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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

Video | US Congress - Rep. Patrick Kennedy Attacks the Press - Media Doing "Despicable" Job Covering Afghanistan
CBS News -
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Germany | Op-Ed - An Absolute Must Read - Beck, Coulter and Limbaugh: Avatars of Julius Streicher
Truthout - By Davidson Loehr - March 10, 2010
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Making fun of demagogues like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh has become a kind of parlor game, an escape valve to let out some of the frustration of impotent rage. This was brought home again when I read "Defying Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner. Writing between 1933 and 1939, he came of age during Hitler's rise to power. His observations are so searing it's still hard to believe that someone could see this clearly while the spirit of his times was morphing into a broad and deep spirit of evil. Once the Zeitgeist had changed, all kinds of murderous and insane actions became logical means toward transforming German culture into its Nazi metastasis.

Chile | Aftershocks Rattle Chile During Inauguration
The New York Times - By Alexei Barrionuevo and Jack Healy - March 11, 2010
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SANTIAGO, Chile — The new Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera, had not even taken office on Thursday when major aftershocks rocked the central coast of this earthquake-ravaged country. But within hours of his inauguration, he appeared on television to announce that troops, relief supplies and even Mr. Piñera himself would be heading immediately to the quake zone.

A 6.9 magnitude aftershock occured during the inauguration ceremony of Chilean President Sebastián Piñera on Thursday. In rushing to respond aggressively to the tremors, it seemed that Mr. Piñera was trying to avoid the missteps of his predecessor, Michelle Bachelet, whose response to a devastating Feb. 27 earthquake was criticized as halting and ineffective. Mr. Piñera said he would fly to the hardest-hit areas later Thursday, and promised to “deploy all of the troops that may be necessary starting this evening to guarantee calm and public order.” “This government will not hesitate one instant, nor wait one second to act,” he said. “But at the same time, we call on everyone to remain calm.”

Chile’s navy issued a tsunami alert following the aftershocks, and residents of coastal areas fled for higher ground, though the United States Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a tsunami was not expected, and that there was no threat to Hawaii.

Chile aftershocks could go on for years: scientists say
Physorg - March 5, 2010
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Chileans will be feeling aftershocks from the devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake for months and possibly years to come, scientists said Friday, as three strong tremors rocked the country. "The larger the earthquake, the larger the aftershocks, the more of them and the longer they're going to last," said John Bellini, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Colorado. "They will wind down in number, but they will probably be noticeable to people for months and could go on possibly for years," he told AFP.

US / Afghanistan - Marjah: The Non-Existent City the Military Said We Conquered in Afghanistan
Marjah isn't even a town, but rather one of the clearest and most dramatic examples of a war of perception as outlined in the US's counter-insurgency doctrine.
Alternet / IPS News - March 9, 2010
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WASHINGTON - For weeks, the United States public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan war against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjah was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centers in Helmand.

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by military officials and reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as an historic turning point in the conflict. Marjah is not a city or even a real town, but a few clusters of farmers' homes amid a large agricultural area that covers much of the southern Helmand River Valley. "It's not urban at all," an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to Inter Press Service (IPS) on Sunday. He called Marjah a "rural community".
Editor - {t's not even misinformation. It's a lie. Welcome to the 'Oh' administration

UK / US | Ex-MI5 head: US hid torture tactics from UK
A former head of MI5 has accused intelligence services in the US of deliberately hiding the mistreatment of terror suspects from their British allies.
The Independent - By Lewis Smith and Robert Verkaik - March 2010
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UK / US | UK complained to US about terror suspect torture, says ex-MI5 boss
Waterboarding of 9/11 suspect was 'concealed
The Guardian - By Richard Norton-Taylor - March 10, 2010
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International / Bi-National Issues

Afghanistan / US | Afghan Senators demand Execution of Foreign Troops
Juan Cole - February 24, 2010
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Pajhwok News Agency reports that on Tuesday, the Afghanistan senate deplored the foreign airstrikes that killed 21 innocent civilians in the province of Daikundi on Sunday, and demanded that NATO avoid any repetition of this sort of error. But some senators went farther, demanding that NATO or US military men responsible for the deaths be executed. Senator Hamidullah Tokhi of Uuzgan complained to Pajhwok that the foreign forces had killed civilians in such incidents time and again, and kept apologizing but then repeating the fatal mistake: "Anyone killing an ordinary Afghan should be executed in public."

The Chile Earthquake

Video | Un "Show" | Homenaje al Espiritu de Chile
US Stream-TV - February 26. 2010 - Antes el Terramoto
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United States Government

Congress | Opinion - House Debate on Afghanistan Missing Bigger Picture
Huffington Post - By Rep Mike Honda - March 10, 2010
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As Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Afghanistan Taskforce, I want to offer my thoughts on the war in Afghanistan in light of Rep. Kucinich's resolution, H.Con.Res. 248, considered today on the House floor. I firmly believe our current strategy falls far short of bringing stability to Afghanistan or security to America. My serious concerns about U.S. strategy have led me to oppose the war funding supplemental bill in 2009, oppose increased funding for the 30,000 troop surge, support a war tax, and call for an about-face in funding priorities. My concerns have led me to host innumerous congressional briefings on Afghanistan, pursue the commissioning of GAO reports to audit aspects of U.S. engagement, and author multiple op-eds on the subject. In short, I take my chairmanship very seriously.

As long as we continue to pursue military solutions to this conflict, paying little to no heed to economic, political and social solutions, security will remain elusive. As long as we continue to forego the building of Afghan capacity and instead prop up a privatized defense industrial complex, as well as an increasingly privatized development industrial complex, Afghans will never be able to answer our call to "stand up". As long as we remain unwilling to bring to justice our allied warlords and corrupt officials in Afghanistan, our calls for an end to corruption in Kabul ring hollow.

Washington must face up to the alarming reality that the hundreds of billions of dollars being pumped into Afghanistan are simply not benefiting the Afghan people whatsoever and are not being used effectively in the long-term U.S. strategic interest. Washington also must realize that hard power is utterly limited in its capacity to eliminate an ideological enemy, who is not finite in number. What must be pursued, instead, is the build-up of Afghan state capacity to provide policing and legal enforcement, systems of justice, and good intelligence (in addition, of course, to the socio-economic policies capable of educating and employing a vulnerable population).

Ending this war (and with it, the loss of additional American lives), a policy prescription which I certainly support, will not end the pursuit of a failed security strategy. It is this failed strategy, inaugurated by the previous administration in Iraq and Afghanistan nearly a decade ago, which I want Washington to rethink immediately, before we continue similar strategies elsewhere. This is the conversation I wish my colleagues in Congress would host, before we are soon engaged in the very same debate about failed strategies in Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia.

Defense | Army contractor's use of a cover name for Blackwater angers Sen. McCaskill
"The American people have a right to be outraged that we're playing this kind of game with contracting. It's wrong. It's flat wrong."
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With those words, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) voiced her exasperation near the end of a three-hour Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about a contract to train Afghan National Army troops last year to use American weapons. One issue at the Feb. 24. hearing was that the $25 million contract, awarded in September 2008, was to a company called Paravant -- well known to those involved as a cover name for Blackwater (now Xe Services).
Editor - Another lapse of promised transparency on the part of the Obama administration

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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 rulingloosening restrictions on corporate spending in campaigns. Only 16 percent of Americans agree with the ruling.

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Colorado | You Get What You Pay For: The first State To let Cttizens Track Their taxes Online
Huffington Post - By Laura Chapin - March 7, 2010\
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So, how much is safe drinking water worth to you? Or K-12 education? Or decent roads? If you're an average Colorado family with an income of $57,000, it's less than $5 a year for groundwater inspections, $827 towards educating more than 800,000 Colorado kids, and $141 in transportation spending on 23,000 miles of state highways and bridges.

State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, in a continuing effort to let Colorado taxpayers know exactly where their money is going, has launched Colorado Tax Tracks, available at www.colorado.gov/treasury. It's a nifty little tool that gives detailed information on an individual or family basis about how state tax dollars are spent, including percentages and how they are used. It's the first and only such state Tax Tracker in the country.

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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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Alert - ***** - Take Action Now - US | Don’t Let Corporations Buy Congressional Elections
Sponsored by: Common Cause - Current
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Editor - Don't fail what remains of the American democracy. Take Action Now At Link Above.

Alert - ***** - Take Action Now - Stop Violence Against Women
The International Rescue Committee - Current
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Urge Congressional leaders to support the International Violence Against Women Act and ensure that Congress passes it without delay. This legislation will empower women to claim their most fundamental human rights. With the necessary resources for medical care, counseling, economic opportunities and education, women and girls can win in the fight against violence.

US | Edgar Wayburn, a Leader in Saving the Wilderness, Dies at 103
The New York Times - By Douglas Martin - March 9, 2010
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Edgar Wayburn, a physician who joined the Sierra Club to take a burro trip and then went on to become a major figure in the conservation movement, leading campaigns that preserved more than 100 million wild acres, died Friday at his home in San Francisco. He was 103. Dr. Wayburn was a five-term president of the Sierra Club. In announcing his death, the Sierra Club called Dr. Wayburn “the 20th-century John Muir,” referring to its founder, who preserved the Yosemite Valley.

When President Bill Clinton awarded Dr. Wayburn the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999, he said Dr. Wayburn had “saved more of our wilderness than any other person alive.”

Dr. Wayburn had central roles in protecting 104 million acres of Alaskan wilderness; establishing and enlarging Redwood National Park and Point Reyes National Seashore in California; and starting the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in and around San Francisco. His methods were the old-fashioned ones of writing letters, raising money, commenting on environmental studies and attending public hearings. He was widely respected for the authority and persistence he brought to lobbying public officials, always softly, with a courtly Georgia accent

Stop Big Agriculture Lobbyists from Killing Food Safety Reforms
Change.org - Sponsored by: Consumers Union of United States - Current
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It's been one year since nine people died and hundreds more were horribly sickened by a salmonella outbreak in peanut products. Yet we still have the same, outdated federal foods safety laws on our books -- and the owners of the Georgia plant who produced the tainted peanuts still haven't been held accountable. How many more months will pass, and how many more families will be at risk, before we get an effective food safety system? It's time Washington makes the safety of our food a top priority. In July 2009 the House passed an FDA food safety reform bill, and late last fall a Senate health panel did too. The full Senate has yet to act -- no more delays!

Tell your Senators to bring the bill to the floor and pass it so we can start having faith in the food we eat each day.

US | Environmentalist Prods Fellow Blacks to Join in Her Crusade
The N ew York Times - By Don Terry -March 4, 2010
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No one can accuse Naomi Davis of lacking ambition. She wants simultaneously to rebuild black America and save the planet — one neighborhood at a time. She knows she cannot do either alone. Her plan is to recruit and train an army. A green army..That is why Ms. Davis, a petite, 54-year-old lawyer turned environmental evangelist, was squeezing her way through a crowded South Side nightclub Monday night, passing out energy-efficient light bulbs that resemble spiral soft-serve custard swirls to anyone who would sign her e-mail list. She has been collecting names from across the country for years, preparing for a war she is waging between the “old gray economy and the new green economy.” More than 10,000 names are on her list.

Communities and Species

The Cyberworld and the Real World | Game Over - A baby starves to death while its parents play online.
It has come to this: A child starved to death while her parents cared for an imaginary child instead.
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It happened in South Korea. A man and woman met online. Their online relationship became physical. They made a real baby. But the baby was troubled. She was premature. Her parents never named her.

Instead, they found another child to raise. She was healthy, happy, and beautiful. She lived in a world called Prius Online. It's a 3-D-graphics-enhanced universe where you can find new friends, a new job, and a new child. Her name is Anima. According to her online introduction, "Anima is not a passive unit that simply tags along with you and follow[s] your orders. She is your companion with her own intentions who knows how to express her feelings."

We used to call sites like this one games. But today, they're more than that. They're worlds. "You get to meet Anima like you meet your soul mate once you start adjusting yourself to the new world," says Prius Online. The difference is more than marketing. A game is a place where your mind takes a vacation. A world is a place where your mind moves in, sets up house, and changes its mailing address.

That's what happened to the Korean couple. They left their real daughter at home, alone, while they spent their days at an Internet café. Or rather, they spent their days in cyberspace. The café was more like a Harry Potter portkey, a vehicle for disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Once a day, they returned to the physical world to feed their daughter powdered milk. Then they went back to the world they cared about.

One day, after a 12-hour stint online, they visited the physical world and found their baby dead. The autopsy blamed malnutrition and dehydration. A police officer said the parents "seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby." Consequently, "They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby."

Corruption and Criminality in Government and Allied Corporations

Exposed: Chevron's Cover-up of Gross Environmental Abuses in Ecuador
Chevron claims it's not responsible for dumping 18 billion gallons of industrial wastewater into the Amazon. A local leader says otherwise.
Alternet - By Cameron Scott - March 8, 2010
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What is a lost culture? Is it just some intangible time before? Is it an economy? Can you inventory a lost culture in the number of lives lost or rivers polluted?

Those questions haunt the lawsuit brought by Ecuadorian indigenous groups against the U.S. oil giant, Chevron, for environmental destruction it allegedly wrought as Texaco in the Amazon rainforest of eastern Ecuador. On paper, the suit asks Chevron (which acquired Texaco in 2001) to pay for the environmental cleanup of an area three times the size of Manhattan, pocked with open oil pits and steeped in 18 billion gallons of dumped industrial wastewater. The damages in the case -- calculated by a court-appointed expert at a record $27 billion -- would also establish a health fund to pay for the estimated 1,400 cases of cancer caused by the pollution -- a number that will likely continue to grow until the site is cleaned up. The rest of the damages fall into the catchall category, "compensation."

Economy and Finance

Bloomberg Economic News
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Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
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Europe / US | Europe bars Wall Street banks from government bond sales
Leading US banks blamed for triggering financial crisis
The Guardian - By Elena Moya - March 8, 2010
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Food and Nutrition

Ethiopia | Billionaires and Mega-Corporations Behind Immense Land Grab in Africa
20+ African countries are selling or leasing land for intensive agriculture on a shocking scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.
Alertnet - March 10, 2010
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Awassa, Ethiopia -- We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia's largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 50 acres* -- the size of 20 soccer fields.

The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 1,500 foot rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tons of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13-million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 7.5 million acres of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world's most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

Health and Fitness

Alert | Don't Mess With Mercury
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More About Mercury Poisoning
Environmental Protection Agency -Current
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Politcal Issues

Real clear 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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US | Our Founders were NOT Fundamentalists
"God made the idiot for practice, and then He made the school board." --Mark Twain
Common Dreams -By Harvey Wasserman - February 13, 2010

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
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The endless, ever-angry escalating assault on our Constitution by crusading theocrats could be obliterated with the effective incantation of two names: Benjamin Franklin, and Deganawidah.

But first, let's do some history.

1. Actual Founder-Presidents #2 through #6---John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams---were all freethinking Deists and Unitarians; what Christian precepts they embraced were moderate, tolerant and open-minded.

Continued at link above.

Religion and Philosophy

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

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 | 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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Technology and Innovation

Video | Ford's most advanced assembly plant operates in rural Brazil
DetNews.com - August 27, 2007
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Violence

US | Commentary - No Nukes
Common Dreams - By Ralph Nader - February 13, 2010
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US | Guns at Starbucks? Pushing the Right to Bear Arms in Public
The Christian Science Monitor - By Michael B. Farrell, Staff writer - February 27, 2010
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US | Justices signal they're ready to make gun ownership a national right
Los Angeles Times - By David G. Savage - March 3, 2010
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Reporting from Washington - The Supreme Court justices, hearing a 2nd Amendment challenge to Chicago's ban on handguns, signaled Tuesday that they were ready to extend gun rights nationwide, clearing the way for legal attacks on state and local gun restrictions.

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Sound and Fury

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Sound off at Carrumpah-Lobo - The Homosapiens.ki Blog
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