NewsTrust - For Review (Independent)

Paying for the great urbanization of China | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

thebulletin.org - By Hal Harvey - May. 24 (Opinion) - Second, the global climate is indifferent to the source of carbon dioxide emissions, so an efficient China will benefit the entire world. And, finally, China's legendary particulate air pollution actually travels across the Pacific, affecting the air in the West coast. A recent study found that more than three-fourths of "black carbon" -- basically, unburned hydrocarbons -- on the West coast comes in airborne plumes from China.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Ríos Montt Genocide Verdict Annulled, But Activists Ensure US-Backed Crimes Will Never Be Forgotten

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman - May. 23 (News Report) - As Guatemala's high court annuls former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt's genocide conviction, we're joined by two people who have worked tirelessly to bring perpetrators of war crimes in the country to justice. Helen Mack, one of Guatemala's most well-known human rights activists, fought for years to prosecute the government forces who assassinated her sister, anthropologist Myrna Mack on Sept. 11, 1990. A Right Livelihood Award Winner, today she heads the Myrna Mack Foundation, named after her sister. We also speak with Kate Doyle, a senior analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America and the director at the Guatemala Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, who is featured in the documentary, "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator." Both Mack and Doyle attended Ríos Montt's recent trial.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.6 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Rooftop Revolution: How Solar Energy Is Putting Power Back in the Hands of the People

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Heeten Kalan - May. 23 (Interview) - Danny Kennedy, Greenpeace activist, Project Underground founder and long-time campaigner, decided to apply his organizing skills to harness the sun’s energy. Choosing to do something about our energy crisis and climate change, he founded Sungevity with a small group of trusted friends in 2007. Now, Sungevity is one the world’s leading residential solar-energy companies and is the exclusive residential solar partner for Lowe’s.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

New Louisiana Law Will Jail Journos for Publishing Gun Info

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Gavin Aronsen - May. 23 (News Report) - On Tuesday, the Louisiana Senate passed a bill that would imprison and fine journalists who intentionally publish information about the state's concealed-carry handgun permit holders. Reporters who violate the law would face penalties of up to $10,000, six months in jail, or both; public safety officials and police officers who leak permit information to the press would face penalties of up to $500, six months in jail, or both. J

NewsTrust Rating: 2.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Justice search warrant relied on "probable cause" of criminal conduct by Fox News journalist | Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

rcfp.org - By Rob Tricchinelli - May. 23 () - anonymous Justice Department spokesperson: Michael Clemente, Fox News’ executive vice president of news, in a statement Monday. “In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.”

NewsTrust Rating: 4.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Too-Big-To-Jail Dogs Obama's Justice Department As Government Documents Raise Questions

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - May. 23 (News) - The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have neither conducted nor received any analyses that would show whether criminal charges against large financial institutions would harm the economy, potentially undermining a key DOJ argument for why the world’

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

‘All I could do was sit there and hold her’

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

oklahoman.com - By Nolan Clay, Andrew Knittle - May. 23 (News Report) - Huddled together in a bathtub, Laurinda Vargyas held her baby girl and 4-year-old girl tight as the tornado began shaking apart their south Oklahoma City home Monday.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

CALIFORNIA VOTERS HAMMERED BY PROVISIONAL BALLOTS -

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

bbvforums.org - By Bev Harris - May. 22 (Investigative Report) - More than one in ten voters who shows up at the polls in California is being given a provisional ballot.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Editor of The Progressive Calls For Eric Holder to Resign Over Spying on Press, Occupy Protesters

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 22 (Opinion) - As the Obama administration faces criticism for the Justice Department's spying on journalists and the IRS targeting of right-wing organizations, newly released documents show how the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and local police forces partnered with corporations to spy on Occupy protesters in 2011 and 2012. Detailed in thousands of pages of records from counter terrorism and law enforcement agencies, the spying monitored the activists' online usage and led to infiltration of their meetings. One document shows an undercover officer was dispatched in Arizona to infiltrate activists organizing protests around the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the secretive group that helps corporate America propose and draft legislation for states across the country. We're joined by Matt Rothschild of The Progressive, who tackles the surveillance in his latest article, "Spying on Occupy Activists: How Cops and Homeland Security Help Wall Street."

NewsTrust Rating: 4.6 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Stuck in a Job at the End of the World

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By John LaForge - May. 22 (Special Report) - Very little sympathy is felt for Air Force personnel assigned to fire nuclear missiles that could end all life on the planet. But their grim, boring and existentially absurd job has eroded staff morale so much that their collapsing competence has added to the world’s risk

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

$156bn lost to tax havens enough to end extreme poverty twice over

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

rt.com - May. 22 (News) - Oxfam, the UK based charity, estimates that some $18.47 trillion is being held by individuals in tax havens around the world. Of this some $7.18 trillion is in accounts situated in British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. Tax lost in tax have

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Think the IRS Was Bad? Try the Spying on Occupy Activists

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:07:59 -0700

The Progressive - May. 22 -

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

What a Real Cover-up Looks Like

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - May. 22 (News Analysis) - Republicans won’t let go of their conspiracy theory about some nefarious “cover-up” in “talking points” for Ambassador Susan Rice’s TV interviews on the Benghazi attack. But they should at least have better skills for detecting a real cover-up, since they’ve had direct experience,

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Is This Big Tea Party Group Really an Innocent Victim of the IRS?

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Stephanie Mencimer - May. 22 (Investigative Report) - Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin has been all over the airwaves since the IRS story broke, talking about how her group was among those whose applications for nonprofit status were unfairly targeted for extra scrutiny. She has called the IRS' actions a "disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of government power." She told Fox News that Tea Party Patriots wants the agency repay it for expenses it incurred as a result of the "intrusive" questions it asked, including requests for "every single post on Facebook" and "every comment that any person who's a fan of ours on Facebook had ever made." On Friday, lawyers for her group sent a letter to the IRS alerting the agency to coming lawsuits over its "illegal" conduct. But while the IRS has admitted to unfairly targeting some conservative groups, Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella organization for the grassroots movement, may not have been one of them. As I reported last week, although IRS officials engaged in misconduct, they also ...

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

You Need Phosphorous to Live—and We're Running Out

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Tom Philpott - May. 22 (Comment) - Western Sahara , a sparsely populated slice of desert on Africa's northwestern coast, doesn't get much ink as a potential crisis point in the global food system. You've probably never heard of the long-standing independence movement in the Morocco-controlled territory—or that the area harbors vast stores of an element critical to contemporary agriculture. Morocco, it is thought, holds up to 85 percent (PDF) of the globe's known phosphate rock reserve—and a lot of it lies in Western Sahara. Morocco's royal family thus controls what Jeremy Grantham, cofounder of the prominent Boston-based global investment firm Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., called the " most important quasi-monopoly in economic history ." Who cares about phosphorus? For starters, every living thing on Earth—including humans—since all the crops we eat depend on it to produce healthy cells. Until the mid-20th century, farmers maintained phosphorus levels in soil by composting plant waste or ...

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Society of Professional Journalists: SPJ Code of Ethics

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

spj.org - By SPJ ethics committee - May. 22 (Statement) - Seek Truth and Report It - Minimize Harm - Act Independently - Be Accountable -

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Rise Up or Die

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

billmoyers.com - By Chris Hedges - May. 21 (Opinion) - What has taken place in these sacrifice zones — in postindustrial cities such as Camden, N.J., and Detroit, in coalfields of southern West Virginia where mining companies blast off mountaintops, in Indian reservations where the demented project of limitless economic expansion and exploitation worked some of its earliest evil, and in produce fields where laborers often endure conditions that replicate slavery — is now happening to much of the rest of the country. These sacrifice zones succumbed first. You and I are next. Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform — the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions — we are left defenseless against corporate power.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Why Austerity Kills: From Greece to U.S., Crippling Economic Policies Causing Global Health Crisis

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 21 (Interview) - In their new book, "The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills," economist David Stuckler and physician Sanjay Basu examine the health impacts of austerity across the globe. The authors estimate there have been more than 10,000 additional suicides and up to a million extra cases of depression across Europe and the United States since governments started introducing austerity programs in the aftermath of the economic crisis.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Oklahoma Senators Jim Inhofe, Tom Coburn, Face Difficult Options On Disaster Relief

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Christina Wilkie - May. 21 (News Analysis) - Sens. Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, both Republicans, are fiscal hawks who have repeatedly voted against funding disaster aid for other parts of the country. They also have opposed increased funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which administers federal disaster relief. Late last year, Inhofe and Coburn both backed a plan to slash disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In a December press release, Coburn complained that the Sandy Relief bill contained "wasteful spending," and identified a series of items he objected to, including "$12.9 billion for future disaster mitigation activities and studies."

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

GOPer Who Got Millions in Farm Subsidies Thinks the Poor Should Starve Rather Than Get Food Stamps

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Justin Doolittle - May. 21 (Opinion) - He fulminates about people who are allegedly "unwilling to work" sucking off the government teat with impunity. This is a patently dishonest representation of the SNAP program. Most people who receive food stamps cannot be dismissed as losers who are "unwilling to work." Nearly half (47%) of all food stamp recipients are children. Another 8% are 60 years of age or older. The "working poor" - people who live in a household with income from work - represent another 41%. Between children, the elderly, the working poor, and people who want a job but cannot find one - someone should tell Fincher that there are still more than 3 unemployed job seekers for every 1 opening

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Meet the Senate's Powerful and Progressive Policy Wonk, Ron Wyden

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Joe Conason - May. 21 (Special Report) - Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden has established a reputation as one of the Senate's more serious and diligent members. Over the years on Capitol Hill, he has watched the Republican Party veer constantly further rightward, and yet he continues to believe against all evidence that bipartisan legislative cooperation is possible -- even likely.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Highly Effective SEO Strategies from Bring the Fresh

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

riseinsoul.com - May. 21 (Opinion) -

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Billionaires Now Own American Politics

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Andy Kroll - May. 20 (News Analysis) - Billionaires with an axe to grind, now is your time. Not since the days before a bumbling crew of would-be break-in artists set into motion the fabled Watergate scandal, leading to the first far-reaching restrictions on money in American politics, have you been so free to meddle. There is no limit to the amount of money you can give to elect your friends and allies to political office, to defeat those with whom you disagree, to shape or stunt or kill policy, and above all to influence the tone and content of political discussion in this country. Today, politics is a rich man's game. Look no further than the 2012 elections and that season's biggest donor, 79-year-old casino mogul Sheldon Adelson . He and his wife, Miriam, shocked the political class by first giving $16.5 million in an effort to make Newt Gingrich the Republican presidential nominee. Once Gingrich exited the race, the Adelsons invested more than $30 million in electing Mitt ...

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

60 Minutes and the Billionaire Agenda: Part 1, “Counterinsurgency Cops”

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Richard Eskow - May. 20 (Opinion) - This Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes was a brilliant case study in the media’s ability to manipulate the public mind. The entire hour is worth studying, if only as one of the most illuminating and sophisticated examples of media manipulation in recent memory.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Corporations Are Stealing Billions in Tax Breaks, While the Confused, Screwed Citizenry Turn On Each Other

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Reich - May. 20 (Opinion) - As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Major advanced countries — and their citizens — need a comprehensive tax agreement that won’t allow global corporations to get away with this.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.6 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer