The Squeezing Of America's Middle Class

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

The Squeezing Of America's Middle Class
NEW YORK, April 15, 2007
(CBS) The idea of a thriving middle class has always been at the heart of the American dream. The concept really took off in the wake of World War II, when the GI Bill started helping everyday Americans pay for college or vocational education and take out loans to buy homes. By the 1950s, TV shows like "Leave It to Beaver" were presenting an idealized picture of middle-class life. Dad worked, Mom took care of the kids, and there wasn't much talk about how they'd pay the bills. But today the American middle class is struggling. "It seems as if health care, retirement security, being able to pay for kids' college, being able to hold on to and afford a home are real sources of anxiety for middle-class Americans today," Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science at Yale University, told Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver. Hacker, an author of a new book that focuses on problems facing America's middle class, says the middle class is more of a symbol than a concrete definition. "I think the symbol is people who are not rich, who have to work hard, usually both parents are working," he said. "They probably have children, that's sort of the image that we have. It's a hard-working middle-class family with kids, making $60,000 to $80,000 a year and feeling really strained economically ...full text

Pope criticizes the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism

"Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."
by Ken Reiner: I view the continuing growth of corporate power and its despotic control of governments throughout the world, including our own, as a socio-economic disease. While Mussolini and others named it "Fascism," I call it "Corporism" because that name better reveals its underlying institutional structure. I would define Corporism as the domination of government and society by the emergence and power of the giant publicly-traded multinational corporations and financial institutions, organized in totalitarian hierarchies, which singly and in combinations buy or destroy their competitors, corrupt the politics of nations, and seize, hoard, and wield for themselves most of the wealth of the human race.

Pope criticizes the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism
In a new book, Benedict XVI decries power of rich over the poor
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:11 p.m. CT April 13, 2007

VATICAN CITY - Benedict XVI criticizes the “cruelty” of capitalism and colonialism and the power of the wealthy over the poor in his first book as pope released on Friday.
Benedict began writing his personal meditation on Jesus Christ’s teachings, entitled “Jesus of Nazareth,” in 2003 when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He stressed that the book is an expression of his “personal search for the face of the Lord” and is by no means official Catholic Church doctrine.
“Everyone is free, then, to contradict me,” he wrote.
Benedict — a prolific and well-known theologian well before he became pope — thoroughly examined the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ public ministry to arrive at the foundation of the Christian faith: that Jesus is God.
Benedict said the fundamental question he is exploring in the book is what Jesus did.
“What did Jesus truly bring, if he didn’t bring peace to the world, well-being for all and a better world? What did he bring?
“The answer is very simple: God. He brought God.”
The 448-page book is due in bookstores in German, Italian and Polish on Monday, Benedict’s 80th birthday. The English edition is due for release May 15 and translations are planned for 16 other languages.
The book is the first of two volumes: Rizzoli, the Italian publisher, said Benedict is expected to write a second volume exploring the birth of Christ, his crucifixion and resurrection.
“Jesus of Nazareth” covers several key points of Jesus’ public life and ministry. An entire chapter is devoted to his baptism, another to the prayer Jesus taught the faithful, the Lord’s Prayer, and another to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, praising the poor, the meek and the hungry in the “Beatitudes.”
“Confronted with the abuse of economic power, with the cruelty of capitalism that degrades man into merchandise, we have begun to see more clearly the dangers of wealth and we understand in a new way what Jesus intended in warning us about wealth.”
In another chapter on the key Biblical parable, the Good Samaritan, Benedict decries how the wealthy have “plundered” Africa and the Third World both materially and spiritually through colonialism. ...full text

Nutrition firm or herbal cabal engaged in Mob tactics?

Corporate MO improvements beyond Enron et al? Based on news since Enron and the Pope's criticism of the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism, it is beginning to look like the "few bad apples" are coming from a barrel full of rotten apples

...........

Nutrition firm or herbal cabal?
Prosecutors allege Georgia company, execs engaged in Mob tactics
By Mike Brunker Projects Team editor
MSNBC
Updated: 12:14 p.m. CT April 12, 2007

Until late last year, Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals of Norcross, Ga., appeared to be a thriving business with a hot-selling line of natural dietary supplements. But in a bizarre case quietly unfolding in federal court in Atlanta, prosecutors allege that it was really a criminal enterprise that sold dangerous “spiked” products and was run by executives who considered assassination and blackmail to quash a federal investigation.
The allegations are the most far-ranging ever leveled against a major player in the loosely regulated dietary supplement industry, and include activities more at home in the Mob hangouts of television's Tony Soprano than a corporate boardroom. Among other things, prosecutors allege in court filings that some or all of the defendants:
· Discussed killing a U.S. Food and Drug Administration agent and blackmailing an assistant U.S. attorney. Neither plot was carried out, but a Hi-Tech co-founder was subsequently jailed after being convicted of being a felon in possession of a “firearm silencer.”
· Used the herbal stimulant ephedra in Hi-Tech diet products after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned its use on April 12, 2004, finding it presented “an unreasonable risk of illness or injury.”
· Sold "herbal" supplements that actually contained the active ingredients of prescription drugs that could interact dangerously with other medications.
· Illegally imported and sold banned steroids.
· Manufactured phony ecstasy tablets that were sold on U.S. streets.
· Created a muscle-building drink that was later marketed as a cleaning solution in an effort to mislead investigators.
The shocking allegations spring from the Sept. 7 indictment of the company and 11 executives, employees and associates for allegedly operating an illegal Internet pharmacy in Belize.
Belize lab ‘substandard and unsanitary’The defendants used numerous Web sites to advertise ... full text

How to Confine the Plants of the Future?

corporate greedy guts vs your life

A NEW generation of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs and chemicals raise concerns about the safety of the global food and feed supply. Once harvested, seeds can move easily, accidentally or deliberately, across and beyond borders on which developers depend for safety. And what happens from there is anyone’s guess.The containment practices used by developers assume an ability to control living and propagating organisms, which scientific evidence does not support. Developers say these crops are the best way to achieve the economies of scale and cost savings that will let them meet rising demand for drugs and continue to generate huge obscene profits

NYT Re: Framing
How to Confine the Plants of the Future?
By DENISE CARUSO
A NEW generation of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs and chemicals is fast approaching the market — bringing with it a new wave of concerns about the safety of the global food and feed supply.
The plants produce medicinal substances like insulin, anticoagulants and blood substitutes. They produce vaccine proteins for diseases like cholera, as well as antibodies against tooth decay and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Enzymes and other chemicals from the plants can be used for a range of industrial processes.
As in past debates over genetically modified crops, biotech developers say that the benefits outweigh the risks, and that the risks are manageable. Critics question the benefits, and say the risk of a contaminated and potentially toxic food supply is untenable.
In the middle, balancing economic benefit and public safety, are our appointed arbiters of risk, the government regulators.
Controversies over biotech risk are caused by a crisis in “official scientific expertise,” according to Jerome Ravetz, an associate fellow at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford.
The crisis, he said, stems from the conflicting roles of government. On one side, businesses provide regulators with scientific evidence about the risk and safety of their product innovations. On the other, suspicious citizens demand that regulators challenge that evidence.
The side whose expertise is accepted as “official” calls the shots.
So far, the business sector has tipped the scales in its favor. Despite science-based concerns voiced by farmers, environmentalists and even its own researchers ...full text

Shocking Mismanagement: Iraqi details Inept US Occupation

Who could have imagined !!!! "THREATS ABOUT AIRPLANES AS WEAPONS PRIOR TO 9/11" By: Dr. Matthew Robinson
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Appalachian State University http://www.justiceblind.com/airplanes.html

Shocking Mismanagement: Iraqi details Inept US Occupation
Insider: Missteps Soured Iraqis on U.S.
Iraq Government Official Says 'Incompetent' U.S. Management Turned Iraqis Against Americans
By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."
"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.
Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.
The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.
First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.
What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis ...full text

Rally Marks Anniversary of Baghdad's Fall

"Freedom & Liberation" begins to resemble the WMDs "Weapons of Mass Donkeys" found in Iraq. BAGHDAD (AP) "After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded.''

April 9, 2007
Rally Marks Anniversary of Baghdad's Fall
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:23 a.m. ET
BAGHDAD (AP). Tens of thousands marched through the streets of two Shiite holy cities to denounce the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The rally was called for by powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government.
A day earlier, the renegade cleric issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq's army and police should join him in defeating ''your archenemy.''
On Monday, demonstrators marched from Kufa to neighboring Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, with two cordons of Iraqi police lining the route.
Some at the rally waved small Iraqi flags; others hoisted up a giant flag 10 yards long. Leaflets fluttered through the breeze reading: ''Yes, Yes to Iraq'' and ''Yes, Yes to Muqtada. Occupiers should leave Iraq.''
''The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people,'' said lawmaker Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, as he marched. ''After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded.''
A senior official in al-Sadr's organization in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a ''call for liberation.''
''We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq ...full text

Global Warming To Hit World's Poor:

Repeat: Scientific ignorance, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming, confirm an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options modern civilization requires for survival. The thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications. From the global warming threat to the ongoing resource wars, (food, water, resource limitations), all these basic problems are eliminated in a normal evolutionary progression of energy systems Fuel 2000 and Beyond

Billions face climate change risk BBC - Billions of people face shortages of food and water and increased risk of flooding, experts at a major climate change conference have warned.

Panel: Global Warming a Threat to Earth - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - April 6, 2007 BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- An international global warming conference approved a report Friday warning of dire threats to the Earth and to mankind -- from increased hunger to the extinction of species -- unless the world adapts to climate change and halts its progress. Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings.

Climate Report Warns of Faster and Wider Damage NYT April 6, 2007 By REUTERS.

Global Warming To Hit World's Poor:
April 6, 2007 BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- An international global warming conference approved a report Friday warning of dire threats to the Earth and to mankind -- from increased hunger to the extinction of species -- unless the world adapts to climate change and halts its progress. Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings ... full text

No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action

Flagstaff's Arizona State University had proposed desalination plants and a pipeline from the Gulf of California years ago through a solar hydrogen economy, but the billion dollar pipeline from the drying Colorado river won out. The tug of war has begun. The water crisis stands out as significantly important because the oceans have not run dry. And we live in the 21st Century! Clean, purified, desalinated water is not being transported (using ultra modern, ‘past due’ methods and means) wherever needed solely due to One Obstacle – Energy and the stagnant science of energy evolution

NYT April 4, 2007
No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and KIRK JOHNSON
A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue.
Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico.
In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns.
The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had.
According to some long-term projections, the mountain snows that feed the Colorado River will melt faster and evaporate in greater amounts with rising global temperatures, providing stress to the waterway even without drought. This year, the spring runoff is expected to be about half its long-term average. In only one year of the last seven, 2005, has the runoff been above average.
Everywhere in the West, along the Colorado and other rivers, as officials search for water to fill current and future needs, tempers are flaring among competing water users, old rivalries are hardening and some states are waging legal fights.
In one of the most acrimonious disputes, Montana filed a suit in February ... full text

Global Warming Expert Fears 'Refugee Crisis'

Repeat: Scientific ignorance, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming, confirm an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options modern civilization requires for survival. The thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications. From the global warming threat to the ongoing resource wars, (food, water, resource limitations), all these basic problems are eliminated in a normal evolutionary progression of energy systems Fuel 2000 and Beyond

Global Warming Expert Fears 'Refugee Crisis'
ABC The Second of Four Major Reports on Climate Change Says It's a Different World Already
By BILL BLAKEMORE
April 2, 2007 — - Within two or three decades, there could be one and a half billion people without enough water, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming.
Such droughts would produce "refugee crises like we've never seen," as one of the study's lead authors told ABC News.
Scientists working on the "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" report have been telling ABC News for months that its findings, once public, would be alarming. The report is being prepared by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of 2,500 experts in the field.
Scientists are hammering out that report's final wording in Brussels and are due to announce it on Friday.
But its basic findings, they say, won't change.
Drafts of the IPCC report depict a world already changed dramatically in the past 35 years by manmade global warming, with increasing drought, heavy precipitation and flooding.
It also says humankind is in for much worse in the next few decades.
The IPCC scientists are finalizing one chart that projects how, with each degree of future warming, Earth's natural life-support systems break down more and more.
It predicts mountain glaciers and snow-pack melting away around the world, faster than scientists thought possible ... full text

The Age Of Warming

Repeat: Scientific ignorance, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming, confirm an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options modern civilization requires for survival. The thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications. From the global warming threat to the ongoing resource wars, (food, water, resource limitations), all these basic problems are eliminated in a normal evolutionary progression of energy systems Fuel 2000 and Beyond

The Age Of Warming
April 1, 2007
(CBS) If you were waiting for the day global warming would change the world, that day is here. It’s happening, far from civilization’s notice, in a place about as remote as you can get. Scientists believed Antarctica, at the bottom of the world, was too vast, too remote, to be bothered by climate change any time soon. But now glaciers are setting speed records for melting. Whole colonies of penguins are disappearing. Why does it matter? Antarctica is a climate giant, driving ocean and wind currents worldwide, with enormous potential to raise sea levels. To find out what’s happening down south, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley set out on an expedition; the first stop was the high mountains of Patagonia in Chile, where you can actually see a new age beginning.
The glacier O’Higgins, a mass of ice, has been frozen for tens of thousands of years in the mountains of southern Chile. O’Higgins is spectacular for its beauty, but for a scientist like Gino Casassa it’s breathtaking for the speed it is disappearing – the glacier is morphing into a lake, retreating more than any glacier ...full text

Report: Climate Change Already Happening

Scientific ignorance, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming confirms an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options which modern civilization requires for survival. The thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications. From the global warming threat to the ongoing resource wars, (food, water, resource limitations), all these basic problems are eliminated in a normal evolutionary progression of energy systems

Report: Climate Change Already Happening
CBS AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, April 1, 2007
(AP) For people in their 30s, climate change already has reshaped the world to which they were born. By the time they reach retirement age, the changes will be far more dramatic — and perhaps life-threatening on a massive scale, an authoritative U.N. study will say this week. On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a network of more than 2,000 scientists, opens a five-day meeting in Brussels, Belgium, to finalize a report on how warming will affect the globe and whether humans can do anything about it. The panel will paint a bleak picture of increasing poverty, paucity of drinking water, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, and a host of vanishing species by mid-century unless action is taken to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. Some regions like parts of North America and northern Europe will see some benefits, at least in the short term, from longer growing seasons and milder winters.
Watch A Preview:The Age Of WarmingScott Pelley travels to the world’s fastest warming place -the South Pole.
Even the most optimistic forecasts say the climate will continue to change and the planet will be irrevocably damaged. The question is, how much? "We are going into a realm the Earth has not seen for a very long time ... over the past 800,000 years," said Camille Parmesan, a University of Texas biologist who has studied the effects of climate change on wildlife and was a reviewer of the upcoming report. A draft of the IPCC's summary has been obtained by The Associated Press, but policy makers will go over the document line-by-line this week before unveiling the final text Friday. It will then become a guideline for governments to determine policies and draft legislation. About 285 delegates from 124 countries are attending, along with more than 50 of the scientists who compiled the report and dozens of observers from nongovernment, mostly environmental, organizations. The closed-door talks are likely to focus on predictions of how many people will be at high risk... full text

65 Tornadoes in Six States Kill Four People

Time to Bunker Down, Adapt and Pray. Certainly easier than to demand science freedom which would automatically unleash wisdom, understanding and open the door to an unlimited, sustainable and prosperous future for all

March 30, 2007
65 Tornadoes in Six States Kill Four People
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Four people were killed in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas after 65 tornadoes swept through six states on Wednesday, officials said yesterday.
Two people died when a tornado swirled through their rural neighborhood near Elmwood, Okla., a state emergency official, Dixie Parker, said. They were identified as Vance and Barbra Woodbury, a husband and wife.
The authorities spread into Beaver County on Wednesday, warning residents to take shelter and to offer assistance, Mrs. Parker said. “There was no house left,” she said. “It was demolished, and we found them in the field. One was still alive, the husband. He passed away just before the ambulance got there.”
The tornado appeared to have cut through their house, as the closest neighbors had just uprooted trees, Mrs. Parker said.
Tornadoes also struck Illinois, Kansas and Nebraska, said Patrick Slattery of the National Weather Service, with some regions pummeled by large hailstones and heavy snowfall.
“It was a big storm, a big system,” Mr. Slattery said. “The majority of these were almost in a straight north-south line along the Kansas-Nebraska border. The effects stretched from Colorado and Wyoming ...full text

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows

Increase that productivity and multitasking our corporate lords demand as they cut more corners, jobs, pay!!! And the overworked, underpaid, under insured, vacation deprived, stuck in traffic consumer/worker slaves complied - desperately trying to qualify for credit cards to be able to afford sufficient "material goods and some luxury items of the good life", despite no time to enjoy them........THESE ARE THE SYMPTOMS & WONDERS OF A CRIPPLED SCIENCE UNDER CORPORATE CONTROL that are destroying imagination, creativity, and sanity. On to the Future! Now let's profit with corn for fuel - and if you (world) ain't got food, eat cake.

NYT March 29, 2007
Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.
The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.
The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.
Prof. Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data with Prof. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.
“If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it ...full text

Saudi King Condemns U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Long time Allies deserting? I suppose the question of the exponential rise of murder and killing, including the murder and killing of women and children since the "liberation" and "occupation", does occasionally arise. The oil fields are pretty safe though.

NYT March 28, 2007
Saudi King Condemns U.S. Occupation of Iraq
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia told Arab leaders on Wednesday that the American occupation of Iraq is “illegal,” and he warned that unless Arab governments settle their differences, foreign powers like the United States would continue to dictate the region’s politics.
The king’s speech, at the opening of the Arab League summit meeting here, underscored growing differences between Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration as the Saudis take on a greater regional leadership role, partly at American urging. The Saudis seem to be emphasizing that they will not be beholden to the policies of their longtime ally.
The Saudis brokered a deal between the two main Palestinian factions last month but one that both Israel and the United States found deeply problematic because it added to the power of the radical group Hamas rather than to the more moderate Fatah. On Wednesday, the king called for an end to the international boycott of the new Palestinian government. The United States and Israel want the boycott continued.
In addition, King Abdullah invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Riyadh earlier this month while the Americans want him shunned. And in trying to settle the tensions in Lebanon, the Saudis seem willing to negotiate with Iran.
Last week, the Saudi king abruptly canceled his appearance at an April White House dinner planned in his honor, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The official reason given for the cancellation was a scheduling conflict.
Mustapha Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, said the Saudis are sending Washington a message. “They are telling the U.S. they need to listen to their allies rather than imposing decisions on them and always taking Israel’s side.”
In his speech on Wednesday, the king said: “In the beloved Iraq, the bloodshed is continuing under an illegal foreign occupation.. full text

U.N.: World must share, not war over water

The water crisis stands out as significantly important because the oceans have not run dry. And we live in the 21st Century! Clean, purified, desalinated water is not being transported (using ultra modern, ‘past due’ methods and means) wherever needed solely due to One Obstacle – Energy and the stagnant science of energy evolution. This same inadequacy in energy science causing “The Trouble With Physics” (by Lee Smolin), idling the Standard Model as Physics awaits new options, is responsible for the looming lethal threats of global warming, resource wars and deadly pollution. The avenue to evolutionary new energy options became accessible in the middle 1940’s. "For the people, by the people can either demand revelations of the ‘hidden variables in science, or create a world body to “re-discover” and implement the required evolving energy systems. Evolution will not wait.

U.N.: World must share, not war over water
Population growth, and now warming, are adding to pressures
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 12:24 p.m. CT March 22, 2007

ROME - With climate change now adding to the pressures, sharing rather than warring over the world's resources of fresh water represents the "challenge of the 21st century," the United Nations said Thursday as it marked World Water Day.
"The bulk of that challenge lies in finding more effective ways to conserve, use and protect the world’s water resources," the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement.
Already 1.1 billion people lack access to adequate clean water and, with the world's population set to grow from the current 6.5 billion to 8 billion by 2030, 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by then, the Rome-based agency estimated.
That growing population also means that "14 percent more freshwater will need to be withdrawn for agricultural purposes in the next 30 years," the FAO stated.
FAO Director Jacques Diouf said the repercussions of not meeting the challenge would be enormous. "Water conflicts can arise in water stressed areas among local communities and between countries," he told a conference marking World Water Day.
"The lack of adequate institutional and legal instruments for water sharing exacerbates already difficult conditions. In the absence of clear and well-established rules, chaos tends to dominate and power plays ...full text

Gore takes warming warnings to Congress

Our Lives are in "good hands" as we place our Trust in "Greedy Guts" Corporate Modus Operandi, the physical embodiment of the ancient Chinese symbol "the dragon eating its own tail".

An interesting dilemma, advancing Civilization cannot proceed without new energy systems, yet new energy systems more powerful than nukes and far simpler to develop once understood, require corresponding degrees of wisdom and understanding.

Gore takes warming warnings to Congress
Call for curbs on coal power, carbon emissions met with GOP skepticism
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 6:26 p.m. CT March 21, 2007

WASHINGTON - Al Gore spoke out on his signature issue Wednesday, telling Congress that the world faces “a true planetary emergency” unless it dramatically and immediately reduces emissions that most scientists tie to global warming.
In a return he described as emotional, the former vice president testified before House panels that it is not too late to deal with climate change “and we have everything we need to get started.”
Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 90 percent by 2050 to avert a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants — a major source of industrial carbon dioxide — that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.
‘A sense of hope’He said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has done for the exchange of information.
“There is a sense of hope in this country that this United States Congress will rise to the occasion and present meaningful solutions to this crisis,” he said. “Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it’s a challenge to the moral imagination.”
Gore favors a “cap-and-trade” program for the U.S. economy, not just specific sectors such as electricity or manufacturing, which would set an overall limit on warming emissions but allow industry to meet the target by trading pollution allowances.
“Trust the market, make it work for us,” he said.
Gore gained international recognition with his Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” as perhaps the leading spokesman on dealing with global warming. At the hearing, he was flanked by cardboard boxes that he said contained some 516,000 letters calling for congressional action to counter global warming.
Skeptics question science, costsBut several Republicans sharply questioned Gore's recommendations....full text

Harmful Warming Effects Already Here?

In Awakening to New Energy Alternatives Andrew Mount says "It is no surprise that a rise of militarism should precede the demise of the fossil fuel empire. It is the vain attempt of the 'old guard' to extend the life of a dying ideology. Rather than take proactive steps to reconstitute the existing business model, brute force is the preferred, more expedient choice." (with the current addition "Adapt to misery and death from global warming, cook up some corn ethanol, escape to Trivia, and avoid Science FUNDAMENTALS at all costs for they threaten our Corporate Power and Glory - and so THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS PERSISTS)

Harmful Warming Effects Already Here?
CBS WASHINGTON, March 11, 2007
(AP) The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium. At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press. "Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report. Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive. For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised. The draft document by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on global warming's effects and is the second in a series of four being issued this year. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials. But some scientists said the overall message is not likely to change when it's issued in early April in Brussels, the same city where European Union leaders agreed this past week to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Their plan will be presented to President Bush and other world leaders at a summit in June. The report offers some hope ...full text

Crisis Looms in Mortgages

Not to worry. The sound philosophy of the prehistoric economic model and corporate structure spreading worldwide has human life, and quality of life, as its first and foremost priority - understanding full well, without human life, there would be no long term profit (historical stats may have an argument here questioning starvation, poverty, pollution, global warming, traffic nightmares, health & medical deprivation, sweatshops and so on)


NYT March 11, 2007
News Analysis
Crisis Looms in Mortgages
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
On March 1, a Wall Street analyst at Bear Stearns wrote an upbeat report on a company that specializes in making mortgages to cash-poor homebuyers. The company, New Century Financial, had already disclosed that a growing number of borrowers were defaulting, and its stock, at around $15, had lost half its value in three weeks.
What happened next seems all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless urging of Wall Street analysts. Last week, New Century said it would stop making loans and needed emergency financing to survive. The stock collapsed to $3.21.
The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.
Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax standards and anything-goes lending.
Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as it involves the nation’s $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury market.
Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means ...full text

Memos Tell Officials How to Discuss Climate

Just Protocol and your standard no need to know freedumb services teaching the public about reality.

“This sure sounds like a Soviet-style directive to me,” Ms. Williams said.

NYT March 8, 2007

Memos Tell Officials How to Discuss Climate
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so.
In December, the Bush administration, facing a deadline under a suit by environmental groups, proposed listing polar bears throughout their range as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because the warming climate is causing a summertime retreat of sea ice that the bears use for seal hunting.
Environmentalists are trying to use such a listing to force the United States to restrict heat-trapping gases that scientists have linked to global warming as a way of limiting risks to the 22,000 or so bears in the far north.
It remains unclear whether such a listing will be issued. The Fish and Wildlife Service this week held the first of several hearings in Alaska and Washington on the question.
Over the past week, biologists and wildlife officials received a cover note and two sample memorandums to be used as a guide in preparing travel requests. Under the heading “Foreign Travel — New Requirement — Please Review and Comply, Importance: High,” the cover note said:
“Please be advised that all foreign travel requests (SF 1175 requests) and any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who’ll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears.”
The sample memorandums, described as to be used in writing travel requests, indicate that the employee seeking permission to travel “understands the administration’s position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues.”
Electronic copies of the memorandums and cover note were forwarded to The New York Times by Deborah Williams, an environmental campaigner in Alaska and a former Interior Department official in the Clinton administration.
“This sure sounds like a Soviet-style directive to me,” Ms. Williams said. ...full text

Congress Takes Aim At Credit Card Policies

Long as it makes a profit, it is right and good - cause you, the people, gave me (the corporation) the power to do as I please - now keep playing trivia, watch footsybally, increase productivity, and hopefully any spare time you have left will be stuck in traffic....................long ago, there was a biblical story about money exchangers

Congress Takes Aim At Credit Card Policies
WASHINGTON, March 7, 2007
(CBS/AP) An Ohio man whose $3,200 credit card debt mushroomed to $10,700 with interest and fees told his story Wednesday to senators, who denounced the industry for confusing billing practices and shifting interest rates. Executives of three major banks defended their credit card practices as responsible and responsive to consumers' needs in testimony at the hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' investigative subcommittee. Those from Citigroup Inc. and Chase Bank USA said their companies were eliminating some practices — including the one that hit Wesley Wannemacher of Lima, Ohio, with over-limit fees on his Chase card account 47 times although he went over his credit limit only three times. The interest charges and fees on Wannemacher's account more than tripled his debt despite his having made payments averaging $1,000 a year over six years, noted Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the subcommittee's chairman. "Unfair? Clearly, I think," Levin said. He said an investigation by the panel found that "sky-high interest charges and fees are not uncommon in the credit card industry. While the ...full text

Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile

It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000.
But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.

…………freedumb, freedumb, freedumb and taxes, as government services dwindle and/or are turned over to For Profit Corporations – huh, that don’t make no lick of sense


NYT March 5, 2007
Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile
By ROBERT PEAR
SALISBURY, N.C. — Vicki H. Readling vividly remembers the start of 2006.
“Everybody was saying, ‘Happy new year,’ ” Ms. Readling recalled. “But I remember going straight to bed and lying down scared to death because I knew that at that very minute, after midnight, I was without insurance. I was kissing away a bad year of cancer. But I was getting ready to open up to a door of hell.”
Ms. Readling, a 50-year-old real estate agent, is one of nearly 47 million people in America with no health insurance.
Increasingly, the problem affects middle-class people like Ms. Readling, who said she made about $60,000 last year. As an independent contractor, like many real estate agents, Ms. Readling does not receive health benefits from an employer. She tried to buy a policy in the individual insurance market, but — having had cancer — could not obtain coverage, except at a price exceeding $27,000 a year, which was more than she could pay.
“I don’t know which was worse, being told that I had cancer or finding that I could not get insurance,” Ms. Readling (pronounced RED-ling) said in an interview in her office, near the tree-lined streets and stately old homes of this city in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000.
But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.
And that is one reason, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, that the problems of the uninsured have jumped to the top of the domestic political agenda in Washington and on the campaign trail.
Today, more than one-third of the uninsured — 17 million of the nearly 47 million — have family incomes of $40,000 or more, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization. More than two-thirds of the uninsured are in ...full text

China Plans Big Increase in Military Budget

"Laca" Wisdom, Understanding, promotes Oblivion in the blink of an eye. If Physics did not have the deliberate missing fundamentals problem, resource wars, adapting to global warming and limitations would disappear - from health care, to food, to material goods, to technological wonders. The quality of life, including transportation, would soar. Freedom and science would replace Corporate Rule.

March 4, 2007
China Plans Big Increase in Military Budget
By JIM YARDLEY and DAVID LAGUE
BEIJING, March 4 — China announced its biggest increase in military spending in five years on Sunday, an increase that quickly prompted the United States to renew its calls for more transparency from the Chinese military about the scope and intent of its rapid arms buildup.
Jiang Enzhu, a spokesman for the National People’s Congress, the Communist Party-controlled national legislature, said China’s military budget would rise this year by 17.8 percent, to roughly 350 billion yuan, or just under $45 billion.
“We must increase our military budget, as it is important to national security,” Mr. Jiang said at a news conference. “China’s military must modernize. Our overall defenses are weak.”
But China’s military modernization efforts, particularly its drive to develop advanced weaponry, have been raising concern from Washington to Tokyo to New Delhi. In January, China set off fears of an arms race in space when it successfully tested an anti-satellite missile that destroyed one its own aging weather satellites. A month earlier, the People’s Liberation Army began deploying the country’s first state-of-the-art jet fighter, the J-10.
These advances reflect China’s intense focus on scientific and technological development, and are the fruits of more than a decade of increased military spending. China’s defense outlays increased ...full text

Record power for military laser

21st Century Wisdom & Understanding magnifying a global arms race to oblivion. This definitely is a lethal Trouble with Physics and a 'laca' wisdom scientific teachings, with glaringly obvious missing fundamentals. Test your scientific skills on the Evolution blog sidebar for elementary survival parameters.

Record power for military laser
By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News 2/22/07
A laser developed for military use is a few steps away from hitting a power threshold thought necessary to turn it into a battlefield weapon.
The Solid State Heat Capacity Laser (SSHCL) has achieved 67 kilowatts (kW) of average power in the laboratory.
It could take only a further six to eight months to break the "magic" 100kW mark required for the battlefield, the project's chief scientist told the BBC.

Potentially, lasers could destroy rockets, mortars or roadside bombs.
For many years, solid state, electrically powered lasers like SSHCL were only able to operate at a fraction of the 100kW mark.
I know of no other solid state laser that has achieved 67kW of average output power Bob Yamamoto, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Then, in March 2005, the system achieved 45kW. Hitting 67kW, said SSHCL programme manager Bob Yamamoto, meant 100kW was now within reach.
"I know of no other solid state laser that has achieved 67kW of average output power," Dr Yamamoto, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, told BBC News.
"We believe we hold the world's record for this."
Pros and cons
The news was announced at an army science conference in Orlando, Florida, and reported by the website Defensetech.org.
The US military has been researching laser weaponry since the 1960s. But the technology has struggled to live up to high hopes; directed energy weapons projects have failed to enter the battlefield ...full text

U.S. Blasted for Treatment of Detainees

Oh, now I remember studying the EXCEPTIONS to the Constitution... huh?

U.S. Blasted for Treatment of Detainees
3/1/07 U.N. Human Rights Chief Criticizes U.S. Action Barring Guantanamo Detainees From Using Courts
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. human rights chief expressed concern Wednesday at recent U.S. legislative and judicial actions that she said leave hundreds of detainees without any way to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.
Louise Arbour referred to the Military Commissions Act approved by Congress last year and last month's federal appeals court ruling that Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot use the U.S. court system to challenge their detention. The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court.
Arbour was critical of the ruling, calling on the judicial system to "rise to its long-standing reputation as a guardian of fundamental human rights and civil liberties and provide the protection to all that are under the authority, control, and therefore in my view jurisdiction of the United States."
Twice before, the Supreme Court issued ruling giving Guantanamo detainees full access to courts. But last June, the justices suggested President Bush could ask Congress for more anti-terrorism authority, prompting passage of the commissions act that in part stripped federal court review.
The act grants suspects at Guantanamo Bay the right to confront the evidence against them and have a lawyer present at specially created "military commissions." But it does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel and specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts.
"I am very concerned that we continue to see detention without trial and with, in my opinion, insufficient judicial supervision," Arbour told a news conference after meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
"I thought there had been progress in that direction. There's been a legislative setback now recently in my view, a judicial decision," she said. These people have "no credible mechanism to ascertain the validity of these ... suspicious or allegations."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. ABC News Internet Ventures

Widespread Storms Cause Deaths in 3 States

More Energy, More Weather

NYT March 2, 2007
Widespread Storms Cause Deaths in 3 States
By BRENDA GOODMAN
ATLANTA, March 2 — A violent storm system that stretched nearly 1,000 miles from the Midwest to the Southeast has killed at least 20 people in three states, including 8 who died when what appeared to be a tornado caused the roof to collapse at a high school in Enterprise, Ala. on Thursday, state emergency management officials said.
At least 31 tornados have been reported over the last two days in Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, the National Weather Service reported. The storm system has been blamed for nine deaths in Alabama, two in Georgia and one in Missouri.
A tornado apparently touched down early today near the Sumter Regional Hospital ...full text

U.S. Heading Towards Bankruptcy?

.....And he acknowledges nobody is addressing the matter. Why? "Because it's always easier not to," Conrad says, "because it's always easier to defer, to kick the can down the road to avoid making choices … You get in trouble in politics when you make choices."

U.S. Heading Towards Bankruptcy?
March 1, 2007
(CBS) The U.S. government's top accountant says the law that added a prescription drug benefits to Medicare may be the most financially irresponsible legislation passed since the 1960s. U.S. Comptroller General David Walker says Medicare — barring vast reform to the program and the nation's healthcare system — is already on course to possibly bankrupt the treasury and adding the prescription bill just makes the situation worse. Walker talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft this Sunday, March 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. "The prescription drug bill is probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s," says Walker, "because we promise way more than we can afford to keep." He argues that the federal government would need to have $8 trillion today, invested at treasury rates, to cover the gap between what the program is expected to take in and what it is expected to cost in the next 75 years — and that is in addition to more than $20 trillion that will be needed ...full text