GAIA AND HOMOSAPIENS

The News Stand and Online Magazine Rack
LINK

CBC Hourly News
- "LINK
Worid News at Six
- LINK ^
America's #1 Populist - Jim Hightower On Air
- LINK ^
Mark Fiore Animated Political Cartoons
- LINK ^
Video | Dark Humor | Bill Maher Blasts Tea Baggers For Ignoring Defense Spending
- LINK ^
Related | Tea Party Fear in Europe
- LINK ^
Video | Cyber War
- LINK ^

---

Note-- The symbol ^ indicates that a full version of the item is available at the link. Recent issues of this website are available in the adjacent left column.

---

Breaking News

US | Call to Action: Nationwide Showdown on Wall Street! on April 29. 2010
A Must. Nationwide Rallies and Marches Against Wall Street
Our Future - Current
- LINK ^

Related Item - Special Issue of Homosapiens.ki
- LINK ^

Video | Bill Moyers Interviews James Kwak and Simon Johnson: Banks Are an Oligarchy
Moyers and economists James Kwak and Simon Johnson wonder whether the financial powers are more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever.
Truthout / Bill Moyers Journal - April 16, 2010
- LINK ^

How did Big Finance grow so powerful that its hijinks nearly brought down the global economy – and what hope is there for real reform with Washington politicians on Wall Street's payroll? Bill Moyers talks with authors Simon Johnson and James Kwak, two of the nation's most respected economic experts and authors of the new book 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.

Obama to Wall St.: ‘Join Us, Instead of Fighting Us’
The New York Times - By Peter Baker and David M. Herszenhorn - April 22, 2010
- LINK ^

President Obama took his rhetoric of reform on Thursday to the nation’s financial capital in a high-profile foray to chide Wall Street bankers for their “reckless practices” and to press for tighter regulations meant to avert another financial crisis.

President Obama talked of Wall Street’s “reckless practices” in his address to the top bankers on Thursday in New York. Addressing leaders of New York’s financial giants, including Goldman Sachs, Mr. Obama described himself as a champion of change battling “battalions of financial industry lobbyists” and the “withering forces” of the economic elite. With his poll numbers sagging, the choreographed confrontation seemed aimed at tapping the nation’s antiestablishment mood as well as muscling financial regulation legislation through Congress.

But the president also struck a note of conciliation with an industry that has contributed generously to his party, beseeching bankers to work with him to forge a new regulatory structure. While he spoke, his Democratic allies in Washington moved to force a showdown in the Senate on Monday, scheduling a procedural vote that will test the prospects for bipartisan compromise and Republican resolve to block the president’s plans.

US | How Big Business Dupes the Masses
Consortium News - By Bill Moyer and Michael Winship - March 12, 2010
- LINK ^

In this guest essay, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship describe how the not-your-grandfather’s Chamber of Commerce is helping the super-rich get even more super-rich, at the expense of the Tea Partiers and other “little” Americans: Living in these United States, there comes a point at which you throw your hands up in exasperation and despair and ask a fundamental question or two: how much excess profit does corporate America really need?

How much bigger do executive salaries and bonuses have to be, how many houses or jets or artworks can be crammed into a life? After all, as billionaire movie director Steven Spielberg is reported to have said, when all is said and done, "How much better can lunch get?"
But since greed is not self-governing, hardly anyone raking in the dough ever stops to say, "That's it. Enough's enough! How do we prevent it from sweeping up everything in its path, including us?

US / NY | Friend to Wall Street, Schumer Is Suddenly Quiet
Senator Charles E. Schumer is known as an advocate for the financial industry, but he has kept a low profile as Congress considers regulatory reform.
The New York Times - By Carl Hulse - April 22, 2010
- LINK ^

WASHINGTON — Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York has long been known as one of Wall Street’s best friends on Capitol Hill, but there are apparently limits to that friendship. Senator Charles E. Schumer has long been among the top recipients of campaign donations from the financial services industry. After years of being a go-to guy for the elite of high finance, Mr. Schumer has embraced new legislation that would put constraints on his hometown’s leading industry.

The stance has put him at odds with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, caused consternation among his allies at the investment houses and led to suggestions that he was putting political ambition ahead of protecting New York’s interests.

Editor - Mr. Hulse, just what are "New York's Interests? Just who or what is "NEW YORK'? Most people would probably say that it is its people. Every thing flows from that basic recognition. Wall Street could conceivably be moved to Naples or Jerusalem and New Yorkers would be better off, or at least less corrupt. --- and we could return to electing our own goverments.

MUST READ | U.S. Faces Choice on New Weapons for Fast Strikes
The New York Times - By David E. Sanger and Tom Shanker - April 22, 2010
- LINK ^

WASHINGTON — In coming years, President Obama will decide whether to deploy a new class of weapons capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour and with such accuracy and force that they would greatly diminish America’s reliance on its nuclear arsenal.

Yet even now, concerns about the technology are so strong that the Obama administration has acceded to a demand by Russia that the United States decommission one nuclear missile for every one of these conventional weapons fielded by the Pentagon. That provision, the White House said, is buried deep inside the New Start treaty that Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed in Prague two weeks ago.

Called Prompt Global Strike, the new weapon is designed to carry out tasks like picking off Osama bin Laden in a cave, if the right one could be found; taking out a North Korean missile while it is being rolled to the launch pad; or destroying an Iranian nuclear site — all without crossing the nuclear threshold. In theory, the weapon will hurl a conventional warhead of enormous weight at high speed and with pinpoint accuracy, generating the localized destructive power of a nuclear warhead.

US man names Pope Benedict in Milwaukee abuse lawsuit
BBC News - By Simon Cox - April 22, 2010
- LINK ^

Fr Murphy is accused of attacking up to 200 children during his 20 years at a school for deaf children in Milwaukee. He was finally moved from the St John school to another diocese in 1974, but was never prosecuted or defrocked.

German Bishop Resigns His Position in Latest Jolt to Church
The New York Times - By Nicholas Kulish - April 22, 2010
- LINK ^

BERLIN — A German bishop accused of beating children decades ago when he was a priest has tendered his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI, the diocese in Augsburg said Thursday, the latest jolt to the Roman Catholic Church in Germany as it grapples with a swirling sexual abuse scandal.

The accused man, Bishop Walter Mixa, was one of the church’s most prominent and outspoken conservatives in Germany, and he aggressively defended himself for weeks against charges of physically abusing children in a Bavarian orphanage.

Accusations have also surfaced of financial irregularities at the orphanage’s foundation. A lawyer hired by the foundation has raised questions about thousands of dollars spent on wine, art, jewelry and even a tanning bed while Bishop Mixa was chairman of the foundation’s board in the 1990s. Bishop Mixa was a priest in the town of Schrobenhausen from 1975 to 1996.

Belgian bishop quits over sex abuse
Al Jazeera - April 23, 2010
- LINK ^

Opinion | Commentary | Editorials | Op-Eds

Editorial | Environment - In Antarctic Waters
The New York Times - April 22, 2010
- LINK ^

Early this month, the International Maritime Organization — the United Nations agency that oversees maritime law — announced that large cruise ships will no longer be allowed to burn heavy fuel in Antarctic waters. This is a welcome step in protecting the harsh but delicate polar environment.

It is also part of a global effort to end the use of heavy, high-sulfur fuel in oceangoing ships. Burning heavy fuel throws highly polluting emissions into the atmosphere, and it poses a serious risk to marine life if spilled.

Op-Ed | US Financial Health | Don’t Cry for Wall Street
the New York Times - By Paul Krugman - April 22, 2010
- LINK ^

On Thursday, President Obama went to Manhattan, where he urged an audience drawn largely from Wall Street to back financial reform. “I believe,” he declared, “that these reforms are, in the end, not only in the best interest of our country, but in the best interest of the financial sector.”

Well, I wish he hadn’t said that — and not just because he really needs, as a political matter, to take a populist stance, to put some public distance between himself and the bankers. The fact is that Mr. Obama should be trying to do what’s right for the country — full stop. If doing so hurts the bankers, that’s O.K.

Editor - Thanks, Paul. We need that type of journalism.

Op-Ed | Ending the Slavery Blame-Game
The New York Times - By Henry Louis Gates - April 22, 2010
- LINK ^

THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.

There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.

While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.

For centuries, Europeans in Africa kept close to their military and trading posts on the coast. Exploration of the interior, home to the bulk of Africans sold into bondage at the height of the slave trade, came only during the colonial conquests, which is why Henry Morton Stanley’s pursuit of Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 made for such compelling press: he was going where no (white) man had gone before.

How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

National News

Afghanistan | Ninety-Four Percent of Kandaharis Want Peace Talks, Not War
IPS News - By Gareth Porter - April 18, 2010
- LINK ^

WASHINGTON - An opinion survey of Afghanistan's Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers".

Afghanistan | Dread Surrounds "Operation Hope" in Afghanistan
Global Post - By Jean MacKenzie - April 19, 2010
- LINK ^

Kabul, Afghanistan - It is being called Operation Omid. The word omid means "hope" in Afghanistan’s Dari language. But, judging by the reaction of local residents, the coming U.S.-led military offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar could not be more inappropriately named.

In Kandahar, residents like Abdul Salaam, a farmer, feel more a sense of dread than hope about a military operation that is being billed as one of the largest in the war to date. "Operation Omid will bring more insecurity, instead of peace," said Salaam, who lives in the Maiwand district of Kandahar Province. "We have just seen that the opposition has accelerated its attacks. There are more and more explosions in the province. You cannot bring peace through war."

United States Government

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress." -- John Adams

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." -- Mark Twain

Bush-Cheney Pulled Torture Strings
Consortium News - By Robert Parry - March 4, 2010
- LINK ^

George W. Bush’s White House stage-managed the Justice Department’s approval of torture techniques by putting pliable lawyers in key jobs, guiding their opinions and punishing officials who wouldn’t go along, according to details contained in an internal report that recommended disciplinary action against two lawyers.

Senate | Democrats Challenge GOP Stubbornness on Financial Reform
Truthout - By Yana Kunichoff - April 18, 2010
- LINK ^

As the November elections cast their long shadow, Senate Democrats are increasingly challenging Republican opponents on financial issues and move towards politically popular legislation to regulate the markets. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs quoted President Obama as telling Republicans that he "would not accept bad policy in pursuit of bipartisanship" during the debate set to hit the Senate floor next week.

House of Representatives | Pelosi: Freeze Pentagon budget, too
MSNBC - By Luke Russert - January 28, 2010
- LINK ^

Toward the end of her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) broke ranks with President Obama and reiterated her call for the president's proposed spending freeze to include the Defense budget as well. She charged that much of the wasteful spending in the U.S. budget is directly related to the Pentagon.

Sweeping Forest Service Rollbacks Threaten Sky Island Biodiversity
The Agency Seeks Massive Rollbacks for Protection of Arizona, New Mexico Environment and Wildlife
Center for Biodiversity - April 15, 2010
- LINK ^

TUCSON, Ariz.— The U.S. Forest Service has proposed a draft land and resource management plan for the Coronado National Forest that includes sweeping rollbacks for wildlife protection. The plan, which would govern all land management on the Sky Island forest for up to 15 years, would eliminate requirements in the current plan to maintain viable populations of wildlife species and would curtail or eliminate forest-wide restrictions on logging, livestock grazing, mining, road construction, and other industrial uses. With the Coronado acting as one of the first of the southwestern region’s 11 national forests to begin updating its forest plan, this marks a first step in the Forest Service’s efforts to roll back critical wildlife protections in all Arizona and New Mexico national forests.

“What the Coronado National Forest has proposed is a step backward for Sky Island forests and wildlife,” said Taylor McKinnon with the Center for Biological Diversity. “While a new plan should provide a framework for conserving biodiversity in the face of climate change, this plan would replace current protections with dangerous doses of bureaucratic discretion.

What the Forest Service seeks – which is freedom from both public accountability and requirements to protect wildlife and their habitat – has nothing to do with the actual needs of Sky Island biodiversity,” McKinnon continued.

The Coronado National Forest is among the most biologically diverse national forests in the United States. Some of the more than 576 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians that call the forest home are found on no other national forest. There are 175 threatened, endangered, or sensitive species in the Coronado National Forest. Of those, 28 are listed or proposed for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act. They include jaguar, Mexican gray wolf, Mexican spotted owl, cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, southwestern willow flycatcher, and desert pupfish. One hundred forty-seven species are designated as sensitive.

---

Topical News

---

Activism at the Ground Level

"The strength of a democracy is, as in nature, in the roots, not in the flamboyant leaves that wither and die after two seasons or so in public office." -- John Davidson Miller

Do something ! News about the latest progressive activism initiatives and ways you can get involved.

Spotlight on Humphrey Nominee: Harry Belafonte
Civil Rights.org- Posted by Tyler Lewis - April 23, 2010
- LINK ^

On May 12, legendary entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte will receive the civil rights community's highest honor, the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil and Human Rights Award, for his lifelong commitment to civil and human right

Take action | Say No to Mandate for GE Crop Research
Contact your Senators and tell them to oppose the Global Food Security Act until the clause mandating support for GE crop research is removed.
- LINK ^

Take action | Tell Discovery: Pull Sarah Palin's anti-environment "nature" show now
Credo ActIon -Current
- LINK ^

Take action | Keep the Internet open
Color of Change - Current
- LINK ^

Big telecom and cable companies want to fundamentally change the way the Internet works, so they can make millions by acting as a gatekeeper over what you see and do online. Our communities rely on the Internet to speak without a corporate filter, and to be able to organize and hold public officials and corporations accountable. But if these companies succeed, a few major corporations would control which voices are heard most easily, and it would be much harder for grassroots groups, individuals, and small businesses to compete with large corporations and well-funded special interests.

Please join Color of Change in calling on the FCC to keep the Internet open and democratic.

Arts & Culture

Musicians mix Coldplay and Taylor Swift together - Enjoy
- LINK ^

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

Communities and Species

Biggest mass of living things in the oceans? Microbes.
ENN - April 19, 2010
- LINK ^

The ocean depths are home to myriad species of mostly hard to see but including spaghetti-like bacteria that form whitish mats the size of Greece on the floor of the Pacific, scientists said on Sunday. The survey, part of a 10-year Census of Marine Life, turned up hosts of unknown microbes, tiny zooplankton, crustaceans, worms, burrowers and larvae, some of them looking like extras in a science fiction movie and underpinning all life in the seas.

Constitutional snd Legal Issues

US Supreme Court | Videos of Small Animals Being Crushed by Women in High Heels Are Protected Free Speech?
Editor - Been sitting on the bench too long. Calification of the brain. Def. hardening by deposition of or conversion into calcium carbonate or some other insoluble calcium compounds.
Alternet - By Liliana Segura - April 23, 2010
- LINK ^

The Supreme Court's 8-1 ruling comes down to protecting the depiction of a gruesome act on 1st Amendment grounds, not the legality of the gruesome act itself.

Corruption and Criminality in the Corpocracy

What Is "White Collar Crime"?
Expert Law - Current
- LINK ^

"White Collar Crimes" are a category of criminal offenses that typically occur in businesses or corporations, such as "insider trading," "antitrust violations," "computer fraud," "securities fraud," and "money laundering." White collar crimes are non-violent in nature, and generally involve some form of fraud or dishonesty. These crimes are committed through apparently legitimate businesses. Sometimes the principals of the business are involved in the crime, while on other occasions the crime is committed by an individual or employee within a business, without the knowledge of anyone else.

Controlling Corporate Criminality: Penal Sanctions and Beyond
First Published in Web Journal of Current Legal Issues in association with Blackstone Press Ltd. - By James Gobert, Professor of Law, University of Essex
- LINK ^

Summary
While journal articles on corporate crime have tended to focus on the proper test of substantive liability, the more meaningful issue from the company's perspective may be what sanctions will be visited on it should it be convicted of an offence. This article examines the range of possible sanctions, as well as the possibility of establishing a scheme of incentives which would dissuade companies from committing crimes in the first place.

Audio | Corporate Murder
Jim Hightower -- April 19, 2010
- LINK ^
Click Listen to this Commentary for Audio.

A mass murder has taken place in another American workplace, taking 29 lives. The authorities know who did it, so shouldn't that person be made to pay for this heinous crime?

They Saw the Goldman Fraud Suit Coming—Could Deutsche Bank Be Next?
Vanity Fair - By Christopher Bateman - April 16, 2010
- LINK ^

In an era where we’ve gotten all too accustomed to the notion of Wall Street having Washington under its thumb, the news that the S.E.C. is suing Goldman Sachs for fraud surely comes as a stunning development to many. While plenty of Americans hold a visceral belief that much of Wall Street's behavior for the past few years has been criminal, it's probably fair to say that few believed a real crackdown would ever happen. One leading financial expert tells VF Daily that “Deutsche Bank is one step behind” Goldman in the government’s crosshairs.

Economy and Finance

"I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." -- Winston Churchill

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan (1986)

Bloomberg Economic News
- LINK ^

Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
LINK

Food and Nutrition

Mercury surprise: Rice can be risky
ENN / Science News - By Janet Raloff - April 19, 2010
- LINK ^

Ask toxicologists how best to avoid mercury poisoning and they'll almost certainly advise against eating too much of the wrong types of fish. (Never mind that there’s considerable confusion about what the wrong types are.) But a new study out of China shows that for millions of people at risk of eating toxic amounts of mercury-laced food, fish isn’t the problem. Rice is.

Humor and Satire

The Maddest of Mad Tea Parties
Edward Sorel sketches Sarah Palin’s Tea Party—the Wonderland version—while Richard Lingeman eavesdrops.
Vanity Fair - By Richard Lingeman - May 2010
- LINK ^

Complete here.

In Wonderland, Alice found a contract saying “Sign me,” and got her own tea party on Foxy News. “Did you know Obama wants to socialize the gene pool?” confided Glenn the Mad Hater. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” explained Bill O’Hare. “Everybody’s mad here—aren’t you?” asked Glenn the Mad Hater. “Say, I just remembered I’m really mad!” said John McCaterpillar. “I’m so mad I could bite my cigar,” said Rushy Dumpty, falling off the wagon. “Well, you’re all mad and I shall be your president!” said Alice. “And I’ll show you just how to win,” purred the Kristol Kat. With that, he vanished. “Socialist tyranny!” cried the Mad Hater. “Off with her hairstyle!” yelled Queen Ayn of Hearts. “Will you all just shut up!” said Bill O’Hare.

Media and Journalism

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." -- Mark Twain

It’s Time for the Press to Push Back Against Apple
Yank iPad apps unless Apple cedes complete control over the right to publish
Columbia Journalism Review - By Ryan Chittum - April15, 2010
- LINK ^

The Nieman Journalism Lab’s Laura McGann has a disturbing report that ought to perk up every news organization that sees Apple’s iPad as part of its future.
McGann talked to Mark Fiore, who won a Pulitzer this week for his trenchant editorial cartoons. Apple has denied his iPhone (and thus iPad) application because in the mega-corporation’s own words, “it contains content that ridicules public figures” and violates its license, which says (emphasis mine): ^

Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”

“Ridicules public figures” is pretty much top of the job description for editorial cartoonists, who have been a critical part of our free press for a couple of centuries longer than investigative reporters have.

Natural Resources

Groundwater Vulnerability
ENN - By David A Gabel - March 25, 2010
- LINK ^

The Earth is truly a blue planet; 70% of its surface is covered with water. Unfortunately 97.5% of that is salt water, unusable for humans. Fresh water accounts for the other 2.5%, however, about two thirds of that is locked up in glaciers and in the icy poles. That leaves humans (and every other living creature on land) only about 1% of all the water on Earth to use.

Political Issues

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

Real clear Politics Daily Rundown
- LINK ^

US | The Cost of “No”
The Republican Party has assumed the mantle of “the party of no.” But at what cost to taxpayers? Here’s a breakdown of the most expensive word in American political history.
Vanity Fair - By Peter Keating and Duff McDonald - April 15, 2010
- LINK ^

‘There is no shame in being the party of no,” former Alaskan governor and future television documentarian Sarah Palin told an adoring audience at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans last Friday. That, however, is a matter of debate. Newt Gingrich, for example, says he would prefer to be a member of “the party of yes.” Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal thinks differently. He wants to be part of the party of “hell, no.” There is time for the Republican leadership to be having this debate because, well, they’re not doing much else.

Obstructing their Democratic rivals’ every move may yet prove to have been an ingenious gambit on the part of congressional Republicans, but there is no question that it carries a cost. With Tax Day upon us, we got to thinking: Just how much money are taxpayers spending on the Republican Party’s commitment to doing exactly nothing? How much would Americans have saved if the Party of Lincoln’s emissaries to the 111th Congress had simply mailed a one-page note to Democrats on January 3, 2009, inscribed with a single word—“no”?

Pollution

Of the Mouth, that is | Queen of the Rubber Chicken Circuit
Vanity Fair - By James Wolcott - April 18, 2010
- LINK ^

Sarah Palin, that is, who is turning into quite the coddled royal to whom stray words must not be addressed. Danielle Crittenden, writing at FrumForum, reports on Palin's tour of the provinces in Canada and the cone of public privacy that follows her like a spotlight:

But Palin couldn’t manage it. Her 45-minute speech rambled all over the place, from her challenges as a mother facing a teenage pregnancy and a Downs-syndrome baby to Todd’s Iron Dog racing to the tea partiers to Alaska-Canada ties, wildlife, the Al-Can highway to God helping us take back this nation and stand up for small business, to common sense solutions, to Plato telling us to be nice to others, to getting’ our economy workin’ again, to the importance of community, to ice hockey and the Olympics—in short, her familiar carpool-mother-with-Tourettes-syndrome.

Sarah Palin is a phony and anyone who falls for her act is a phool.
God, I dread the upcoming Fourth of July and the prospect of Tea Partiers acting as if they own the fricking holiday.

The Printed Page

Book by Ralph Nader | Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us
What problems do you think the Super-Rich should unite to solve?
- LINK ^

"In the cozy den of the large but modest house in Omaha where he has lived since he started on his first billion, Warren Buffett watched the horrors of Hurricane Katrina unfold on television in early September 2005. . . . On the fourth day, he beheld in disbelief the paralysis of local, state, and federal authorities unable to commence basic operations of rescue and sustenance, not just in New Orleans, but in towns and villages all along the Gulf Coast. . . He knew exactly what he had to do. . ."

So begins the vivid fictional account by political activist and bestselling author Ralph Nader that answers the question, "What if?" What if a cadre of superrich individuals tried to become a driving force in America to organize and institutionalize the interests of the citizens of this troubled nation? What if some of America's most powerful individuals decided it was time to fix our government and return the power to the people? What if they focused their power on unionizing Wal-Mart? What if a national political party were formed with the sole purpose of advancing clean elections? What if these seventeen superrich individuals decided to galvanize a movement for alternative forms of energy that will effectively clean up the environment? What if together they took on corporate goliaths and Congress to provide the necessities of life and advance the solutions so long left on the shelf by an avaricious oligarchy? What could happen?

This extraordinary story, written by the author who knows the most about citizen action, returns us to the literature of American social movements—to Edward Bellamy, to Upton Sinclair, to John Steinbeck, to Stephen Crane—reminding us in the process that changing the body politic of America starts with imagination.

Religion and Philosophy

Video | Christopher Hitchen's Ten Commandents
Vanity Fair - Current
- LINK ^

Three millennia or so after God dictated the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, Christopher Hitchens believes it’s high time for an update. Luckily for Hitchens, broadcast technology has advanced a bit in the meantime—instead of unwieldy stone tablets, the resolute atheist delivers his own Decalogue on streaming video.

Science and Technology

Bloomberg Index of Current Science News
- LINK ^

The Icelandic Cauldron
ENN - By Andy Soos - April 19, 2010
- LINK ^

On March 20, 2010, Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano awakened for the first time in 120 years, spewing still active lava fountains and flows. A network of sensors on the ground and aboard NASA's Earth Observing (EO)-1 satellite, automatically alerted researchers to this new volcanic "hot spot" and began observation and measurement.

science craft software enabled the spacecraft to analyze science data on board and then notify researchers on the ground within 90 minutes of detecting events, and then set up the satellite to observe those events more closely. EO-1 was able to take advantage of recently uploaded "smart" software that allows the spacecraft to react quickly to an event and to rapidly down link the data for processing by ground personnel in less than 24 hours. That process used to take three weeks for researchers to do.

"Use of autonomous systems in this way represents a new way of doing science, where spacecraft can think for themselves and react to dynamic and often transient events," explained Ashley Davies, lead scientist for NASA's New Millennium Program-Space Technology 6 Autonomous Science craft at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Less than 24 hours after the satellite's first observation, the JPL team confirmed the volcano was emitting more than one billion watts of energy -- enough to power 40,000 passenger cars at the same time -- and discharging more than six tons of lava per second.

Even with that in mind the Eyjafjallajökull eruption is not the largest ever seen. The Krakatoa eruption of 1883 put forth an estimated 200+ megatons of dynamite equivalent energy, was heard hundreds of miles away and darkened skies affecting overall climate for years. Mount Saint Helen in Washington state in 1980 had only 24 megatons of energy released. The eruption of Thera around 1600 BC is estimated as being more than 6 times larger than Krakatoa.

Reading on the Brain
The Nation - By Ange Mlinko - March 2, 2010
- LINK ^

The incus, malleus and stapes are the three bones of the middle ear. They were formed before mammals existed, and still exist in their original setting--a reptile's jaw. Nature is a great recycler of its own designs. The neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, a professor of cognitive psychology at the College de France, wagers that our brain performs a similar trick: it recycles its own neuronal pathways in response to new cultural objects. In Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention (Viking; $27.95), Dehaene offers a theory about the evolution of reading and writing that suggests that, while humans did not evolve to read (writing is too young a technology, and took hold too swiftly, for that), we did invent a system that both conforms to pre-existing circuits and utterly revamps them. This contradiction points to the innate difficulty of reading. Learning to read laboriously reorganizes the brain. Dehaene has the neuroimaging to prove it.

Green Growth is the Way of the Future: Swiss and U.S. Officials Advocate Clean Technology
ENN / Embassy of Switzerland - April 13, 2010
- LINK ^

Washington D.C. - "Countries that embrace a long-term policy towards clean technology will be the winner in the future market," said Swiss President Doris Leuthard during a briefing with U.S. officials. This sentiment was echoed by Matt Rogers, a Senior Advisor in the U.S. Department of Energy and Congressman Russ Carnahan (D-Missouri).

Social Issues

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." -- Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

Turning the Page

Book Review | Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life
Publishers Weekly - Current
Order from Amazon.com >
- LINK ^

In this compelling and important analysis of the triumph of capitalism and the decline of democracy, former labor secretary Reich urges us to rebalance the roles of business and government. Power, he writes, has shifted away from us in our capacities as citizens and toward us as consumers and investors. While praising the spread of global capitalism, he laments that supercapitalism has brought with it alienation from politics and community. The solution: to separate capitalism from democracy, and guard the border between them. Plainspoken and forceful, if somewhat repetitious, the book urges new and strengthened laws and regulations to restore authority to the citizens in us. Reich's proposals are anything but knee-jerk liberal: he calls for abolishing the corporate income tax and labels the corporate social responsibility movement distracting and even counterproductive.

As in 2004's Reason, Reich exhibits perhaps too much confidence in Americans' ability to think and act in their own best interests. But he refuses to shift blame for corporations' dominance to the usual suspects, instead pointing a finger at consumers like you and me who want better deals, and from investors like us who want better returns, he writes. Provocatively argued, this book could help begin a necessary national conversation. (Sept. 6)

---

Sound off at Carrumpah-Lobo, the Homosapiens.ki Blog
- Check in

---

Sound and Fury

This website incorporates clips from mainstream and alternative media and, less frequently, blogs, and even obviously biased and counter-point-of-view sources. The clips are taken directly from the websites noted in each source link. Quotation marks are used where they appear in the cited source.

Homosapiens.ki has been developed on the XOOPS website production program.

Subscribe to a brief email notification as each issue of this site is posted. See top, left of any page io subscribe - no fee.

The editorial offices of Homosapiens.ki are located in New York City and Nelson BC Canada. Website hosting and technical services are provided from Sydney, Australia. The domain name registration ( .ki ) is a service of the Republic of Kiribati ( South Pacific ) domain registrar. Special thanks are due to all those who have assisted in bringing this site to life on the internet.

You may email the editor at
orchill@earthlink.net

In accordancee with TITLE 17 U.S.C. Sectopm 107, this material is distributed free to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes, Homosapiens.ki has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this content nor is Homosapiens.ki endorsed or sponsored by any originator.

Links are provided for access to source articles and for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are sometimes updated by their host sites, a version posted here may not match the version our readers view when clicking the source link on this site.

Privacy - we will not sell, rent, or give your name, address or any other personal information to any entity or person whatsoever ==at any point in time.

---

===