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Komen Fundraiser Calls for CEO Nancy Brinker to Quit

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Karen McVeigh - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - Ellis refers to her disappointment even as Brinker reversed the funding decision. "Brinker's words struck me as vague and hollow – no future commitment to Planned Parenthood and no specific apology to the low-income women who would have become the collateral damage from the defunding," Ellis wrote. "I also don't believe Brinker and her board when she claims that Komen's decision wasn't political."

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Asia's highest mountains have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Damian Carrington - Feb. 08 (News Report) - The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that aro

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The Wire: taking sociology forwards? | Steve Busfield | Society | guardian.co.uk

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Feb. 08 (News) -

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Famine in Somalia is over, says UN

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Feb. 03 - Exceptional harvest and food deliveries have improved conditions, but millions of people are still at risk An exceptional harvest after good rains and food deliveries by aid agencies have ended famine in Somalia, although conditions remain fragile and could worsen, the United Nations have said. The UN declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia last July and extended the famine warning in September to six out of eight regions in the country. The UN said initially 750,000 Somalis faced imminent starvation and lowered this to 250,000 by November. Six months after famine was declared, 4 million Somalis were in need of aid and the UN said the number now stood at 2.34m. "The gains are fragile and will be reversed without continued support," said Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia. "There are 1.7 million people in southern Somalia still in crisis. Millions of people still need food, clean water, shelter and other assistance to survive and the situation is expected ...

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What the Occupy movement must learn from Sundance

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Naomi Wolf - Feb. 01 (Special Report) - the violent crackdown against the Occupy movement in the United States represented the first salvos of a civil war initiated by political and allied economic elites against protesters in a nascent movement whose still-not-fully articulated agenda would represent a threat to their unmediated and untransparent hold on profits. And a civil war it has indeed turned out to be. The Los Angeles Police Department is engaging in training exercises with the US military. At a parallel march in support, in New York City, a new apparition – large groups of masked men – joined the protesters, which is, globally, a sign that provocateurs intent on violence have joined the scene; ...

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Acta goes too far, says MEP

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Charles Arthur - Feb. 01 - Kader Arif, the lead Acta negotiator in the European Parliament, says Acta potentially cuts access to lifesaving generic drugs and restricts online freedom The French MEP who resigned his position in charge of negotiating the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) has said it "goes too far" by potentially cutting access to lifesaving generic drugs and restricting internet freedom. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Kader Arif – a member of the European Parliament's international trade group, who was the lead negotiator over Acta – said that despite talks over the agreement having begun in 2007, "the European Parliament, which represents the rights of the people, had no access to this mandate, neither had it information of the position defended by the commission or the demands of the other parties to the agreement". Arif resigned in protest on 26 January as the EU signed the treaty, saying that he wished to "denounce in the strongest manner the process that led ...

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Undercover police had children with activists

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Rob Evans, Paul Lewis - Jan. 22 (News Report) - Undercover police had children with activists — Disclosure likely to intensify controversy over long-running police operation to infiltrate and sabotage protest groups — Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy …

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The New York Times public editor's very public utterance

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Clay Shirky - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - Thursday, Arthur Brisbane, the public editor of the New York Times, went to his readers with a question : "I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." Brisbane (who, as public editor, speaks only for himself, not the Times) referred to two recent stories: the claim that Clarence Thomas had "misunderstood" a financial reporting form when he left out key information, and Mitt Romney's assertion that President Obama gives speeches "apologising" for America. Brisbane asked whether news reporters should have the freedom to investigate and respond to those comments. The reaction from readers was swift, voluminous, negative and incredulous. "Is this a joke? THIS IS YOUR JOB." "If the purpose of the NYT is to be an inoffensive container for ad copy, ...

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The economic illiteracy of economists | Mark Weisbrot

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Mark Weisbrot - Jan. 10 - The American Economic Association's annual meeting is red-letter day for 'the dismal science'. And dismal it proved The American Economic Association's annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on "the economics of regime change" , when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about "the political economy of the US debt and deficits". The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States' rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn't do something about it. Yawn. But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the US national debt as generally ranging from "ludicrous to ...

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How will technology influence the news in 2012?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - Predicting the next year's news is a fool's errand, but looking at technological trends could give us a hint At the beginning of 2011, aging dictators ruled Egypt and Libya, and despotism was the nearly unquestioned reality in most of the Middle East. The eurozone was seeing trouble at its edges, but wasn't heading toward collapse. News International had successfully covered up most of its rampant bad acts, and Rupert Murdoch was on the verge of even greater control over British media and politics. Anyone who might have predicted how utterly and rapidly those realities would change might have been branded a lunatic. Which is one reason why the annual journalistic ritual of making predictions about the year ahead is a fool's errand. With that in mind, let me offer instead some observations about the technology and media trends we've seen in past months, and how they might play out in 2012. In many cases, the trajectory is deeply worrisome. But I remain an eternal optimist in the face of ...

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Bradley Manning pre-trial hearing: what we learned

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Ed Pilkington, Matt Williams, Dominic Rushe - Dec. 23 - For the past week, a military court has been considering the case of Bradley Manning, alleged to have leaked more than 250,000 embassy cables to Wikileaks. What have we learned? For seven days, a makeshift court inside a sprawling military base in Maryland has been hearing evidence in a case that that has raised questions of freedom of speech, the practices of US army intelligence, gender identity and the place of gay personnel in the armed services. Sitting sometimes in secret, at other times in a kind of pseudo-public forum, this idiosyncratic court has been considering whether a full court martial should be held for Bradley Manning, an army intelligence analyst with a troubled background who is alleged to be the source of the biggest leak of US state secrets in history. Manning faces a potential life sentence if army investigators can prove he passed the information to WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website founded by the mercurial Julian Assange. Overview It has been a curious ...

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This bastardised libertarianism makes 'freedom' an instrument of oppression

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Dec. 20 (Opinion) - It's the disguise used by those who wish to exploit without restraint, denying the need for the state to protect the 99% Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice? In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor. ...

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Our leadership is dire, but we mustn't despise government | Jeffrey Sachs

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Jeffrey Sachs, The Guardian - Dec. 17 - Our leaderships, in thrall to big business, are failing in so many places all at the same time. But we can't give up on them The year 2011 will be remembered as the year of failed summits. Governments proved themselves time and again to be failures at addressing the growing crises engulfing the world, whether the eurozone debacle, climate change, or budget politics in the US and Europe. Next year is likely to be worse, as electoral politics will further impede decision-making in the US, France and several other countries. Why should governance be so poor in so many places at the same time? There are several factors at play. Globalisation has undermined the manufacturing base of most of the high-income economies, costing millions of jobs and leading to stagnant or falling living standards for a large part of the workforce, especially those with basic skills and modest education attainment. The US has lost around 8-9 million manufacturing jobs since the peak in that sector in 1979, just as ...

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'They are trying to silence me'

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Steven Morris - Dec. 15 (Opinion) - A 17-year-old schoolboy from Cardiff is proving an unlikely but effective opponent of powerful organisations pushing miracle cures for serious diseases Like many teenage boys, Rhys Morgan loves video games, rock music and hanging around with his friends. He works hard at school and tries to do his bit helping out at home. But what makes this 17-year-old a little different is that he also finds time to join battle with powerful, wealthy organisations that promote miracle alternative cures for serious diseases. Morgan's burgeoning campaign, run from the front room of his family's house in a cul-de-sac in Cardiff, is gaining him friends and enemies. He is winning plaudits from within the sceptical community and from some journalists impressed at his gumption, but is berated by those desperate to believe in the treatments offered – and has spent countless hours in recent weeks batting away threats of legal action. So why does this floppy-haired teenager bother? Wouldn't it be less hassle to ...

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U.S. District Attorney Goodwin: Alpha "not a life, it's not a being, it can't go to jail."

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Writing Corner - By Beth Wellington - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - Montcoal, WV. 3:27 PM on Monday, April 5, 2010. It was the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in nearly 40 years. Twenty months ago, just across the river from Coal River Mountain on Cherry Pond Mountain near its mountaintop removal mine, Massey Energy's underground mine at Upper Big Branch exploded.

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Central bank action: stunning move highlights sense of desperation

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Jill Treanor - Dec. 01 (Opinion) - European governments are desperately seeking a lender of last resort as sovereign debt exposure fears grow The stunning move by six central banks to announce emergency measures to push more dollars into the financial system shows just how desperate the authorities are to "ease strains in financial markets" that are making it difficult for some banks to operate as easily as normal. Jon Peace, head of European bank research at Nomura, said: "It is an evolution of the crisis from three years ago, when countries took on the risks of the banks. Back in 2008, there was a lender of last resort – countries bailed out banks. This time it is governments that need a lender of last resort – but there is no obvious lender of last resort." While the massive bank bailouts of October 2008 – in the month after Lehman collapsed – worked for a while in shoring up banks, confidence is again ebbing , even though the banks are much stronger then they were three years ago. This time the problems for banks is ...

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Rural Peru gets connected | Mattia Cabitza

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Mattia Cabitza - Nov. 28 - More than 100 communities in rural Peru now have renewable energy and internet access, thanks to an aid programme that is being rolled out across the eight poorest nations in Latin America The connection was not of crisp video quality, but the chorus of schoolchildren from San José de Huamaní, near Ica in the south, could be heard loud and clear: "Good morning," they chanted. Hundreds of kilometres away, they were greeted with applause, through video link, by a brightly lit conference room full of Peruvian and European Union officials. They were meeting in Lima to announce the completion of an aid programme that is taking renewable energy and the internet to 130 rural communities in Peru. With funding from the EU, the Euro-Solar programme is being rolled out across the eight poorest nations of Latin America, such as Peru, at a cost of €36m ($47.6m/£30.9m). The aim is to benefit more than 300,000 people whose communities are not connected to the electricity grid. Via satellite ...

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Attacks on climate scientists are the real 'climategate' | Stephan Lewandowsky

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Nov. 23 () - Climate scientists' emails are not a scandal but the attacks on those scientists and a growing anti-science movement are, argues Stephan Lewandowsky Emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit have once again been released on the internet. The timing is similar to the "climategate" scandal of 2009, with emails published just before an important UN climate conference. Does this mean the science is in doubt? Quite the opposite, says Stephan Lewandowsky. An ambulance pulls up behind you. You know it's an ambulance because you can read AMBULANCE in your rear view mirror. But you can also read it when you look at the vehicle directly; because the human visual system has the ability to quickly correct complete inversions or left-right reversals of letters. In fact, a complete inversion is easier to read than letters that are rotated only partially. This human ability to process complete inversions more quickly than just partial distortions, alas, lends itself to ...

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Murdoch's News Corp accused of trying to bribe Australian senator

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Nov. 23 (News Report) - Federal police investigate Bill O'Chee's claim he was offered favourable coverage if he voted against digital TV laws Australian police are investigating a former senator's allegations that an executive from Rupert Murdoch's News Limited offered him favourable newspaper coverage and "a special relationship" in return for voting against government legislation. Bill O'Chee made the allegations in a nine-page statement to police and they were published Wednesday by Fairfax Media newspapers, rivals of News Corp's Australian subsidiary. The newspapers reported that an unnamed executive of News Ltd asked O'Chee during a lunch on 13 June 1998 to vote against his conservative government's legislation on the creation of digital TV in Australia. The News group stood to profit from the legislation failing. The Australian federal police said in a statement on Wednesday that O'Chee's allegations had been under investigation since 4 November. "As this matter is ongoing it would not be appropriate to ...

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Is the end of the world really nigh?

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Alok Jha - Nov. 20 (Special Report) - All too real are the human-caused threats born of climate change, excess pollution, depletion of natural resources and the madness of nuclear weapons. We tinker with our genes and atoms at our own peril. Nanotechnology, synthetic biology and genetic modification offer much potential in giving us better food to eat, safer drugs and a cleaner world, but they could also go wrong if misapplied or if we charge on without due care.

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Archbishop Rowan Williams backs revolt against coalition's welfare cuts

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Daniel Boffey - Nov. 20 - Church of England bishops unite to take a moral stand against controversial policies that they say will hit the poorest hardest Bishops across the country, backed by Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, have condemned the coalition government's controversial welfare reforms, which they say risk pushing thousands of children into poverty and homelessness. Eighteen Church of England bishops, backed by Williams and the archbishop of York, John Sentamu, are demanding that ministers rewrite their flagship plan to impose a £500-a-week benefit cap on families. In an open letter in Observer, they say the Church of England has a "moral obligation to speak up for those who have no voice". Their message is that the cap could be "profoundly unjust" to the poorest children in society, especially those in larger families and those living in expensive major cities. The high-profile intervention comes after the Church of England became embroiled in an embarrassing row over its attitude to ...

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CIA urged to be more open about climate change

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Suzanne Goldenberg - Nov. 15 (News Report) - After a year of epic weather, drought, heatwaves, hurricanes and floods, America's intelligence establishment has come out with a bold new suggestion: maybe it's time the CIA stopped treating climate change as a secret. A new report from the Defence Science Board – a US government agency – urges the CIA to step outside its traditional culture of secrecy and begin sharing the intelligence it has been gathering on climate change. The report, Trends and Implications of Climate Change for National and International Security, goes as far as to recommend the establishment of a new agency devoted to the study of climate change – one that would operate in the open and transparent manner so alien to the CIA. The report is the latest in the series of blows to CIA's climate centre, which has been struggling to justify its existence to the public since its establishment ...

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The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Nov. 08 (Opinion) - Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes. The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize , are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their ...

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Iran nuclear report: IAEA claims Tehran working on advanced warhead - The Guardian

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Nov. 08 - Iran nuclear report: IAEA claims Tehran working on advanced warhead The Guardian The UN's nuclear watchdog will publish new details on Wednesday on alleged Iranian work on an advanced design for a nuclear warhead developed with the help of a former Soviet scientist, according to nuclear experts. The report by the International ... Iran ready and able to build a nuclear bomb, UN watchdog warns the world Telegraph.co.uk Iran is on the threshold of gaining nuclear capability Economic Times Ahmadinejad warns against attack on Iran in lead up to nuclear report National Post eTaiwan News ABC News all 2,533 news ...

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Is capitalism broken... and what is the world going to do to fix it?

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Yvonne Roberts - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - Louise Cooper, Will Hutton, Mark Littlewood, Tanya Paton and William Taylor join a round table discussion on the issues raised by the global Occupy movement T here is no doubt that it has been an extraordinary three weeks. It began with Occupy LSX taking up residence around St Paul's, a protest that exposed the dithering of the Church of England. Occupy LSX has since sparked a remarkable national debate about the kind of society in which we want to live, its priorities and values. In that spirit, the Observer brought together several opposing voices to continue the great debate. Yvonne Roberts So, can capitalism be fixed, Louise? Louise Cooper It's all a question of balance and I think it's moving the pivotal point back a little. Capitalism is clearly the only way that economies work. Capitalism works in the biggest communist state, China. So, as with everything, there needs to be a balance between the returns to those that supply capital and those that supply human capital. Maybe ...

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