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GAIA AND HOMOSAPIENS
View this unusual film on the evolution and sustainability, or not, of gaia and homosapiens.
- HERE

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Note:The symbol " denotes that that article continues at the link.

Imaging Life
Women Around the World
Oprah.com - October 23, 2009
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For the past 30 years, scientific researchers and survey results have all reached the same conclusion?Danes are consistently happier than the rest of the world. On the "world map of happiness"?a map created by a social psychologist in England?Switzerland, Austria and Iceland rank just below Denmark on the happiness scale. Canada comes in at number 10, while the United States is a distant 23rd. So what makes the Danes so happy? Oprah met up with Nanna Norup, a resident of Copenhagen, to find out. As they walk down the cobblestone streets, Nanna explains some of the differences between Denmark and America.

For instance, in Copenhagen, people are very environmentally conscious. A third of the population rides bikes around the city, many with grocery bags or small children in tow.

Homelessness, poverty and unemployment are also extremely rare in this nation of 5.5 million people. If you lose your job, Nanna says the government continues to pay up to 90 percent of your salary for four years. And not to worry?healthcare is free for everyone.

The Danish government also takes a special interest in mothers and their children. Women typically get six to 12 months in paid maternity leave. And, when it's time to go to college, citizens get paid to go the universities. "When you go to university, then you get paid $400 or $500," Nanna says. "You have free education. Then, you have healthy, well-educated people in the world. What could beat that?"

Quaker business practices might be worth emulating.

Alina_Stefanescu.typepad.com - October 12, 2009

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Imagine filing into the conference room for a business meeting, only to find the other participants sitting there in thoughtful silence. If someone has something to say, they stand up and speak; then others take their turn. No one ever interrupts. When a person finishes having his say, the silence resumes until someone else is moved to speak. No authority figure presides over the meeting, no vote is taken, and there is no agenda. That's how Quakers run their meetings, whether they have gathered for worship or to conduct the congregation's business.

If their methods sound eccentric, consider this: In centuries past, Quaker meetings produced decisions that shaped the course of capitalism. Given the poor-quality decisions emerging from corporate conference rooms these days, a revival of Quaker methods may be long overdue.

I think that managers can adapt certain elements and the guiding spirit of the Quaker business meeting to their purposes," said Margaret Benefiel, a Boston-based management consultant and the author of Soul at Work: Spiritual Leadership in Organizations.

Those elements include "a quiet, reflective frame of mind, mutual respect, [and] the idea that no one person has all the truth, but must listen deeply to others to gain a fuller picture of the truth," said Benefiel, who is a Quaker herself, and teaches at Massachusetts' Andover Newton Theological School when she is not advising managers.

Quakers are more properly known as The Society of Friends, which comprises not one organization but many. Each meeting house sets its own procedures. But they are all egalitarian. Quakers have no priesthood or hierarchy and defer to no human authority figures.

The faith was born in England during the 17th century. Persecuted for their beliefs, Quakers banded together for self-protection, forming communities and networks based on mutual trust. Supported by those communities and empowered by those networks, Quakers invented new ways of doing business. (At least one of their innovations is still with us: the traveling salesman.) Indeed, author David K. Hurst locates the cradle of capitalism in the little town of Coalbrookdale, England, where Quaker manufacturers like Abraham Darby forged the iron sinews of the Industrial Revolution.

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International

Change rules of war, Israeli PM demands
Sydney Morning Herald - By Jason Koutsoukis, Correspondent - October 22, 2009

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JERUSALEM: Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will attempt to change the international laws of war in the wake of accusations that Israel committed war crimes during the January conflict in Gaza. Mr Netanyahu authorised a special committee to deal with the legal consequences of the findings of a United Nations fact-finding mission on the war in Gaza led by the South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Mr Netanyahu said he had instructed his Justice Ministry to form a committee to deal with the prospect of ''legal proceedings abroad against the state of Israel or its citizens''. ''We need to keep punching a hole in this lie that is spreading with the help of the Goldstone report,'' Mr Netanyahu said.

He said draft proposals to change the laws of war would take into account the need to contend with ''the expansion of terrorism in the world''. A spokesman for the Prime Minister's office said international law needed to be changed to allow countries such as Israel that faced threats from terrorism to properly defend themselves. Mr Netanyahu also instructed Israel's Foreign Ministry to develop a special informational campaign to combat the findings of the Goldstone report.

United States Government

Congress | Bill That Would Block Release of Torture Photos Expected to Be Signed Into Law
Obama goes back on his earlier position that these photoss should be released further weakening his claim to change on Bush questionable actions.
Truthout - By: Yana Kunichoff - Thursday 22 October 2009
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In an unprecedented move, Congress passed legislation Tuesday including an amendment which would maintain one of the most contentious hangovers of the Bush administration, allowing the Department of Defense to exempt torture photos of US detainees overseas from public access under Freedom of Information Act requests. This amendment, passed as part of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, would give Secretary of Defense Robert Gates the prerogative to suppress photos of prisoner abuse taken after September 11, 2001, which could result in the endangering of US citizens, troops or employees.

The availability of photos and records of detainee abuse has been at the center of a lawsuit between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Bush administration since 2003. The lawsuit is now continuing under the Obama administration and is aimed at photos that were ordered released by a federal appeals court as part of an ACLU FOIA lawsuit, though it would apply to other photos in government custody as well.

President Obama had initially indicated that he would not block the release of these photographs; however, in May, he reversed his decision and filed an appeal with the Supreme Court.

Despite the uncertain effect of Tuesday's legislation on their ongoing litigation, the ACLU plans to continue with the case. It has thus far been upheld by two federal courts, which found that there was "significant public interest in the disclosure of these photographs." A decision from the Supreme Court is expected on October 30, 2009.

With New York Picking a Mayor, the ?Jewish Vote? Is on the Wane

Smaller and More Fractured, its Influence Is ?Not What it Was?

The Forward - By Gal Beckerman - Issue of October 30, 2009
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Citizens / Civil Organizations / Activism

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Topical Sections
Art and Culture

Leonard Cohen | "First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin" | Music Video
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Civil and Corporate Crime

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.?
--- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-Nov-21, in a letter to Colonel E. Mandell House

Communities and Species

'Ardi' May Rewrite the Story of Humans - 4.4 Million-Year-Old Primate Helps Bridge Evolutionary Gap
Washington Post - By Joel Achenbach, Staff Writer - Friday, October 2, 2009
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Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago in the woodlands of East Africa. She spent most of her time in the trees. She stood about 4 feet tall, weighed 110 pounds, and had long arms, short legs, and a grasping big toe that was perfect for clambering branch to branch. She ate in the trees, raised her offspring in the trees, slept in the trees. But sometimes she came down to the ground, and stood upright. She could walk on two legs. She was, in a sense, taking baby steps on a journey that would change the world.
"Ardi" is the nickname given to a shattered skeleton that an international team of scientists painstakingly excavated from the Ethiopian desert, analyzed over the course of 15 years, and declared Thursday to be a major breakthrough in the study of human origins. Ardi lived more than a million years before "Lucy," a much-celebrated, 3.2 million-year-old fossil of an early human progenitor found just 45 miles away.

If the scientists are correct, Ardi and her kind were the ancestors of our ancestors. She was a transitional figure, almost a hybrid -- a tree creature who could carry food in her arms as she explored the woodland floor on two legs.

The skeletal remnants of Ardi were recovered along with bones from at least 35 other members of a species that the scientists call Ardipithecus ramidus. Their arduous investigation had incited grumbling in a scientific community that had grown impatient to find out what exactly had been found in the silty clay of Ethiopia. The answers are dramatic, detailed in 11 papers published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science and discussed in dual press conferences in Washington and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The discovery of Ardi "further confirms that Ethiopia is the cradle of humankind," said Yohannes Haile-Selassie, the paleontologist who found the first two bones of Ardi in 1994.

Constitutional and Legal Issues

US | Antitrust Laws | Congress cranks up pressure on insurance industry
Reuters - By Donna Smith and John Whitesides - Thusday, October 22, 2009
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WASHINGTON - Democrats in the U.S. Congress moved on Wednesday to repeal the health insurance industry's exemption from antitrust laws, cranking up the pressure in a growing battle over President Barack Obama's healthcare reform plans. The moves were the latest chapter in an escalating feud between the industry and backers of sweeping healthcare reform that would tighten regulations and create a government-run public insurance option to compete with private insurers.

Economy and Finance

Bloomberg Economic News
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Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
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Diseconomy | US - Built to Trash - Is ?heirloom design? the cure for consumption?
In These Times - By Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin - October 21, 2009

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While my parents continued working at the sturdy antique desks they inherited from my grandparents, my children have become the first and last owners of a seemingly endless supply of plastic toys and particle-board furniture.

As the middle-class daughter of a refugee mother and a Depression-era father, I grew up straddling two worlds. My parents could afford much more than they were willing to buy. Most things that broke could be and were repaired. My German grandmother?s aphorisms lingered in the air: ?Waste not, want not,? ?A penny saved is a penny earned,? ?A stitch in time saves nine.?

By the time my own children were born, America was flooded with cheap and cheaply made goods. So while my parents continued working at the sturdy antique desks they inherited from my grandparents and sleeping beneath a hand-crocheted bedspread, my children and their friends became the first and last owners of a seemingly endless supply of plastic toys and particle-board furniture.

I was part of the transitional generation. Building blocks were still made of wood. Comforters were still filled with down. I recall the meticulously machined pencil sharpeners with ?made in West Germany? stamped on their sides that lasted until I lost them. Even the cheap items?the ones ?made in Japan??tended to hold up pretty well.

Now nearly everything is produced in China and made to be discarded. According to a 2008 report by the Economic Policy Institute, the United States imported $320 billion in Chinese goods in 2007. In that year alone, this country imported $26.3 billion in apparel and accessories, $108.5 billion in computers and electronic products, and $15.3 billion in furniture and fixtures from China.

The manufacture, distribution and disposal of an ever-growing mountain of short-lived consumer goods has taken an enormous environmental toll. Annie Leonard?s website ?The Story of Stuff,? which has garnered more than 7 million views in less than two years, has helped spread awareness of that cost far beyond the usual environmentalist circles.

We can?t, however, only blame the quantity and quality of Chinese goods for the environmental and other consequences of this transoceanic factory-to-waste stream. For that we can blame the two horsemen of the modern consumer apocalypse: functional obsolescence and fashion obsolescence.

HS Editor - My own experience as a child growing up in depression dust bowl New Mexico Impressed upon me by those conditions and my parents was to not spend unnessarily, to save scruptiously and to avoid participating in the social rograms of the FDR era. It has been a model for me ever since. This has all come back to me in the recent past. In fact, I advised friends a couple of years before the present economic implosion that they should mend their profligate spendind exceses and multiple "maxed out" credit cards, as they said, as green disappeaed and black economic clouds appeared on the horizon flooding their in-boxes. To no avail. To no avail. We have become a society gorging on plastic.

Latin America plans US dollar replacement
Press TV - Saturday, October 17, 2009
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Leftist Latin American leaders have agreed on using a new intra- regional trading currency, dubbed as Sucre, instead of the US dollar.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, who hosted leaders of the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA), said that the ?document is approved.? During the seventh ALBA summit, the leaders agreed on the currency reform as well as approving plans to impose economic sanctions against the coup leaders in Honduras, AFP reported. The currency, Sucre, is named after Jose Antonio de Sucre who fought for Spain's independence alongside Venezuelan hero Simon Bolivar in the early 19th century. Sucre is scheduled to be rolled out in 2010 in a non-paper form.

Environment and Radioactivity
Australia | Population growth 'damaging' environment

Sydney Morning Herald - By Jacob Saulwick, National correspondent - October 23, 2009

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AUSTRALIA will struggle to deal with the environment challenges thrown up by its growing population, the Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry believes. Stressing that they were his private views, not those of the Treasury, Dr Henry said yesterday he was pessimistic that the population could continue to grow at its projected rate without major damage to biodiversity and exhausting water resources.

''In the last decade, permits have been issued to allow the commercial slaughter of 49.6 million kangaroos - primarily to give household pets a bit of variety in their diet,'' he said. ''That is but one instance of a set of behaviours that suggests that with a population of 22 million people, we haven't managed to find accommodation with our environment. Our record has been poor and in my view we are not well placed to deal effectively with the environmental challenges posed by a population of 35 million.''

Global warming and Climate Change

What a difference four degrees makes: warming's extra toll
Sydney Morning Herald - By Tom Arup - October 23, 2009
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A RESEARCH project commissioned by the British Government reveals regional temperature increases from global warming will be much higher on land surfaces than the overall global average. The British weather bureau's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction has produced a map charting the different regional temperature increases across the globe, if average global temperatures rise by four degrees due to unchecked global warming.

The map shows temperature increases will vary significantly across different regions of the world, but that on average land surfaces would be 5.5 degrees warmer as early as 2050. The 5.5-degree land average is offset by lesser temperature rises in the oceans. Significant warming on land surfaces threaten agriculture, drinking water and glacier melts, the research finds.

Health and Fitness

US | Tests show flu spreads from schools
Reuters - By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor - Wednesday. October 21, 2009
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WASHINGTON - Results of tens of thousands of flu tests indicate that the pandemic H1N1 virus is spreading from school-aged children to the rest of the U.S. population, makers of the tests say. Quest Diagnostics, which makes a commercially available test that can confirm swine flu infection, said the findings suggest many more adults will be infected with the new H1N1 influenza.

Legal Issues

Bloomberg Index of Current Legal News
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Faux Religion and Anti-Philosophies

***** US | Meet the Senators in the Creepy Right-Wing Cult Trying to Defeat Health Care Reform
Altenet - By Adele M. Stan - October 20, 2009.

The Family has spent decades consolidating power within the GOP and may have come to dominate the party even among those who do not belong to the cult

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Rights and Freedom

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians."
--- Angelica Grimke - (1805-1879) Source: Anti-Slavery Examiner, September 1836

"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction."
--- Thomas Jefferson - (1743-1826), Source: in a letter to John Adams as quoted in John A. Stormer, None Dare Call it Treason (Florissant, MO: Liberty Bell Press, 1964)

Science & Technology

Bloomberg Index of Current Science News
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Social Issues
Australia | Call to lift minimum drinking age to 21

Sydney Morning Herald - October 22, 2009

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THE drinking age should be raised to 21 and the price of a standard drink at least doubled if state governments are serious about tackling the problem of alcohol-related violence, a leading criminologist says. Professor Ross Homel, of Griffith University, yesterday criticised the NSW Government's attempt to reduce pub assaults in Sydney with measures such as a 2am lockout and a proposed pub safety rating system, describing them as ''gimmicks unsupported by scientific evidence''. He said overseas research had shown overwhelmingly that raising the drinking age, increasing the cost of alcohol and reducing hotel opening hours were the best ways to cut violence.

Social Stress and Civil Unrest


US | Repentant robber joins cashier in mid-heist prayer
A gunman in the US spent nearly 10 minutes on his knees praying with a clerk at an Indianapolis check cashing business.

Sydney Morning Herald - October 22, 2009
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A repentant robber fell to his knees and prayed with the store assistant during a hold-up, according to US media, which said the man nevertheless proceeded to pinch $US20 from the cash register.
The 23-year-old initially entered the check-cashing establishment in the midwestern city of Indianapolis, Indiana seeking a loan but left, purportedly to get an identification card that was requested, law enforcement officials told ABC television. He returned armed with a gun, which he pointed at the employee, telling her that he had a son to feed and "no choice" but to revert to robbery since "times are hard", according to the report of the heist.

But when the clerk started to talk to the man about God, the gunman appeared to have a change of heart, confiding in the clerk about his hardships and asking her to pray with him.

"I started crying and praying and telling him, `Don't do this', he was too young to throw away his life," store clerk Angela Montez later told a police dispatcher by phone. "He took the bullet out of the gun and said, `Here, I'm not going to hurt you, I'm not going to hurt you,"' Montez said.

The suspect, Gregory Smith, asked Montez for a hug and asked her not to report the crime, then told her to go into the store's restroom and not come out for 20 minutes, police told ABC. Officials said Smith took Montez's phone from her purse and $US20 from the cash drawer, leaving the rest of the money behind. He was arrested on robbery and firearm charges when he turned himself in to authorities a few hours later.

HS Editor - Well, at least that's several notches above the bankers / financial tycoons who recently fleeced their clients while accepting / extorting? taxpayer money from the government and collecting outrageous bonuses from their conniving financial whizes. The legal ramificaions of this anti-social behavior are just now surfacing. To my knowledge, no media center has yet reported soiled pant knees from contact with the marbled floors of the Wall Street financial institutions to date.

Parellel Story - UK | Man jailed for staging car crashes for money

[ Not unlike others who staged economic crashes for money. ]

Sydney Morning Herald - October 22, 2009
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A British man who staged car crashes for money, helping fraudsters claim ?1.6 million ($2.8 million) from insurance firms, was jailed on Wednesday for 4? years.

Violence - Civil, Religious and Governmental

Wear bullet-proof vests, German World Cup stars warned
A target man on the field, German star Michael Ballack may have to wear a bullet-proof vest off it.
Sydney Morning Herald - October 22, 2009
Germany's World Cup stars were warned yesterday to wear bullet-proof vests if they venture away from the team hotel at next year's tournament in South Africa.

Sound and Fury

Photography - US | Photos from the Book, Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America
- Slide Show / Audio

Hip Hop | Maestro Fresh Wes - Drop The Needle
- Video

Bouncing barefoot on the sidewalk
- Video

A Song for the Times - Bing Crosby (1932) ?Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?
- Audio

The History of A Great Depression-Era Anthem For Our Time
- Audio/Text

Yip Harburg (1970)
- Audio

The Internet Press Room

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Music Video | Leonard Cohen | "Democracy Is Coming to the USA"
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