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The Pacific Ocean Is Dying

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - May. 18 (Special Report) - Just prior to the Supermoon of March 18th, 2011, the world witnessed a natural and manmade disaster of epic proportions. What transpired off the coast of Honshu Island, Japan on March 11 has forever altered the planet and irremediably affected the global environment.

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Role Reversal: Why TV Is Replacing Movies As Elite Entertainment

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Hollywood Economist - By Edward Jay Epstein - May. 13 (News Analysis) - Once upon a time, over a generation ago, The television set was commonly called the “boob tube” and looked down on by elites as a purveyors of mind-numbing entertainment. Movie theaters, on the other hand, were considered a venue for, if not art, more sophisticated dramas and comedies. Not any more. The multiplexes are now primarily a venue for comic-book inspired action and fantasy movies, whereas television, especially the pay and cable channels, is increasingly becoming a venue for character-driven adult programs, such as The Wire, Mad Men, and Boardwalk Empire. This role reversal, rather than a momentary fluke, proceeds directly from the new economic realities of the entertainment business. Consider what happened to Pay-TV. Back in the 1970s, HBO provided something home viewers could not get elsewhere: movies uninterrupted by commercials. It was, as a HBO executive put it, “the only game in town,” so its subscribers paid a monthly fee, no matter how little or often they watch it, to their local cable provider who in turn forked over a share to HBO. As the cable systems grew, so did HBO. By 2010, it had (including its Cinemax unit) over 40 million subscribers, and just the monthly fees produced cash flow of over $1.5 billion a year. Getting new movies was no problem. HBO simply licensed them from a few major studios for an exclusive period (which began a few months after they were released on video and DVD) in so-called “output deals.” To continue to harvest this immense bounty, HBO had merely to stop subscribers from ending their service.

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Top GOP Pollster to GOP: Reverse On Gay Issues

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Andrew Sullivan - May. 12 (News Report) - Below is a remarkable document. It's a memo circulated by Jan van Lohuizen, a highly respected Republican pollster, (he polled for George W. Bush in 2004), to various leading Republican operatives, candidates and insiders. It's on the fast-shifting poll data...

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Why Atheists Have Become a Kick-Ass Movement You Want on Your Side

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Greta Christina - May. 12 (Special Report) - Atheists are becoming a force to be reckoned with. They are a powerful ally when inspired to take action -- and a powerful opponent when they're treated like dirt.

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Frankenfoods: Why Is the Gates Foundation Helping Monsanto Push Genetically Modified Food?

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Paige Aarhus - May. 11 (Special Report) - serious concerns about viability, corporate dependency and health effects linger — even while leading research firms and NGOs do their best to smooth them over. Monsanto-patented seeds are usually costly, which has led to numerous accusations of exploitation and contemporary colonialism. But how long will these particular strains of seeds last? What are the guarantees? Critics fear dependence on corporate fertilizers and pesticides, the emergence of super-weeds and pests that can no longer repel GM varieties, and terminator seeds that only last for one planting season.

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President Barack Obama's shifting stance on gay marriage

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - May. 11 (Fact Check) - ABC broke into its daytime lineup May 9, 2012, to announce a historic shift: the president of the United States declaring his personal support for gay marriage. "I've been going through an evolution on this issue," President Barack Obama told ABC News .

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New Legislation Would Give Power to Keyboard Cops

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Naomi Wolf - May. 07 (Special Report) - The respected Internet technology site Techdirt has called the bill "insanity." It has written that "CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information ... for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as [it] can claim someone committed a ‘cybersecurity crime.'"

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Are We in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction?

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Richard Pearson - May. 06 (Special Report) - NEARLY 20,000 species of animals and plants around the globe are considered high risks for extinction in the wild. That's according to the most authoritative compilation of living things at risk - the so-called Red List maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This should keep us awake at night

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Bombs Not Food: Republicans Aim To Save Military By Cutting Food Stamps

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Arthur Delaney, Michael McAuliff - Apr. 27 (News Analysis) - WASHINGTON -- The latest Republican plan to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and...

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CISPA Critics Warn Cybersecurity Bill Will Increase Domestic Surveillance and Violate Privacy Rights

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - CISPA Critics Warn Cybersecurity Bill Will Increase Domestic Surveillance and Violate Privacy Rights

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Gulf Oil Spill: BP Execs Escape Punishment as Fallout From Disaster Continues To Impact Sea life

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 23 (Special Report) - Two years since the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, we look at its impact on the Gulf of Mexico's residents and wildlife even as no BP officials have faced criminal prosecution for the disaster. Eleven workers died when the Deepwater Horizon well exploded and almost five million barrels of crude oil leaked into the ocean before the well was plugged after 51 days. BP maintains the Gulf is rapidly recovering thanks to the company's efforts, but Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail describes how scientists say shrimp, fish and crabs in the Gulf of Mexico have been deformed by oil and chemicals released during the spill clean-up effort. Meanwhile, ProPublica’s environmental reporter Abrahm Lustgarten says the company failed to learn from past mistakes that could have helped avoid the explosion. He is the author of the new book, “Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster.” [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Eyeless Shrimp and Fish With Tumors: The Horrific Consequences of BP's Spill

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Lisa Kaas Boyle - Apr. 19 (Special Report) - Disturbingly, the allowable levels set by the government for the toxins in our seafood are based on health impacts for a 176 pound adult eating less than 2 medium shrimp a day. The testing is for 1 chemical out of a crude oil mixture containing thousands of chemicals. No synergistic effects are considered. This in no way protects children, fetuses, people who weigh less than 176 pounds or anyone who eats seafood on a daily basis like the folks here on the Gulf Coast.

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Where Are the Women Writers? (ASME Edition)

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Adam Weinstein - Apr. 04 (Special Report) - They called it the Count, and the concept was simple: Tally up how many women get published in some of the world's top literary magazines and journals, compare it with the number of men gracing those pages, and slap the results into a pie chart. Red for men, blue for women. The result was a lot of big red pie slices . First published in 2011, they conveyed a clear fact: From Harpers to The New Yorker to The Atlantic , it's still very much a man's world. Roughly 65 to 75 percent of the space in the prestigious magazines went to male writers. The Count is the brainchild of two accomplished poets, Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu. In 2009, the duo founded VIDA: Women in Literary Arts , a nonprofit that acts as part online community, part advocate and agitator for women of letters. The idea, Belieu says, came in a "moment of loathing and terror and revolutionary spark." They intended the Count to be a conversation-starter, and it certainly has been : After they published the first round, some major ...

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Turning America Into a Giant Casino

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich - Apr. 03 (News Analysis) - Organized gambling is a scam. And it particularly preys upon people with lower incomes - who assume they can't make it big any other way, who often find it hardest to assess the odds, and whose families can least afford to lose the money. Yet America is now opening the floodgates.' Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

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How Prison Undoes Family Values

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - Apr. 02 (Special Report) - In the last 30 years or so, the rush to lock people up for ridiculously long sentences even for minor crimes has led to an explosion of the prison population. And as the majority of prisoners are also parents, the population of children with a father or mother in prison has also exploded. Since 1990, the number of children with a parent in prison has increased overall by 82%, and the number of incarcerated mothers has increased at almost twice the rate of incarcerated fathers. There are now an estimated 10 million American children who have had a parent in prison (pdf), on parole or under some kind of probationary supervision. And, as is always the case when you are talking about the prison population, there is a disturbing racial disparity; one in 15 black children have a parent in prison, compared to one in 111 white children.

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As Fukushima Worsens, US Approves New Nukes

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - Mar. 31 (News Report) - Despite reports this week that the Fukushima nuclear situation may be even worse than previously thought, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has given approval today for two combined licenses for two nuclear reactors in South Carolina, only the second time in the last three decades that new nuclear plants have been approved in the nation. read ...

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Coffee Makes Hard Workers Lazy, Rat Study Suggests

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jennifer Welsh - Mar. 31 (Special Report) - Caffeine also turns hardworkers into slackers, but doesn't make lazy rats into productive superstars the way amphetamines do. The results of the study appear today (March 28) in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

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Label It Yourself Campaign: Citizen Action to Label GMOs

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - Mar. 29 (News Report) - Citizens from across the country, concerned by the increasing scientific data indicating serious economic, environmental and public health risks associated with GMOs (genetically modified organisms), have taken matters into their own hands, labeling foods that may contain GMOs in a nationwide campaign to “Label It Yourself” (#LIY).

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Polluters Dump 226 Million Pounds of Toxins into U.S. Rivers

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

care2.com - By Jennifer Mueller - Mar. 24 (Investigative Report) - Industrial polluters dumped 226 million pounds of toxic chemicals in to U.S. waterways in 2010, according to a new report by Environment America. The group analyzed government data on industrial facilities to reveal total discharges by state and which U.S. rivers bear the heaviest toxic chemical burden.

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Obama Wanted Higher Gasoline Prices?

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Robert Farley - Mar. 23 (News) - Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have repeatedly lifted several quotes out of context to allege that President Barack Obama and his administration actually wanted to drive up the price of gasoline, and have succeeded. Gingrich said Obama wants gasoline prices to get to the European levels of … More >>

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Pennsylvania Fracking Law Gags Physicians

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Walter Brasch - Mar. 22 (News Report) - new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. The procedure is commonly known as fracking

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Monsanto ‘Biotechnology Book for Kids’ Caught Brainwashing Children

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Nation of Change - By Anthony Gucciardi - Mar. 22 (Special Report) - There is a serious war on for the minds of developing children right now, and it is being waged by government-approved mega corporations who care not for the health of these children but for profits. The claims made within this book are not only scientifically unfounded, but they are seriously dangerous to the health of children and adults alike.

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5 Things Corporations Are Trying to Hide From You

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By David Sirota - Mar. 15 (Special Report) - as Businessweek recently noted, regulations are hardly job killers. Instead, the magazine points out, they typically “wind up creating about as many jobs as they kill.” In the process, they also mitigate major social problems, as Coca-Cola and Pepsi just proved.

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Does Meat Kill More Americans Than Cigarettes Do?

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Kathy Freston - Mar. 15 (Research) - It may be awhile before eating a chicken wing is seen, as it should be, as the heath equivalent of smoking a cigarette -- the meat industry is still more powerful than tobacco has ever been, and most of the medical establishment is not yet as nutrition-focused as progressive scientists and doctors like T. Colin Campbell and Dean Ornish. But the best research clearly points in that direction, and more and more, I'm seeing cause for optimism.

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As NYCHA Seeks Flexibility, Tenant Advocates ConcernedCityLimits.org

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

City Limits - Mar. 13 (News) - The city's public housing agency wants rules relaxed to allow creative budgeting. But advocates for residents want stronger assurances that financial flexibility won't come at the cost of tenant rights.

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