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SR Needs Your Support
I have been doing SR every day since 1991, except for very infrequent breaks when it was impossible to get on line. That’s 23 years. In all that time except for a few much appreciated contributions, I have borne all the costs. Now SR needs some support to go forward. So I am asking each of you -- some of you have been subscribers for two decades -- to make a contribution. I would suggest $25 or more if you can do it, less if $25 is too much for your budget. It will help me keep SR going and I thank you in advance.
I want to thank those of you who have already made a contribution. I very much appreciate it and it will help to keep SR up and running. I see this sort of tangible support as a vote telling me SR is valued and that I should continue
-- Stephan
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 Harmonic Healing
By Stephan A. Schwartz
From the earliest times we seem to have known intuitively that the directed mind and human spirit have the power to bring healing to oneself and others. All religions and spiritual paths honor the power of Therapeutic Intent. Now laboratory and clinical research in dozens of studies has confirmed this belief scientifically. The work has demonstrated that everyone has the power to heal. The Healing CD combines a respect for the ancient traditions as well as the insights of science to take you on an inner-voyage that will show you how to link to the greater whole and activate your power to heal.
Use Harmonic Healing once a week, or more often if needed, to heal yourself, and to send healing to others.
Click here for details and ordering information. |
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| Wednesday, 23 April 2014 |
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Government = Protection Racket for the 1 Percent
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| A democracy cannot long survive when its citizens perceive the government to be against their best interests |
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BILL MOYERS and MICHAEL WINSHIP - Bill Moyers.com |
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The evidence of income inequality just keeps mounting. According to 'Working for the Few,” a recent briefing paper from Oxfam, 'In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.”
PewOur now infamous one percent own more than 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 40 percent of the country is in debt. Just this past Tuesday, the 15th of April - Tax Day - the AFL-CIO reported that last year the chief executive officers of 350 top American corporations were paid 331 times more money than the average US worker. Those executives made an average of $11.7 million dollars compared to the average worker who earned $35,239 dollars.
As that analysis circulated on Tax Day, the economic analyst Robert Reich reminded us that in addition to getting the largest percent of total ... |
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The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
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Here is the latest on the vanishing American middle class. This is all self-inflicted damage, and need not have happened.
Click through to see the many useful graphs. |
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DAVID LEONHARDT and KEVIN QUEALY - The New York Times |
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The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.
While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.
After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada - substantially behind in 2000 - now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.
The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of the most detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.
Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in ... |
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Death on the Farm
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| Yet another downward trend. I just hate doing stories like this. They all tell us the same thing: the industrial model of agriculture and animal husbandry wherever it is practiced in the world leads to bad social outcomes. |
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MAX KUTNER - Newsweek |
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On January 21, 2010, a cold, clear day, Dean Pierson woke up early, as usual. The 59-year-old put on a pair of blue jeans and a hooded coat before the sun was up, then went to his barn, turned on the lights, closed all the doors and windows, powered off the fans and cranked up the volume on the radio. He then shot each of his milking cows with a .22-caliber N1 carbine rifle, about 51 of them, between their horns and eyes, hitting their brains and killing them instantly. Pierson then sat down in a wooden chair with an upholstered seat, pulled a ski mask over his face, picked up a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and shot himself once in the chest.
Around 9 or 9:30, a truck driver from the Agri-Mark co-op arrived to collect milk from Pierson's tanks. The driver saw a note attached to the barn ... |
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What Are the Economic Consequences of Climate Change?
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| People are finally beginning to consider the economic consequences of climate change and finding them rather scary, as this report spells out. |
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DIANA LIVERMAN and AMY GLASMEIER - The Atlantic |
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When Hurricane Sandy pummeled the east coast of the U.S. and the Caribbean in October 2012 it exposed millions of people and billions of dollars worth of economic assets to the sorts of hazards that might be expected to increase as a result of climate change. An estimated 1.8 million structures and homes were destroyed or damaged, with economic losses exceeding $65 billion.
Among the businesses most negatively affected by Sandy were tourism (losses of more than $1 billion and 10,000 jobs) and small- and medium-scale manufacturing and storage. Retailers, such as clothing firm Eileen Fisher, lost inventory when Sandy flooded warehouses and disrupted supply chains.
There were a few bright spots: Building-supply stores like Home Depot saw sales shoot up in locations affected by the storm. In the three months after the storm, the company attributed $242 million in sales to the event as residents and ... |
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| Tuesday, 22 April 2014 |
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Study: Fuels From Corn Waste Not Better Than gas
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| Corn ethanol was never a good idea and, as time goes on, it looks worse and worse as a program, as this report explains |
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DINA CAPPIELLO - The Associated Press |
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WASHINGTON -- Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration's conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.
A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.
While biofuels are better in the long run, the study says they won't meet a standard set in a 2007 energy law to qualify as renewable fuel.
The conclusions deal a blow to what are known as cellulosic biofuels, which have received more than a billion dollars in federal support but have struggled to meet volume targets mandated by law. About ... |
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The Koch Brothers Are Going After Solar Panels
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| Here is the Koch brothers' latest move. These are evil people. |
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LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor - Salon |
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Homeowners and businesses that wish to generate their own cheap, renewable energy now have a force of conservative political might to contend with, and the Koch brothers are leading the charge. The L.A. Times, to its credit, found the positive spin to put on this: Little old solar 'has now grown big enough to have enemies.”
The escalating battle centers over two ways traditional utilities have found to counter the rapidly growing solar market: demanding a share of the power generated by renewables and opposing net metering, which allows solar panel users to sell the extra electricity they generate back to the grid - and without which solar might no longer be affordable. The Times reports on the conservative heavyweights making a fossil fuel-powered effort to make those things happen:
The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation’s largest power ... |
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Ocean Acidification Making Fish do Strange Things
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| Here is the latest on what acidification is doing to the world ocean. |
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FELICITY OGILVIE - ABC News |
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MARK COLVIN: Researchers at James Cook University have found that acid in the ocean is doing strange things to fish. The acid that they've been looking at is carbonic acid; it's created by carbon dioxide in the ocean.
There are fears that human-induced climate change will make the world's oceans more acidic. The scientists wanted to know what effect that would have on fish.
Felicity Ogilvie reports.
FELICITY OGILVIE: In the waters off southern Papua New Guinea, underwater volcanoes are releasing carbon dioxide into the ocean. When the carbon dioxide dissolves it creates carbonic acid.
For Professor Philip Munday from James Cook University, it's a natural laboratory to study what effect ocean acidification has on fish.
PHILIP MUNDAY: These are quite unique areas of coral reef where there are carbon dioxide bubbles coming up from deep underground, through the reef and into the ocean water ... |
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Humans and Neanderthals were 99.84% genetically alike
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| The story of our relationship with the Neanderthals becomes ever more complex. |
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RICK DOCKSAI - Science Recorder |
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An average Neanderthal and a prehistoric human were about as close, genetically speaking, as any two humans walking the Earth today. That is the conclusion of a new Israeli study that finds that only 0.12% of difference, on average, separated the Neanderthals’ genomes from those of early homo sapiens.
This makes Neanderthals definitely similar enough to mate with early humans and to essentially be considered the same species with them. Human genomes today differ from each other by about 0.1%, on average. For comparison’s sake, chimpanzees, our closest nonhuman cousins alive today, are a comparably more distant 98.8% genetically identical to us. Gorillas share a similar 98.4% of our DNA.
Two researchers from Hebrew University in Jerusalem-Liran Carmel, computational biologist; and Eran Meshorer, stem cell biologist-led the study, which used computer models to compare the epigenomes of Neanderthals, homo sapiens, and a third human relative, the Denisovans. The ... |
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| Monday, 21 April 2014 |
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37% of Voters Fear the Federal Government
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| Rasmussen is a right leaning survey operation. I mention this because context matters and a Right leaning poll with these results is worthy of close attention. I think this is telling us that the basis of trust upon which our democracy was based is eroding as quickly as the ice sheet covering Greenland. |
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Rasmussen Reports |
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Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Likely U.S. Voters now fear the federal government, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Forty-seven percent (47%) do not, but another 17% are not sure.
Perhaps in part that’s because 54% consider the federal government today a threat to individual liberty rather than a protector. Just 22% see the government as a protector of individual rights, and that’s down from 30% last November. Slightly more (24%) are now undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
As recently as December 2012, voters were evenly divided on this question: 45% said the federal government was a protector of individual rights, while 46% described it as a threat to those rights.
Two-out-of-three voters (67%) view the federal government today as a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Just 17% disagree, while 15% are undecided.
Only 19% ... |
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Dirty South, Clean It Up
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| Here is some real home truth about climate change and what is going on. This is worth your close attention. |
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KEITH JOHNSON - Foreign Policy |
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The latest report from the United Nations climate change body, released Tuesday, makes clear the good, the bad, and the ugly about one of the world's most intractable problems.
As things stand today, the world will be hard pressed to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and avoid the worst effects of global warming during the rest of the century. That's the ugly.
In the twenty-odd years since global warming leapt on the international stage at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janiero global greenhouse-gas emissions have not only kept growing, they're growing at an ever-faster clip. That's the bad.
Now, the world's hopes for limiting temperature increases and minimizing catastrophes such as rising sea levels and devastating droughts depend to a large extent on what steps developing economies take to fundamentally change the way they use energy. And that, curiously enough, could be the good.
On Tuesday, the ... |
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Maddow Asks: 'Why Do We Overlook Right-Wing Violence and Refuse to Call it Terrorism?' Answer: Because They'
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| I think this essay about Theocratic Right violence is a very accurate assessment. We simply do not treat this white Rightist violence as the terrorism it is, and we should. I am much more concerned about the activities of white Supremist Fundamentalist than I am Muslim jihadists. |
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CHAUNCEY DEVEGA - AlterNet (U.S.) |
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The shooting deaths of three people near Kansas City by the noted Neo-Nazi Frazier Glenn Miller has refocused the public’s attention on the violent tendencies of the White Right in the United States.
On the Tuesday edition of her MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow concluded a segment on the Republican Party’s deep denial about (and active protection of) its violent 'Patriot” and militia wing by asking the following question: why do we overlook right-wing violence and refuse to call it terrorism?
The answer to Maddow's question is simple.
"We" don't talk about right-wing domestic terrorists and other extremists because 'they” are largely white and male.
The language used by Rachel Maddow-and how it undermines the scurrilous Right-wing lie that there is such a thing as a 'liberal media”-helps to demonstrate the above claim. Once more, a "liberal" news analyst talks around the obvious and is afraid to ... |
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Creationist Carl Kerby Insists Dinosaurs Were on Noah’s Ark: They Took the Younger Ones
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| More on Neo-medievalsim and the Willful Ignorance Trend. Click through to see the actual video. |
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ERIC W. DOLAN - The Raw Story |
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One of the founding border members of the Creationist organization Answers in Genesis believes that dinosaurs accompanied Noah on his Ark as the entire world was flooded by God.
Speaking to Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association on Thursday, Carl Kerby insisted it wasn’t infeasible for the giant reptilian creatures to have been on Noah’s Ark.
The self-described 'creation scientist” said he had debunked the notion that two of every animal could not have possibly fit on Noah’s Ark. The Bible states that the boat was about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 50 feet high, Kerby explained.
'I see some people that like to mock and ridicule, especially about the dinosaurs, how did they put the big old dinosaurs on there?” he said. 'Well, I would suggest to you they didn’t take the big old dinosaur - they would have taken the younger ones. ... |
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