hearing in the Senate could determine whether any progress is made in addressing this unacceptable, avoidable risk—and your senator needs to hear from you.

To better protect Americans, independent experts agree that radioactive waste that has cooled sufficiently should be transferred to concrete and steel dry casks. In fact, in most cases the pools contain much more radiation than the reactors. An accident or terrorist attack resulting in a rapid loss of cooling water from a pool could lead to a fire and the release of a massive quantity of highly radioactive material.

The Founding Contradiction

How many years are we away from a national apology over slavery?

Wait, scratch that word, “apology.” Too late, not possible. The scope of the wrong was too great. Make that a national atonement — an owning up to the crime, a pause in the collective heartbeat, eye contact, prayer, remorse. And the question: What can we do to right matters?

Perhaps the time is no longer to be measured in generations.

Let’s begin with the names of the insured: Aaron, Abby, Abraham … Chloe, Congo, Courtney … all the sundry Jacks and Jims and Williams … Winney, Woodley, Woodson, Zach. Human beings with single names, like pets. Commodities, severed — for legal purposes — from their souls. No ties to a past, no depth of existence. _Here, boy._ They came when you whistled. They had a function. And they were worth money to their owners.

We have to understand what we have done. That’s the only way to make sure we’re not still doing it.

My opinion on the whole Trayvon Martin situation

Well, I am very disappointed at the fact that Zimmerman was found not guilty because I know, as well as everyone else, that George Zimmerman committed homicide, on the day of April 11, 2012. The fact that his father was a retired judge and that his parents had money means they could have paid the judge and the police off so that George could be proven not guilty. In other words, who really knows the reason he wasn't found guilty?

Also, I do not understand why African Americans get so enraged when a white person kills a black person. We have people dying every day from black-on-black crime and no one ever cares, right? Because it’s no big deal.

So, before we point the finger, I believe it is important to make a difference in the world we live in, to start a change, and be the change. Believe it or not, according a report published by Columbus Dispatch on July 18, 2013, the crime rate for homicides in Columbus from 2000-2012 has actually lowered down to 44.

Progressivism needs to grow mobile

Nearly 10 percent of Americans – more than 30 million people- now live in mobile homes. Recently, my wife and I became two of them.

We had been living in a $1,000 per month (rent plus utilities) Wilmington, NC site-built house whose owner, following five years of our tenancy, chose to re-occupy. We had to go. With little savings, two dogs and three cats our options were limited. Other rental houses were too expensive and apartments that would accept our menagerie were non-existent.

Luckily, we found a 1968 40’x12’ fixer-upper with an 8’x16’screen porch for four grand ($2500 purchase price and $1500 renovations). Now we’re on Lot 16 in a tree-packed RV park in Holden Beach, midway between the Myrtles and Wilmington, - ground zero of Trailer-land.

Holden is a quasi-resort town which still has anti-Obama billboards mixed in with the Repent signs on the main drag nearly a year past the election. It has its share of million dollar homes on the waterfront but two miles inland, where we are, the stock is mostly working-class.

Obama's willing executioners of the Fourth Amendment

It’s now painfully clear that the president has put out a contract on the Fourth Amendment. And at the Capitol, the hierarchies of both parties are stuffing it into the trunks of their limousines, so each provision can be neatly fitted with cement shoes and delivered to the bottom of the Potomac.

Some other Americans are on a rescue mission. One of them, Congressman Justin Amash, began a debate on the House floor Wednesday with a vow to “defend the Fourth Amendment.” That’s really what his amendment -- requiring that surveillance be warranted -- was all about.

No argument for the Amash amendment was more trenchant than the one offered by South Carolina Republican Jeff Duncan, who simply read the Fourth Amendment aloud.

To quote those words was to take a clear side: “_The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized._”

CBC Chair Marcia Fudge, Senators Ron Wyden, Rand Paul and OpEdNews / Rob Kall honored with the Pillar Human Rights Award

ACORN 8 and Federally Employed Women-Legal Education Fund (FEW/LEF) will co-host this year's Whistleblower Summit for Civil & Human Rights on July 29-31, 2013. The Government Accountability Project and the Pacifica Foundation will continue their support of whistleblowers and this event. Over the last seven years members from the Make it Safe Coalition (MISC) have arranged an assembly of whistleblowers in Washington, DC each year for an annual conference originally known as Washington Whistleblower's Week.

We are proud to announce that Congressional Black Caucus Chair Marcia Fudge (D-OH), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) will be honored with a Pillar Human Rights Award for International Person's of Conscience. We will also recognize journalists with Pillar Awards this year; Rob Kall will be recognized for OpEd News (New Media) and a posthumous award goes to Ambrose Lane (Journalist) and Host of "We Ourselves" on WPFW.

The Pillar is awarded to notable civil and human rights champions; p revious recipients include Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Senator Charles "Chuck" Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO).

Russia’s campaign against human rights

On July 21 Russian police officers detained and interrogated four Dutch filmmakers for several hours. Arrested outside the Russian city of Murmansk, the filmmakers were shooting coverage at an LGBT camp and planned to make a documentary that tracked the gay rights movements throughout Russia. Aside from detention, each filmmaker faces a charge of 3,000 roubles and deportation.

Radiation expert exposes danger to Ohioans from fracking waste: Better public protection needed from State and Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District

The FreshWater Accountability Project Ohio (FWAPOH) today released a report on the presence and dangers of radiation present throughout the horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) industry that is extracting minerals in Ohio. The report, authored by Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a longtime expert on radioactive waste management and since 1992, on radiation hazards from oil and gas drilling, details the serious problem associated with bringing up long-buried radium and other naturally-occurring hazards from thousands of feet underground. The radiation is associated directly with the "hottest" areas of gas and oil productivity in deep shale layers and is an inevitable and burgeoning waste problem.

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