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let your love flow...

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:08:06 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Daily_zen

Clip Source: community.livejournal.com

Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,

A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.

- Sutta Nipata Buddha

Civilization's last chance

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:48:51 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, NASA's chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper -- that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."

Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points -- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

So it's a tough diagnosis.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Even for Americans -- who are constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start -- even for us, the world looks a little terminal right now.

It's not just the economy: We've gone through swoons before. It's that gas at $4 a gallon means we're running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It's that when we try to turn corn into gas, it helps send the price of a loaf of bread shooting upward and helps ignite food riots on three continents. It's that everything is so tied together. It's that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the "limits to growth" suddenly seem ... how best to put it, right.

All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth.

World CO2 Levels At Record High, Scientists Warn

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:40:06 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tons of carbon each year. Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be re-absorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

Martin Parry, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s working group on impacts, said: “Despite all the talk, the situation is getting worse. Levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise in the atmosphere and the rate of that rise is accelerating. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and the scale of those impacts will also accelerate, until we decide to do something about it.”

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control.

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm - the fourth year in the past six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

Sadr City Residents Fear A Cease-Fire Means More Violence

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:21:52 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Imaine if you had to live in this kind of fear in yyour town...USA needs to end the occupation and air strikes now.

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

BAGHDAD - One day after an agreement between followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr and the Iraqi government to end more than six weeks of fighting, the streets in parts of the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City were deserted, amidst signs of a battle. Wires snaked out of potholes and from underneath tires - signs of past or future roadside bombs; abandoned pickup trucks, destroyed by airstrikes, littered the streets, and bullets or shrapnel scarred the houses.

Hussein Abd Sakran walked three hours, holding up a white flag, to escape southeast Sadr City, where U.S. and Iraqi forces battled Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, and took refuge inside the home of his brother-in-law, Raheem Abdul Hassan.

“We just want peace,” Sakran’s wife, Suham Bresam, said, her eyes heavy from sleepless nights. “This agreement happened and I was up all night from the gunshots and strikes.”

Nowhere in Sadr City is safe from an air strike

“It’s just the civilians who get hurt,” she said.

Federal Judge Rules Iraq KBR ‘Rape Victim’ Can Seek Trial In US

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:16:33 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

An American woman who claims that she was gang-raped by coworkers in Baghdad while employed by Halliburton/KBR, a defence contractor, can take her case to trial, a federal judge has ruled.

The decision has opened the door for other American women who have reported sexual assaults in similar circumstances to challenge clauses in their employment contracts restricting such claims to private arbitration and keeping them out of court.

It comes at a time when the US Congress is examining whether the Government is adequately protecting contractors who allege sexual assault.

In Britain, MPs are investigating allegations of sexual harassment and abuse at the Embassy in Baghdad. The allegations also concern employees of KBR, which was hired to maintain the Embassy’s premises. The Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee has written to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to ask for a full explanation.

Judge Says Bush Must Decide Whether To Save The Polar Bear As The Ice Melts

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:09:26 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Hmmm...let's see....the Polar bear or my cronies in Big Oil's profits. Right ...who'll give me odds on profits?

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

It’s a classic stand-off between one of the world’s best loved animals and one of its most unpopular leaders, between the planet’s largest bear and its most powerful man. And it comes to a head this week.

On Thursday, by order of a federal judge, George W Bush must stop stalling on whether to designate the polar bear as a species endangered by global warming. The designation could have huge consequences for his climate-change policies; his administration would, by law, have to avoid doing anything that would “jeopardise the continued existence” of the mammal whose habitat is melting away.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the administration has sought to avoid the decision. It has delayed it for months, and was seeking to put it off for months more. But two weeks ago Claudia Wilken, the judge, ruled it had long been “in violation of the law”, and ordered it to act by 15 May.

“Polar bears need our help now, not whenever the Bush administration feels like getting round to it.”

Ethics and Capitalism

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:05:42 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Attitude Adjustment

Consumers with high ethical expectations of companies doled out bigger rewards and punishments than consumers with low expectations. What each group was willing to pay for a pound of coffee based on production standards.

Consumers with high expectations:
Ethical standards - $11.59
Unethical standards - $6.92

Consumers with low expectations:
Ethical standards - $9.90
Unethical standards - $8.44

The article also points out that "if 100% ethical becomes expected among consumers, anything less will be punished." Hmmm! Ethics cost more but perhaps we can get by with less. We'll see what the market demands

Clip Source: cathy-edgett.livejournal.com

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to do a study on whether ethics pay. It seems they do, but you don't want to go too far with it. No reason to go overboard after all. The conclusion is this. "The lessons are clear. Companies should segment their market and make a particular effort to reach out to buyers with high ethical standards, because these are the consumers who can deliver the biggest potential profits on ethically produced goods.

Here are some statistics.

Reward and Punishment

What consumers were willing to pay for a pound of coffee based on what they were told about the company's production standards.

Ethical Standards - $9.71
Unethical Standards - $5.90

Control (no information) - $8.31

How much consumers were willing to pay for all-cotton T-shirts based on what they were told about the proportion of ethical production.

100% organic cotton - $21.21
50% organic cotton - $20.44
25% organic cotton - $20.72
Unethical behavior - $17.33

Pangea Day joins audiences around the world

Mon, 12 May 2008 21:33:28 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: The program was broadcast in seven languages. The live audience at Sony was about 1,200, joining crowds of 2,000 each in London, Rio de Janeiro, the Great Pyramids of Egypt, Mumbai, India, and Kigali, Rwanda, with smaller gatherings in other cities. At Sony, there were big video screens and a news ticker that listed a roll call of the cities and small towns participating (Each of the films and a one-hour highlight show was put up on the web at pangeaday.org right after the broadcast.)

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Audiences around the globe join for short films, speeches and one big drum circle.

STANDING FOR UNITY: Cameron Diaz presents an animated, environmentally themed short to a worldwide audience from Sony Studios in Culver City.

There was a message in the drumbeats. The final moments of the first international Pangea Day event on Saturday were big on symbolism, as seven drummers of varied cultures were linked via satellite from Stage 15 at Sony Studios to an international drum circle scattered across the planet.

"By sharing stories, we have begun the process of turning strangers into friends," filmmaker Jehane Noujaim told the U.S. studio audience in Culver City on the same soundstage where Dorothy and Toto once danced down the Yellow Brick Road. Noujaim had conceived of the idea of a multinational film festival broadcast, and it was supported through a prize from the annual TED Conference, a gathering of creative thinkers in science and culture.

PANGEA DAY A WONDERFUL SUCCESS

Mon, 12 May 2008 21:17:13 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: It was a wonderful program--to see excerpts or a replay see the link above--WELL WORTH THE TIME!
"We have the capacity and tendency to separate 'us' from 'them.' Once established, we're more tolerant to those we call 'us' and more brutal toward 'them.' But increasingly, science shows there's no limit to who we define as 'us.' Eventually, someday, there might not be any more 'thems.'" - Psychologist Robert Kurzban

"How can films change the world? They can't, but the people who watch them can. By changing minds, we change the world." - Actress Cameron Diaz

Clip Source: www.pangeaday.org.

Pangea Day's fabulous line-up of thought-provoking, inspirational speakers produced no less stellar a collection of memorable quotes and priceless bits of wisdom. A small sampling of what we heard:

"When we look at the earth from space, we can see ourselves, our species, in its brave struggle. Yes, we're troubled inhabitants of a small planet, but we're also dreamers of dreams." - Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco

"When we laugh, we change. And when we change, the world changes." -- Dr. Madan Kataria, founder of the International Laughter Club

"We have the capacity and tendency to separate 'us' from 'them.' Once established, we're more tolerant to those we call 'us' and more brutal toward 'them.' But increasingly, science shows there's no limit to who we define as 'us.' Eventually, someday, there might not be any more 'thems.'" - Psychologist Robert Kurzban

Hillary's Seeds of self-destruction

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:50:19 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.

Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.

There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans

Change We Can Stomach--I Big Ag on the downslide?

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:47:02 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Now that argument no longer holds true. With the price of oil at more than $120 a barrel (up from less than $30 for most of the last 50 years), small and midsize nonpolluting farms, the ones growing the healthiest and best-tasting food, are gaining a competitive advantage. They aren’t as reliant on oil, because they use fewer large machines and less pesticide and fertilizer.

In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre. Big farms have long compensated for the disequilibrium with sheer quantity. But their economies of scale come from mass distribution, and with diesel fuel costing more than $4 per gallon in many locations, it’s no longer efficient to transport food 1,500 miles from where it’s grown.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Farming has the potential to go through the greatest upheaval since the Green Revolution, bringing harvests that are more healthful, sustainable and, yes, even more flavorful. The change is being pushed along by market forces that influence how our farmers farm.

Until now, food production has been controlled by Big Agriculture, with its macho fixation on “average tonnage” and “record harvests.” But there’s a cost to its breadbasket-to-the-world bragging rights. Like those big Industrial Age factories that once billowed black smoke, American agriculture is mired in a mind-set that relies on capital, chemistry and machines. Food production is dependent on oil, in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, in the distances produce travels from farm to plate and in the energy it takes to process it.

responded that if we’re feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?

feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?

Oh, Puh-leeeze--Karl Rove giving Obama advice on Faux News

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:41:12 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

WASHINGTON — Late Thursday night, Karl Rove, the architect of the last two Republican presidential victories, was on his new television perch at Fox News, offering free advice to Senator Barack Obama as he closed in on the Democratic nomination.

Karl Rove, formerly of the Bush White House, on Fox News, where he is an analyst.

Any move by Mr. Obama to declare victory before the last of the Democratic primaries in June, Mr. Rove said, would alienate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s wing of the party. “That’s a mistake,” he said. “That just is rubbing the loser’s nose in it. And a lot of those supporters will remember it by November.”

In the Obama campaign war room in Chicago, where Mr. Rove’s talking head was just one of several across six television screens, his counsel was taken with a heavy dose of salt.

“Wouldn’t taking his advice be a little like getting health tips from a funeral home director?” said Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton.

SNL takes on Hillary.

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:31:24 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: nice translation from Hillarese innuendo. bare truth

Clip Source: www.nbc.com

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Message from Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton gives her take on the Democratic nomination in 3 points

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Slick Back-Hair Men Rally Against Negative Hollywood Portrayal

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:22:12 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.theonion.com

Ray Swartz, a prominent slicked-back-hair man.

LOS ANGELES—Thousands of members of the slicked-back-hair community gathered in Hollywood Monday to protest the film industry's longtime trend of depicting men with slicked-back hair as untrustworthy, unlikeable antagonists.

"There have been 4,192 films in the past 10 years in which male characters with sleek or slicked-back hairstyles have been portrayed in a negative light," said Ray Swartz, chairman of the National Organization of Men with Slicked-Back Hair. "Even though men with this hairstyle comprise just 3 percent of the U.S. populace, they make up nearly 80 percent of all film and TV villains, bad guys, and just plain assholes. As a result, thousands of men who enjoy wetting their hair and then combing it straight back face a silent but pervasive form of discrimination every single day."

"I'm just a man with slicked-back hair," Swartz added. "Does that make me a sleazeball?"

Only around 20% of the aid needed is getting into Burma

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:16:57 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: The civil war in Burma/Myanmar has been oin on for 60 years...so much for war solving problems.

Clip Source: blogs.guardian.co.uk

Follow the latest from Burma as international aid beings to trickle in as the ruling military continues to struggle with the crisis.

The first US aid flight for Burma took off today, after a week of negotiations with the ruling military junta, as aid workers and survivors give their accounts of the aftermath of cyclone Nargis.

Cases of cholera and asthma are increasing among survivors, an aid worker told Mizzima - the Burmese dissident website based in New Delhi. "Since aid is not reaching as it should be, villagers are forced to use the water which is contaminated by dead bodies," the aid worker said.

[Video]

11.10am
Only around 20% of the aid needed is getting into Burma, according to the World Food Programme.

The Charity Commission has published advice to the public wishing to donate funds for the victims of the cyclone.