http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/76204/how-sea-otters-make-the-case-carbon-trading
Chris Wilmers, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and colleagues determined that the endangered animal, feasting on sea urchins, helped the growth of kelp forests, which can sequester at least 0.18 kg of carbon from the atmosphere for every square metre of otter occupied coastal water.
The fur craze took a huge toll on the otter populations, which in some areas are seriously endangered—there are just 70,000 in Alaska today. So urchins are running wild and kelp forests are dwindling. Bad news.
Threatening World Order: US and Israel Quietly Announce Plans to Reconstitute Their Nuclear Stockpiles
http://www.truth-out.org/threatening-world-order-us-and-israel-quietly-announce-plans-reconstitute-their-nuclear-stockpiles61
Part of the fear of those advocating nuclear abolition in the Middle East is that the United States will agree to send nuclear materials - extracted from its own civilian nuclear power plants - to Israel, much as it did for India, another country that refuses to sign the NPT.
The Obama and Netanyahu governments are seeking to obscure their contempt for nuclear abolition by calling for "nonproliferation" in the Middle East, while Israel simultaneously boycotts New-York-based discussions (at the 2010 NPT conference) of the need for a "nuclear free" Middle East.(2) "Nonproliferation," within this context, can be understood to apply only to other countries such as Iran, which has long been a target for US and Israeli military planners.
Sanctions against Iran and the Next War
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/10518
by Alejandro Nadal (source: Monthly Review)
Friday, July 9, 2010
In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides relates how Pericles, in the fifth century BC, imposed economic sanctions against the city of Megara, which had allied itself with Sparta. Athens prohibited trade with this city state and sent a message: if Megara did not break its alliance with Sparta, it would be punished. Megara was enraged and urged Sparta to unleash war. The resulting hostilities lasted for 30 years.The history of economic and political sanctions to compel a country to change its conduct is long, but it teaches us that they frequently result in failure. Not only do they fail to change the conduct of the sanctioned states, but they invariably lead to war.
The Security Council voted last week for a set of sanctions against Tehran. It's another step toward confrontation in the course of the myopic foreign policy of the United States vis-à-vis Tehran.
( Related posts
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS, JUST WAR DOCTRINE, AND THE "FEARFUL SPECTACLE OF THE CIVILIAN DEAD"
Secret Document Affirms U.S.-Israel Nuclear Partnership
Israel’s Army Radio reported on Wednesday that the United States has sent Israel a secret document committing to nuclear cooperation between the two countries.
According to Army Radio, the U.S. has reportedly pledged to sell Israel materials used to produce electricity, as well as nuclear technology and other supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Other countries have refused to cooperate with Israel on nuclear matters because it has not signed the NPT, and there has been increasing international pressure for Israel to be more transparent about its nuclear arsenal.
Army Radio’s diplomatic correspondent said the reported offer could put Israel on a par with India, another NPT holdout which is openly nuclear-armed but in 2008 secured a U.S.-led deal granting it civilian nuclear imports.
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/10516 )No Dominion: The Lonely, Dangerous Fight Against Christian Supremacists Inside the Armed Forces
http://www.truth-out.org/no-dominion-the-lonely-dangerous-fight-against-christian-supremacists-inside-armed-forces61214
Mikey Weinstein and the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) have recorded a tremendous string of victories in the fight against Christian supremacists inside the armed forces.
Mikey Weinstein can be a brute and a zealot. He knows this and admits it freely. But he believes it's the only position a reasonable person can take when confronted with a faction dedicated to mutating the U.S. military into "a weaponized Gospel of Jesus Christ." The military cannot favor one religious sect over another because it's destructive of good order and discipline, creating divisions between service members when they must rely on the guy next to them to survive in a firefight.
Why Are We in Afghanistan? As Petraeus Takes Over, Could Success Be Worse Than Failure?
http://www.truth-out.org/tom-engelhardt-why-are-we-afghanistan-as-petraeus-takes-over-could-success-be-worse-than-failure6126
Experts expect the counterinsurgency campaign to continue for years, even decades more; the NATO allies are heading for the exits; and, again according to the experts, the Taliban, being thoroughly interwoven with Afghanistan’s Pashtun minority, simply cannot in any normal sense be defeated.
We would be in minimalist possession of a fractious, ruined land, at war for three decades, and about as alien to, and far from, the United States as it’s possible to be on this planet. We would be in minimalist possession of the world’s fifth poorest country. We would be in minimal possession of the world’s second most corrupt country. We would be in minimal possession of the world’s foremost narco-state, the only country that essentially produces a drug monocrop, opium. In terms of the global war on terror, we would be in possession of a country that the director of the CIA now believes to hold 50 to 100 al-Qaeda operatives (“maybe less”) -- for whom parts of the country might still be a “safe haven.” And for this, and everything to come, we would be paying, at a minimum, $84 billion a year.
On the basis of our stated war objective -- “[W]e cannot allow Al Qaeda or other transnational extremists to once again establish sanctuaries from which they can launch attacks on our homeland or on our allies,” as General Petraeus put it in his confirmation hearing at the end of June 2010 -- success in Afghanistan means increasingly little. For al-Qaeda, Afghanistan was never significant in itself. It was always a place of (relative) convenience. If the U.S. were to bar access to it, there are so many other countries to choose from.
A counterinsurgency “success” there would be meaningless unless, based on the same strategic thinking, the U.S. then secured Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and a potential host of other places. In other words, the U.S. military would have to do one thing the Bush years definitively proved it couldn’t do: impose a Pax Americana on planet Earth.
The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism
http://www.truth-out.org/the-disappearing-intellectual-age-economic-darwinism61287
http://www.truth-out.org/the-disappearing-intellectual-age-economic-darwinism61287
There are plenty of talking heads spewing lies, insults and nonsense in the various media,all of whom trade in reactionary world views, ignorance, ideological travesties and outlandish misrepresentations - all the while wrapping themselves in the populist creed of speaking for everyday Americans.
Richard Cohen, writing in The Washington Post about Sen. Michael Bennett, was shocked to discover that he was actually well-educated and smart but had to hide his qualifications in his primary campaign so as to not undermine his chance of being re-elected. Cohen concludes that in politics, "We have come to value ignorance."[5] He further argues that the notion that a politician should actually know something about domestic and foreign affairs is now considered a liability.
As social protections disappear, jobs are lost, uncertainty grows and insecurity prevails, Tea Party members express anger over a weakened social state that represents one of the few institutions capable of providing the capital, policies and safety nets necessary to protect those who have been shaken by the economic recession. Yet the Tea Party movement wants to abolish government and expand even more the deregulated capitalism that has unsettled the lives of so many of its members.
There is a kind of intellectual vacuum produced at different levels of American society that cultivates ignorance, limits choices, legitimates political illiteracy and promotes violence.
Students are urged by some conservative groups to spy on their professors to make sure they do not say anything that might actually get students to think critically about their beliefs. Faculty are being relegated to nontenured positions and because of the lack of tenure, which offers some guarantees, are afraid to say controversial things inside and outside the classroom for fear of being fired.
A culture of ignorance serves to both depoliticize the larger public while simultaneously producing individual and collective subjects necessary and willing to participate in their own oppression.
A theater of cruelty and a mode of public pedagogy undermines all forms of solidarity while simultaneously promoting the logic of unrestricted individual responsibility.
As the welfare state is dismantled it is being replaced by the harsh realities of the punishing state as social problems are increasingly criminalized and social protections are either eliminated or fatally weakened. The harsh values of this new social order can be seen in the increasing incarceration of young people, the modeling of public schools after prisons and state policies that bail out investment bankers, but leave the middle and working classes in a state of poverty, despair and insecurity.
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