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GAIA AND HOMOSAPIENS

CBC Hourly News
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CBC World at Six News - "What's Going On Out There?"
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Music to accompany you on your cyber-visit
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Note-- The symbol ^ denotes that that article can be read in full at the link. Articles with titles in italics are from a recent issue.

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Breaking News

24 Hour TV Channel Live from Disaster in Chile
Canal de Chile / US Stream Updated Continuously
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Chile struggles to keep order in quake-hit city
Reuters - By Mario Naranjo - March 2, 2010
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CONCEPCION, Chile - Chilean authorities extended a curfew in the country's second-biggest city on Tuesday as troops struggled to contain worsening looting and crime in the wake of a devastating earthquake. A night-time curfew in the badly damaged city of Concepcion was extended until midday after looters burned stores and residents complained of deteriorating security and slow government delivery of food and other basic supplies

Chile | A Time Magazine Reporter's Account of Effectts of Quake in Santiago
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US | 2K Federal Transport Workers Face Furlough
White House Blames Kentucky GOP Senator for Blocking Bill that Would Keep Federal Cash Flowing to States.
How one Senator can bring the government to a screeching halt
CBS News / AP - March 1, 2010
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US | USDOT Furloughs to Shut Down Critical Construction Projects
Secretary LaHood Denounces Political Games During Tough Economic Times.
US Department of Transportation - March 1, 2010
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US | Senate inaction jeopardizes unemployment benefits
ABC News / AP - By Stephen Ohlemacher - February 26, 2010
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US | New 9/11 Photos Released
Scroll to bottom for Video and Analysis
James Fetzer Blogspot - February 10. 2010
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International Issues

The Historical Mirror | Myth of the altruistic conqueror
Socialist Worker - February 23, 2010
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Global Regions

Africa | Sarkozy admits Rwanda 'mistakes'
Al Jazeera - February 25, 2010
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Middle East | Opinion | israel's new war on Islamic sites
Al Jazeera - By Daud Abdullah - February 25, 2010
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Nstional News

Afghanistan | The American Awakening
The New Republic - By Dexter Filkins - March 1, 2010
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The Chile Earthquake

Chile | Pat Robertson: “God Even Angrier with Chile than Haiti"
The Desperate Blogger's Salon Page - February 27, 2010
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Video | A "Show" | Homage al Espiritu de Chile
US Stream-TV - February 26. 2010 - Antes el Terramoto
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Several Agencies Start Text Fundraising Campaign For Chile Earthquake Victims
WHNT News, Staff Reports - February 28, 2010
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If you'd like to help the victims of the earthquake in Chile, several agencies have set up text campaigns so you can make a donation. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile have waived all calling fees for its customers trying to reach loved ones in Chile. All the carriers Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon will not charge to text message donations.

Information on the various organizations collecting donations for Chile through texting campaigns. Click above link.

Underwater Plate Cuts 400-Mile Gash
The New York Times - By Henry Fountain - February 27, 2010
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*Editor - This recalls for me one of those smaller quakes in 1965 when I and my family were living in Concepcion where I was technical adviser to the Chilean government on habitat and regional development planning. On a Saturday morning while I was reading to the children. seated on the living room floor, there was a sudden vertical jolt. Fortunately no damage occured. Later, I was informed by the government provincial office that a fault line ran below that area. All the houses on that block had been destroyed in the 1960 quake excepting a two story wood frame house next to our newly built concrete reinforced house. In fact, during my 35 year career at the UN I was sent on missions to a number of earthquake-hit zones around the world to help governments prepare for post--disaster planning and recovery.

Chile was ready for quake, Haiti wasn't
Wealth, building codes and preparedness kept many Chileans safe while Haitians perished.
Salon / AP - By Frank Bajak - February 27, 2010
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Wrecked Roads and Bridges in Chile Hinder Rescue Effort
The New York Times - By Mark Lacey - March 1, 2010
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Historic | The 10,000-Mile Disaster
Time - Monday, June 6, 1960
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Editor - As a Ford Foundation technical consultant to Chile's Ministry of National Planning on regional development between 1965-1969 I had occasion to witness the results of this earthquake on the nation first in Concepcion, where unsettling aftereffects were still being felt, then in Santiago. The intensities of the 2010 and 1960 quakes were similar. This is an account of the 1960 event at the latter date.

As Chile cracked and heaved last week under the force of its fifth major earthquake in two days, a six-year-old boy in Puerto Montt snatched up his baby brothers, tucked one under each arm and tried to run. Walls twisted and split above him. The earth beneath rocked so crazily that he could not move his feet. Then an avalanche of crumbled masonry buried him to the neck. When he was dug out, his brothers were dead—and in the shock and fright of his own eyes was the measure of Chile's disaster.

Fragile Crust. Geologically, Chile is in a mountain-building period, thrusting up the Andes Mountains over slow-moving heat currents in the solid layer beneath the earth's crust. When the heat currents flow evenly, the surface holds steady. When the currents vary, they put strains on the crust, which slips ponderously along lines of weakness called fault lines. The magnified result of such slips can be devastating to humans and their buildings on the earth's surface. Transferred to the sea, the giant push creates huge seismic waves.

Measured on the Richter scale, which counts any jolt over 7 as "major,"* the five biggest of Chile's shudders ranged between 7.25 and 8.5, striking along a fault line (see chart) that cuts through Chile's southern wheat-growing breadbasket and close to coal-mining, fishing and light-industrial towns.
At Concepcion, which has been destroyed five times in the past by earthquakes, only the earthquake-proof buildings put up after the city was last shattered in 1939 survived the first shudder. The cold, rain and sleet of subequatorial winter chilled the survivors as they dug through the ruins for bodies, or camped in the open, waiting numbly for the next jolt. Six old volcanoes and three new ones came to angry life as channels cracked open to lava beds. Just north of the town of Rupanco, a flood of boiling lava poured into Lake Ranco and swept over the town. Short moments before, an avalanche had thundered down a nearby mountain, burying 113.

Two small mountains sank out of sight, a 25-mile stretch of high ground dropped 1,000 feet, and new lakes were formed. Volcanic ash rose 23,000 ft. into the sky. Seismic waves washed away 630 of the 800 citizens of the fishing village of Queilen. In the inferno of lava, smoke, fire, water, avalanche and death, the helpless victims first scurried around in panic, then subsided into resigned silence. They worked feverishly to claw the dead and injured from the rubble.

Drowned Coastlines. Then, on seismic waves of deceptively quiet water, Chile's tragedy spread across the Pacific. Traveling as fast as 520 m.p.h. but separated as much as 100 miles from crest to crest, the waves met incoming ships so gently that they merely slowed them down. But when the waves hit land, they caused an unruly violence that varied according to the slope of a shore, the shelter of a peninsula or the degree of warning.

In Alaska, Fiji and Tahiti, the waves became nothing more than wildly fluctuating tides. At Pago Pago they carried three houses into the bay; in New Zealand, sheep dogs chained to kennels were swept out to sea and drowned, while the waves' great ebb eerily exposed the wreck of a British frigate sunk in 1840 off Auckland.
- Continued >

Video | Harsh Lessons for Chile and Haiti from Peru
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The Haiti Earthquake

Rains threaten more Haiti misery
Al Jazeera -- february 26, 2010
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United States Government

***** video | Fault Lines - Obama's War
Al Jazeera - February 24, 2010
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As a candidate for the US presidency, Barack Obama staked much of his his campaign on the claim that the war in Iraq was a distraction from the "good war" against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But as the new president attempts to turn his pledges into action, US troops in Afghanistan currently seem confounded by an opponent whose roadside bombs and guerilla tactics have made this one of the US's deadliest wars.

Doctors Without Morals
The New york Times - By Leonard S. Rubenstein and Stephen N. kenakis - February 28, 2010
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AFTER five years of investigation, the Justice Department has released its findings regarding the government lawyers who authorized waterboarding and other forms of torture during the interrogation of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. The report’s conclusion, that the lawyers exercised poor judgment but were not guilty of professional misconduct, is questionable at best. Still, the review reflects a commitment to a transparent investigation of professional behavior.
Editor - This recalls the uses of medical procedures in Nazi Germany of this nature. Let's face it.

***** Video | Fault Lines - The Afghanistan Debate
Al jazeera - November 16, 2009
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***** video | Fault Lines - Has Obama brought change to the US?
Al jazeera - October 1, 2009
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Supreme Court | Decision Could Allow Anonymous Political Contributions by Businesses
Editor - The Corporatization of the electorial process - Beware Americans. Your democracy is being given over to to non-citizens. Corporations are not citizens despite right wing judicial decisions. Your contributions. are transparent through the tax filing process.
The New York Times - By Grace Palmer - February 27, 2010
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The Supreme Court decision last month allowing corporations to spend unlimited money on behalf of political candidates left a loophole that campaign finance lawyers say could allow companies to pay for extensive political advertising while avoiding the disclosure requirements the court appeared to leave intact.
Editor - Appeared? Do you think this was accidental? This borders on doubtful or sloppy judicial drafting.

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A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll finds that 67 percent of Americans disagree with the Supreme Court's recent Citizens United ruling loosening restrictions on corporate spending in campaigns. Only 16 percent of Americans agree with the ruling.

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Supreme Court | Toxic Waters - Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Hampering E.P.A.
The New York Times - By Charles Duhigg and Janet Roberts - February 28, 2010
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Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.
Editor - Is the Supreme Court protecting the corporations, major polluters of our waters, again? Should we start to refer to this Supreme Court as"The Toxic Supreme Court"? There appears to be some justification for this appelation.

Editorial | The Toxic Court System | If the Lawyer Fails
The New York Times - February 28, 2010
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Complete here
Our legal system is complex and a lot more powerful than any individual. That is why the Constitution guarantees people accused of serious crimes the right to counsel. If a lawyer turns out to be negligent, the system must do all it can to protect the individual’s rights.

The Supreme Court has a chance to reinforce that fundamental protection in the case of Albert Holland. A Florida prisoner, he did everything he could to ensure that his lawyer filed his habeas corpus petition, which would allow the federal courts to review his state-court conviction for first-degree murder and other crimes.

He continually asked about it, and emphasized the importance of meeting the deadlines. The lawyer repeatedly assured Mr. Holland that he would take care of it, and then missed the habeas deadline. Mr. Holland was given a new lawyer, who argued that due to the first lawyer’s extreme negligence, the failure should be excused under “equitable tolling,” which allows for deadlines to be excused in the broader interests of justice.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rejected the argument, ruling that even gross negligence by a lawyer does not provide a basis for equitable tolling. Unless there was “bad faith, dishonesty, divided loyalty, mental impairment,” or something of that magnitude, the court said, the deadline would stand.

It is a shameful ruling. Mr. Holland’s lawyer’s conduct was not merely negligent. It was, as legal ethics professors and practitioners say in a brief, “intolerable, thoroughly unacceptable behavior.” The legal system cannot take away Mr. Holland’s right to challenge his conviction on the basis of inexcusably awful lawyering.

Underlying all of the law is the principle of “equity,” meaning rules must be interpreted in ways that advance fundamental fairness. The 11th Circuit’s decision is part of a disturbing trend. Increasingly, courts are ignoring fundamental fairness and overemphasizing rigid rules and technical legal points — in many cases, deadlines of one kind or another — in ways that undermine justice.

The Supreme Court, which hears Mr. Holland’s case on Monday, should not allow this to continue. It should reverse the 11th Circuit’s deeply unfair ruling and allow Mr. Holland’s habeas petition to be heard.

Supposed 'Independent Pentagon panel' has contractor contacts and financial ties in conflict with the purpose of its creation
USA TODAY - By Ray Locker and Ken Dilanian - March 1, 2010
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WASHINGTON — More than half of the panel memrs appointed to review the Pentagon's latest four-year strategy blueprint have financial ties to defense contractors with a stake in the planning process, a USA TODAY analysis shows. Congress created the 20-member panel in 2006 to analyze the Defense Department's four-year plan, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review. Lawmakers called for the panel to provide an independent "alternate view" of the Pentagon's plan, which shapes future military policy and spending on weapons and other needs.

A dozen of the unpaid panelists were appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and eight by the top Republican and Democrat members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. Eleven work for defense contractors as employees, consultants or board directors, records show.

"The Pentagon often talks about its cooperation with industry, but this makes you wonder who's wearing the pants in this relationship," said Mandy Smithberger, national security investigator for the Project on Government Oversight.

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Topical News

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Activism at the Ground Level

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." -- Mark Twain

The people's history reading list for Activists
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Opinion | Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century
Climate Stabilization Requires a Cultural and Political Revolution
Common Dreams - By Ronnie Cummins & Will Allen - February 14, 2010
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Israel | Moshe Dayan's widow: Israel doesn't know how to make peace
Haaretz - By Gideon Levy - March 1, 2010
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Arts & Culture

US | The Dark Arts and Shady Culture of Wall Street - No Accountability - $15 Billion for Jobs, $20 Billion for Bonuses
Huffington Post - Richard Eskow - March 1, 2010
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If the jobs bill is small, Wall Street bonuses sure aren't. How's this for perspective? The Senate bill provides $15 billion to help the nation's unemployed, but the Wall Street bankers we all rescued got $20 billion in bonuses last year. That means that 29 million unemployed Americans will receive less financial support in total than was given out in bonuses to about 165,000 Wall Street employees (and most of that went to the guys at the top).
Editor - If robbing banks is criminal, couldn't one say that robbing the people's Treasury with the assistance of our Congress is big time criminality?

Climate Change

Op-Ed | We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change
The New York Times - By Al Gore - February 27, 2010
a href ="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html?th&emc=th"> - LINK ^

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

Constitutional snd Legal Issues

US | Opinion | The Second Amendment’s Reach
The New York Times - March 1, 2010
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Two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down parts of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. On Tuesday, the court will consider whether that decision should apply everywhere in the country, not just in the federal territory of the nation’s capital.

We disagreed strongly with the 2008 decision, which took an expansive and aggressive view of the right to bear arms. But there is an even broader issue at stake in the new case: The Supreme Court’s muddled history in applying the Constitution to states and cities. It should make clear that all of the protections of the Bill of Rights apply everywhere.

The Corporate Charnel House

"If an activity is not, in our bureaucratic times, corporate, it is suspect."
The New Republic | Book Review - "Dostoyevsky and the French" - By Saul Bellow - February 23, 2010
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Economy and Finance

Bloomberg Economic News
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Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
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Commentary | How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America
The Atlantic - By Don Peck - March 2010
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HOW SHOULD WE characterize the economic period we have now entered? After nearly two brutal years, the Great Recession appears to be over, at least technically. Yet a return to normalcy seems far off. By some measures, each recession since the 1980s has retreated more slowly than the one before it. In one sense, we never fully recovered from the last one, in 2001: the share of the civilian population with a job never returned to its previous peak before this downturn began, and incomes were stagnant throughout the decade. Still, the weakness that lingered through much of the 2000s shouldn’t be confused with the trauma of the past two years, a trauma that will remain heavy for quite some time.

Environment

News Analysis | Pollution | EPA Drastically Underestimates Coal Waste Pollution
Truthout - By Joshua Frank - February 28, 2010
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Food and Nutrition

Vancouver's Gold-Medal Wines
The Atlantic - February 24, 2010
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Politcal Issues

Real cleat Politics Daily Rundown
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Music Video | "Democracy Is Coming to the USA" - Leonard Cohen
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Study | Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?
Time Magazine - By John Cloud - February 26, 2010
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Religion and Philosophy

Video | Fault Lines - Religion and the US military
Al Jazeera - June 26, 2009
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Science and Technology

Bloomberg Index of Current Science News
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Commentary | My Brain on My Mind
The ABCs of the thrumming, plastic mystery that allows us to think, feel, and remember
The American Scholar - By Priscilla Long 0 Winter 2010
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Social Issues

Video | Fault Lines - The forgotten US patients
Al Jazeera - September 20, 2009
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Video | The Recession Generation
Experts explain why the current crop of 20-somethings is unequipped to face today's job market.
The Atlantic - February 9 2010
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Violence

US | Commentary - No Nukes
Common Dreams - By Ralph Nader - February 13, 2010

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US | White House Is Rethinking Nuclear Policy
The New York Times - By David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker - February 28, 2010
a href ="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/politics/01nuke.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y"> - LINK ^

As President Obama begins making final decisions on a broad new nuclear strategy for the United States, senior aides say he will permanently reduce America’s arsenal by thousands of weapons. But the administration has rejected proposals that the United States declare it would ne

US | Guns at Starbucks? Pushing the Right to Bear Arms in Public
The Militarianism of the Citizenry - Gun owners in California have been wearing their handguns in coffee shops and restaurants. The guns are unloaded and legal, but some citizens and police departments are wary.
The Christian Science Monitor - By Michael B. Farrell, Staff writer - February 27, 2010
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Sound and Fury

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