Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center

The NSA is building an enormous spy center, probably the biggest ever, in Bluffdale Utah. When construction is completed in 2013, the heavily fortified $2 billion facility will encompass 1 million square feet, including four 25,000-square-foot areas to house endless rows of high-powered servers. The center will be fed data collected by the agency’s eavesdropping satellites, overseas listening posts, and secret monitoring rooms in telecom facilities throughout the US.

The incredible processing power of this facility will be used to scan e-mails, phone calls, text messages, tweets or any other kind of communication. As a former NSA officer states in his article, while holding his thumb and forefinger close together “We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.” Here’s an article from Wired about this massive facility.

Read article: http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/the-nsa-is-building-the-countrys-biggest-spy-center/

Thanks everyone for contributing here ...
Always feel free to post (and share here) any items that fits into the main theme of this thread ~ Trends That Will Affect Your Future ~
whether from the original ~ Schwartz Report ~ here http://www.schwartzreport.net/ Or from anywhere else (on the net) with a credible source link.

Blessings Gio

[quote="Sanicle"]
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center

The NSA is building an enormous spy center, probably the biggest ever, in Bluffdale Utah. When construction is completed in 2013, the heavily fortified $2 billion facility will encompass 1 million square feet, including four 25,000-square-foot areas to house endless rows of high-powered servers. The center will be fed data collected by the agency’s eavesdropping satellites, overseas listening posts, and secret monitoring rooms in telecom facilities throughout the US.

The incredible processing power of this facility will be used to scan e-mails, phone calls, text messages, tweets or any other kind of communication. As a former NSA officer states in his article, while holding his thumb and forefinger close together “We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.” Here’s an article from Wired about this massive facility.

Read article: http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/the-nsa-is-building-the-countrys-biggest-spy-center/



After reading some of that Sanicle maybe a CME (a biggie) will be welcome after all in 2013...they've only got a backup generator for three days...not a year or more

Maybe they're siphoning off some of their billions from the Mormons

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IRS May Share Tax Info With Police to Fight Fraud

All of the databases are linking together. This should be seen as an historic transition and a very dangerous compromise of our rights to privacy.
That all of this goes on evoking almost no comment is a stunning and important commentary on acquiescence.

PATRICK TEMPLE-WEST - Reuters

A surge in tax refund fraud and identity theft has prompted the Internal Revenue Service to consider sharing more tax return information with police, a senior official told a congressional hearing on Tuesday.

In a move that could spark concerns over personal privacy, the IRS said it is considering a pilot program in Tampa, Florida, where identity theft and refund fraud are rife.

"We are limited in what we can supply to local law enforcement," said Steven Miller, deputy IRS commissioner for services and enforcement.

Tax return information is normally kept tightly secret by the IRS. Under the program, exceptions could be made, with the permission of victims of identity theft and tax refund fraud, so that bogus tax return documents could be shared with police.

Tampa has seen a rash of identity theft and tax refund fraud cases since last year, totaling $130 million in ...

Read More- http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/20/us-usa-tax-idtheft-idUSBRE82J1AU20120320

Las Vegas Bets on Desert Water Pipeline as Nevada Drinks Itself Dry



I have been saying for several years Las Vegas, at least as it is currently configured, cannot go on. This is now going from a prediction to reality, and here is an early report of what is happening. Click through to see a very revealing interactive map. Thirty years from now, perhaps in as little as 20, this city will be bulldozing hundreds of city blocks that cannot be lived in because they have no water. I know real estate there has been depressed for years, but I am afraid it is going to get worse. Also in the future only structures designed to be water efficient in ways that would seem extreme today will be allowed. Water is destiny.

SUZANNE GOLDENBERG - The Guardian (U.K.)

BAKER, NV -- There was a time during the cold war when the Pentagon wanted to bury hundreds of nuclear missiles in the vast emptiness of Nevada, in case the United States came under attack from the Soviet Union. In a 21st-century version of an existential struggle in the desert, the city of Las Vegas wants to pump up to 300bn litres of water a year out of this landscape and transport it 300 miles south to the thirsty metropolis of casinos and golf courses.

The most advanced of three such projects as the US south-west struggles to adapt to recurring droughts, the pipeline could get the go-ahead on Thursday from the state's chief engineer.

Supporters say the $7bn (£4.4bn) project is a matter of life-or-death for Las Vegas, which, some projections suggest, could run out of drinking water in 20 years. Opponents of the pipeline say draining ...

Read More - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/22/las-vegas-desert-water-pipeline-nevada

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Experts: Drought Effects Will Linger After Rains


This is another part of the Western water trend, this time concerning Texas. Although all this is centered in the Southwest, its effects will reach throughout the country.

RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI - Bloomberg Businessweek

HOUSTON -- The economic impact of a historic drought that has parched Texas and other parts of the Southwest will be felt for years, with ripple effects spreading nationwide as agriculture damage adds to increases in food prices, experts told a Texas legislative committee on Thursday.

Texas had an estimated $7.6 billion in agriculture losses last year, the driest in its history. Crops failed, ranchers sold or slaughtered cattle they couldn't afford to feed leading to the largest reduction in the state's herd since the Dust Bowl, municipalities spent millions on stop-gap measures to ensure they didn't run out of water and at least one community began trucking water into residents.

Food prices are expected to rise because Texas is third in the nation when it comes to agricultural production and the leading producer of beef.

But of even greater concern is the long-term, with experts warning ...

Read More - http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-03/D9TLOBG80.htm

Finally ...

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FDA Told to Move on Antibiotic Use in Livestock

More good news. A court has finally done what the debased regulatory agencies failed to do. We will all be the healthier for this decision, and so will the chickens.

JOHN GEVER, Senior Editor - MedPage Today

A federal judge in New York City has ordered the FDA to start proceedings to revoke approvals for the use of antibiotics in livestock, a practice blamed for the spread of antibiotic-resistant "superbug" bacteria.

In a case brought by five environmental and consumer advocacy groups, Judge Theodore Katz of the Southern District of New York ruled that the FDA had violated its own regulations when, in 1977, it identified risks to human health from widespread antibiotic treatment of livestock but then failed for nearly 35 years to take action.

The lead plaintiff, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), applauded the ruling. "Today, we take a long overdue step toward ensuring that we preserve these life-saving medicines for those who need them most – people," said the group's health attorney, Avinash Kar, in a statement.

In 1977, the FDA officially concluded that low doses of penicillin and tetracycline ...

Read More -http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/FDAGeneral/31792?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyHeadlines&utm_source=WC&eun=g351002d0r&userid=351002&email=saschwartz@earthlink.net&mu_id=5344718

Insect Experts Issue 'Urgent' Warning On Using Biotech Seeds



The mono-culture chemical industrial agriculture industry, which really isn't that old -- less than a century -- has destroyed the iconic family farm,
the bees, and the plants its uses, and its genetic manipulation is now in the process of creating monster insect pests.


DAN CHARLES - NPR

For America's agricultural biotech companies, the corn rootworm is threatening to turn into their worst nightmare.

Last year, we reported that a major insect pest, the corn rootworm, had "found a chink in the armor" of genetically engineered crops. In several different places across the corn belt, the insects have developed resistance to an inserted gene that is supposed to kill them.

Now, in a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released this week, 22 of the nation's top experts on corn pests lay out some of the implications of this discovery, and they are potentially profound.

In order to slow down or prevent the spread of resistance, the scientists are calling for big changes in the way that biotech companies, seed dealers and farmers fight this insect. The scientists urge the agency to act "with a sense of some urgency."

The rethinking ...

Read More - http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/03/08/148227668/insect-experts-issue-urgent-warning-on-using-biotech-seeds

Why Generators Are Terrified of Solar

As time has gone on it has become ever more clear to me that non-petroleum energy sources are not only cleaner, they are truly going to be much cheaper. On that basis if national wellness were our country's first priority then we would be spending billions to make the transition. But the path out of old energy has been troubled and problematic. Why? The answer of course is that those corporations whose profits are based on old energy are doing everything they can to stop the decentralization which is implicit in the alternatives. Mostly the attack point is the regulations that allow people, towns or communities to sell to the grid. He is what is going on in Europe and Australia, where solar is a much bigger factor than it is in the U.S. Click through to look at the very useful charts; they are worth some close attention.

GILES PARKINSON - REneweconomy

Here is a pair of graphs that demonstrate most vividly the merit order effect and the impact that solar is having on electricity prices in Germany; and why utilities there and elsewhere are desperate to try to reign in the growth of solar PV in Europe. It may also explain why Australian generators are fighting so hard against the extension of feed-in tariffs in this country.

The first graph illustrates what a typical day on the electricity market in Germany looked like in March four years ago; the second illustrates what is happening now, with 25GW of solar PV installed across the country. Essentially, it means that solar PV is not just licking the cream off the profits of the fossil fuel generators – as happens in Australia with a more modest rollout of PV – it is in fact eating their entire cake.

Both graphs were published ...

Read More (click charts to enlarge) - http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/why-generators-are-terrified-of-solar-44279

Note ~ i am adamantly against any kind of animal testing, But i agree with Mr. Schwartz's comments -
in that hopefully a new trend will emerge in the way science behaves towards other lifeforms on this planet...

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Making Mice Comfy Leads to Better Science, Stanford Researcher Says

Back in the 1960s and, again, in the 1980s, I had occasion to visit labs where animal testing was going on. Both times the conditions appalled me so much that I made up a reason why I had to leave, and arranged for a later meeting at another site. The cages were perfectly clean, the mice had enough to eat (mostly) and all that. But the mice were always in view, and in light, and the rooms were cold.

I had grown up on a cattle farm where we had an unused stable. A family of mice moved in. I let them be and observed them through the years. It was a stable little world, and I saw that mice left alone don't like to be exposed to light all the the time, and are very careful about their nests when it gets cold. They like to be warm. My cat, Pangur Ban, feels the same way as do I, for that matter. So although the lab mice were treated well as animated objects, there really was no sense of their feelings as beings. It was very sad, and a form of willful ignorance.

This report may seem a small thing, but I think it is part of an emerging new paradigm recognizing that all life is interconnected and interdependent, and I see it as very good news.

I tried to start a biotech company to provide an alternative to animal testing, and I know that animal testing per se is not going to stop completely for many years. So I view this research with hope, and the fervent wish that it takes hold.

RUTHANN RICHTER - Stanford University Medical Center

STANFORD, Calif. -- Nine out of 10 drugs successfully tested in mice and other animal models ultimately fail to work in people, and one reason may be traced back to a common fact of life for laboratory mice: they're cold, according to a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Laboratory mice, which account for the vast majority of animal research subjects, are routinely housed in chilly conditions, which may affect their well-being as well as the outcome of research studies, said Joseph Garner, PhD, associate professor of comparative medicine.

"If you want to design a drug that will help a patient in the hospital, you cannot reasonably do that in animals that are cold-stressed and are compensating with an elevated metabolic rate," Garner said. "This will change all aspects of their physiology - such as how fast the liver breaks down a drug - which can't help but increase the chance that a drug will behave differently in mice and in humans."

In a new study, Garner and his colleagues report finding an easy solution to the problem: Simply provide the animals with the proper materials, and they'll build a cozy nest that allows them to naturally regulate their temperatures to a comfortable level. These thermally content mice would be more physiologically comparable to humans and thus might serve as more meaningful research subjects, Garner said.

"Why not let them do what they do in the wild, which is build nests? Mice can happily infest a meat freezer, with temperatures far below zero, but they survive and breed because they build these wonderful nests," he said.

The study, part of nearly seven years of work with mouse nesting behavior, is the first to "ask" mice to rate the value of nesting material in terms of temperature savings, which is an important first step in setting standards for nesting material, said Garner, whose work has focused on the well-being of the mouse. He is the senior author of the study, which will be published online March 30 in PLoS ONE.

Mice, which Garner calls "one of the most fantastic animals on Earth," have evolved in the same environment as humans for thousands of years, making them remarkably adaptable, able to live virtually anywhere. For that reason, they make excellent research subjects, with hundreds of millions of them populating laboratories around the world.

Given the option, mice gravitate to temperatures of between 30 and 32 degrees Celsius (the equivalent of about 86 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit). But based on federal regulations, U.S. research laboratories are routinely kept on the cold side — between 20 to 24 degrees C. There can be advantages to these cold temperatures. For instance, mice have aggressive tendencies that are suppressed in cooler climes. Female mice also lactate better in cooler temperatures, though their pups don't do as well in the cold.

When kept in temperatures toward the low end of this scale — between about 18 and 20 degrees C (64-68 degrees F) — the mice begin to show changes in immune function and their growth may be retarded. "So we're housing them right at that threshold," Garner said. "That means the mice may be compromised physiologically, potentially affecting research results."

Simply raising the temperature in the lab isn't an option, not least because the mice would then become unmanageably aggressive, he said. Rather, Garner and his colleagues looked to other options in their study, which involved 36 male and 36 female mice of three common strains. The researchers created sets of two cages linked by a small tube so the mice could move between them. One cage in each set was maintained at a chilly 20 degrees C (68 degrees F) and was equipped with varying quantities of shredded paper, which the animals could use to construct nests for shelter and warmth. The other cage was kept at one of six temperatures: 20, 23, 26, 29, 32 or 35 degrees C (68, 73, 79, 84, 90 or 95 F), but without nesting material.

The mice then had the choice of staying put and tolerating the cold, choosing a balmier cage, eating more to add fat and elevate metabolic rate, or building a nest.

Each strain and sex had slightly different preferences, the researchers found. None was content to simply sit out the cold, either moving to a toastier location, if available, or building elaborate, dome-like nests to warm themselves. The more nest-building material they had, the more they were willing to settle for a cooler clime, as the nests served to temper the chill, the researchers found.

In fact, the nest-building drive was so strong that the mice often would spend hours collecting strands of paper, bit by bit, from the chilliest cage and then transporting it to a more comfortable spot in another cage to build a sturdy little home.

Garner said these mice decided they wanted to have it all, choosing a warm spot and building a nest as well. "Naughty little rascals" is how he described them. "They would go on holiday somewhere warm AND take their nest with them," he said. "Some people like to take a pillow on holiday and some don't. These mice were packing their own pillow."

The fact that some mice moved nesting material to the warmer cage means that the nests serve a function beyond warmth, argued Garner, perhaps providing physical comfort, or a form of protection that decreases the animals' anxiety and stress levels.

The nest-building mice tended to eat less, as they didn't need the extra calories to satisfy their higher metabolic demands, the researchers found. In general, the females preferred warmer temperatures than the males — by about 5 degrees: they are smaller and have less fat to generate heat.

The researchers concluded that the mice could manage with 6 grams of nesting material but sometimes could use as much as 10 grams, suggesting the larger amount be supplied routinely in research labs.

Another benefit of the nests is that they facilitate researchers' work with the mice — it's easier to pick them up as well as observe them. "The shape of the nest tells an experienced person whether the animals are too hot or too cold, whether they are sick or whether they are about to give birth," Garner said. "Once you learn how to 'speak mouse nest,' the nest is a wonderful tool that anyone can use to assess the general state of the mouse."

Source & Research References Link - http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-03/sumc-mm032812.php

"The Bottom Line" ...

This next reported news item gives a new literal meaning to this well used financial banking term...
It is becoming quite obvious now, that perhaps this is and has always been the ongoing banking systems real intent...

giovonni

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When Bankers Win: 60% Unemployment, Poverty, Starvation

by John Galt
April 1, 2012

In the nation of Greece, poverty and misery rules the day as the ideals of Eurosocialism when implemented to completion take hold. The attempt to create a hybrid version of capitalism with Marxist overtones has never been successful and there is no reason to believe that success is just around the corner as a desperate population begins to realize the failure of the globalists which have sold the nation out to participate in an international currency system which offers no benefits nor sovereignty to the citizenry...

Read more - http://johngaltfla.com/wordpress/2012/04/01/perama-greece-and-example-of-when-bankers-win-60-unemployment-poverty-starvation/

A Twofer for Tuesday ...

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Supreme Court Signs Off On Strip Searches for all Arrestees

The surveillance, now this, as well as the largest gulag on the planet -- 5 per cent of the world population, 25 per cent the the world's prisoners -- I think it is fair to say the U.S. is a soft police state.

I find this decision simply beyond belief, and expect to see outraged accounts of abuse surfacing within 90 days of its implementation. And it must be seen within the context of what the TSA does. I think this level of physical intrusion might create a social uprising.

STEPHEN C. WEBSTER - The Raw Story

Going forward from this week on, people arrested in the United States may face a mandatory strip search, even if their offense is minor and authorities don’t suspect them of smuggling any contraband.

That’s because U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy sided with the court’s conservatives on Monday, swinging the vote 5-4 in favor of allowing jail officials to conduct a strip search of anyone in their custody.

Those searches may now even be carried out on people who’ve only committed minor offenses like traffic violations or small drug possession, and in cases where there is nothing that meets the previous standard of 'reasonable suspicion” that someone may be hiding something.

In its opinion (PDF), the court’s majority suggested that strip searches would make inmate populations safer by helping to stem the tide of drugs and weapons, and healthier by identifying early on inmates with injuries ...

Read More - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/02/supreme-court-signs-off-on-strip-searches-for-all-arrestees/

Also ~

Kids to U.S. Court: Who Owns the Air?



This is one of the most original approaches to progressive social change I have seen. It is is not clear it will win but the issues it raises will, I think, continue to grow even if the judicial outcome rules against them. Who owns the air indeed?

RUSSELL MCLENDON - Mother Nature Network

If you enjoy public beaches, state parks or fishing piers, you can thank the sixth-century Roman emperor Justinian. He's credited with introducing the public trust doctrine, a legal concept that forbids private ownership of certain natural resources, instead preserving them for public use. This idea has spread worldwide since then, protecting everything from beaches and streams to oyster beds and fish stocks.

It was an early tenet of English common law, later encoded in the Magna Carta, and also has a long history in U.S. courts, dating back to at least 1842's Martin v. Waddell. During a 1983 case about water use at California's Mono Lake, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically quoted this section of Roman law to explain public trust:


"By the law of nature these things are common to mankind: the air, running water, the sea and consequently the ...

Read More - http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/kids-to-us-court-who-owns-the-air

A slew of news items to report today...

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Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Here is the latest revelation concerning the Bush-Cheney elective war. Its beginnings represent an extended act of fraud, and war crime. I find it very interesting that there has been virtually no coverage of this story -- note that I got it from an British newspaper.

JONATHAN OWEN - The Independent (UK)

A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.

"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.

He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."

The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were ...

Read More - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/man-whose-wmd-lies-led-to-100000-deaths-confesses-all-7606236.html?origin=internalSearch

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These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps



I have been telling you about the vast profit potential in the growing surveillance industry, and the moral corruption it represents, and here is the evidence. That means these industries now have lobbyists whose sole purpose in life is to perpetuate this profit. Only voting will change this.

ANDY GREENBERG, Staff Writer

If Americans aren’t disturbed by phone carriers’ practices of handing over cell phone users’ personal data to law enforcement en masse–in many cases without a warrant–we might at least be interested to learn just how much that service is costing us in tax dollars: often hundreds or thousands per individual snooped.

Earlier this week the American Civil Liberties Union revealed a trove of documents it had obtained through Freedom of Information Requests to more than 200 police departments around the country. They show a pattern of police tracking cell phone locations and gathering other data like call logs without warrants, using devices that impersonate cell towers to intercept cellular signals, and encouraging officers to refrain from speaking about cell-tracking technology to the public, all detailed in a New York Times story.

But at least one document also details the day-to-day business of telecoms’ handing over of data to ...

Read More - http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/04/03/these-are-the-prices-att-verizon-and-sprint-charge-for-cellphone-wiretaps/?partner=forbespicks&google_editors_picks=true

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Technology Secret Life of Plants: Scientists Discover Plants Can Talk

Back in 1971, when my dear friends the late Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins were beginning the research that resulted in their book, The Life of Plants, whenever they talked about the idea of plant communications with most biologists they were told they were out of their minds. When the book came out it got even worse. Scientific conferences hold panels telling the world Tompkins and Bird (a Harvard trained biologist) were fools at best and charlatans at worst. Every year since then research has step by step demonstrated that they were, in fact, correct. And we are only at the beginning of this journey to understand our world. Slowly we will come to understand as a culture that those policies which encourage wellness, including recognizing that all life is interconnected and interdependent, will produce better and cheaper social outcomes.

The Telegraph (U.K.)

Plants that respond to sound and "click" to communicate with each other?
It's not science fiction, according to research released by the University of Western Australia.

"Everyone knows that plants react to light, and scientists also know that plants use volatile chemicals to communicate with each other: for instance, when danger - such as a herbivore - approaches," UWA researcher Monica Gagliano said.

"I was working one day in my herb garden and started to wonder if maybe plants were also sensitive to sounds - why not? - so I decided as a scientist to find out."

Dr Gagliano, along with professor Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol in the UK and professor Stefano Mancuso at the University of Florence in Italy, found that the roots of young plants emitted and reacted to particular sounds...

Read More - http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/technology/sci-tech/secret-life-of-plants-scientists-discover-plants-can-talk/story-fn5h1ywy-1226318169757

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How to Start Your Own Power Company, Stop Coal and Nukes, and Transform Your City

This is a wonderful story and it could be done in your town or mine -- I am going to try and see if we can do it in mine.

Ursula Sladek speaks truth in this interview. Read it closely.

SVEN EBERLEIN - AlterNet

Ursula Sladek, a 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, is the co-founder and president of EWS, one of Europe’s largest cooperatively owned green energy companies. Motivated by the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl in 1986, the schoolteacher and mother of five from the small town of Schönau (population 2,382) in Germany’s Black Forest region - along with her husband Michael and a group of concerned parents - unsuccessfully lobbied her regional power company to adopt conservation measures, to no avail. After over 10 years of citizen activism and two referendums, Sladek and her small-town energy rebels were able to take over the local grid and start a community-run power co-op.

With total sales reaching 67 million euro in 2009, EWS has long outgrown its local market. While Schönau boasts three times the national average in photovoltaics, 20 cogeneration units, two hydroelectric plants, and a windmill, EWS today provides power from over ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/story/154743/how_to_start_your_own_power_company%2C_stop_coal_and_nukes%2C_and_transform_your_city?akid=8525.267705.2KxdY7&rd=1&t=28

Monsanto Threatens to Sue Vermont if Legislators
Pass a Bill Requiring GMO Food to Be Labeled



The very act of threatening to sue the state of Vermont tells you how much Monsanto has to hide.
For my readers in Vermont, please contact your state legislators and tell them to find their spines.

WILL ALLEN and RONNIE CUMMIN - AlterNet

The world’s most hated corporation is at it again, this time in Vermont.

Despite overwhelming public support and support from a clear majority of Vermont’s Agriculture Committee, Vermont legislators are dragging their feet on a proposed GMO labeling bill. Why? Because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if the bill passes.

The popular legislative bill requiring mandatory labels on genetically engineered food (H-722) is languishing in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, with only four weeks left until the legislature adjourns for the year. Despite thousands of emails and calls from constituents who overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, despite the fact that a majority (6 to 5) of Agriculture Committee members support passage of the measure, Vermont legislators are holding up the labeling bill and refusing to take a vote. Instead, they’re calling for more public hearings on April 12, in the apparent hope that they can run...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/food/154855/monsanto_threatens_to_sue_vermont_if_legislators_pass_a_bill_requiring_gmo_food_to_be_labeled/?page=entire

Novel Solar Reactor May Enable Clean Fuel Derived From Sunlight

When I find these stories I always think two things: I am glad to see this forward movement, all part of the trend away from petroleum. But also this: Where would we be now if in 1973 when the fuel shortage occurred, we had committed to exiting the age of petroleum for alternatives, and stuck with it steadily, as we do with missiles.

KAREN B. ROBERTS - Physorg.com

Producing hydrogen from non-fossil fuel sources is a problem that continues to elude many scientists but University of Delaware’s Erik Koepf thinks he may have discovered a solution.

Hydrogen is traditionally made from natural gas. Unfortunately, natural gas is a fossil fuel that releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, when converted to hydrogen.

Koepf, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, has designed a novel reactor that employs highly concentrated sunlight and zinc oxide powder to produce solar hydrogen, a truly clean, sustainable fuel with zero emissions.

His advisers are Ajay Prasad, professor of mechanical engineering and director of UD’s Center for Fuel Cell Research, and Suresh Advani, George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

'People have been trying for years to generate hydrogen renewably from sunlight, and Erik’s reactor takes us closer to that goal,” explained Prasad, principal investigator of the University’s fuel cell bus ...

Read More - http://phys.org/news/2012-04-solar-reactor-enable-fuel-derived.html

Also ____________________

What Cuba Can Teach Us About Food and Climate Change

We must abandon industrial agriculture, for its dependence on massive amounts of petroleum and water if nothing else. And it can be done.



RAJ PATEL - Slate

The Studebakers plying up and down Havana’s boardwalk aren’t the best advertisement for dynamism and innovation. But if you want to see what tomorrow’s fossil-fuel-free, climate-change-resilient, high-tech farming looks like, there are few places on earth like the Republic of Cuba.

Under the Warsaw Pact, Cuba sent rum and sugar to the red side of the Iron Curtain. In exchange, it received food, oil, machinery, and as many petrochemicals as it could shake a stick at. From the Missile Crisis to the twilight of the Soviet Union, Cuba was one of the largest importers of agricultural chemicals in Latin America. But when the Iron Curtain fell, the supply lines were cut, and tractors rusted in the fields.

Unable to afford the fertilizers and pesticides that 20th-century agriculture had taken for granted, the country faced extreme weather events and a limit to the land and water it could use ...

Read More - http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/future_tense/2012/04/agro_ecology_lessons_from_cuba_on_agriculture_food_and_climate_change_.single.html

Big Oil's Strategy for Jacking Up Gas Prices

Prices at German gas pumps oscillate wildly, sometimes changing several times a day. The rises and falls are far from random, however.
Studies and market observers say it is an attempt by big oil to ratchet up the cost of a fill-up as high as possible.

I am writing this on the plane as I fly to Tucson to present a paper at the big consciousness research conference held there each year. To get to the airport from my island I take the shuttle, which we meet at a gas station. As we were sitting there I looked up and saw that gas had gone up nearly a quarter a gallon in the past three days. Surprise, suprise. Not. It happens every Easter, or Christmas, or Fourth of July, as you have probably noticed yourself.

Mainstream media will not really cover this story, except to report the price increase, so I went searching to see if some real journalists outside the U.S. have done work on this trend. They have. This story is centered on Germany, but the basics of the report are the same as those found in the U.S. As you read this remember that Big Oil owns, or at least rents, a passel of Senators and Representatives to do its bidding, and they make sure that billions of dollars of subsidies also roll in to Big Oil each year. One just can't make too much profit -- who cares about the social consequences.

ALEXANDER JUNG and ALEXANDER NEUBACHER - Der Spiegel (Germany)

It's Easter weekend and, if all goes as usual, motorists will be hopping mad during the holiday. Their frustration will boil over when the needle reaches the red zone and they pull into the nearest filling station: first at the pump, then at the cash register.

That's where they'll note with dismay that the oil companies never tire of playing the same old game in the run-up to Easter. As in previous years, gas prices soared in the days leading up to the Friday before Easter -- just when millions of Germans head off on vacation.

In 2009, prices jumped by as much as 11 euro cents per liter ($0.54 per gallon) compared to weeks prior, as was documented in the Cologne area by a report released last year by Germany's Federal Cartel Office. At the time, the Bonn-based anti-trust agency said it was "plausible" that the oil ...

Read More - http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,825750,00.html

Broadcom has just rolled out a chip for smart phones that promises to indicate location ultra-precisely, possibly within a few centimeters, vertically and horizontally, indoors and out.nThe unprecedented accuracy of the Broadcom 4752 chip results from the sheer breadth of sensors from which it can process information. It can receive signals from global navigation satellites, cell-phone towers, and Wi-Fi hot spots, and also input from gyroscopes, accelerometers, step counters, and altimeters.

The variety of location data available to mobile-device makers means that in our increasingly radio-frequency-dense world, location services will continue to become more refined.

In theory, the new chip can even determine what floor of a building you’re on, thanks to its ability to integrate information from the atmospheric pressure sensor on many models of Android phones. The company calls abilities like this “ubiquitous navigation,” and the idea is that it will enable a new kind of e-commerce predicated on the fact that shopkeepers will know the moment you walk by their front door, or when you are looking at a particular product, and can offer you coupons at that instant.

read more at link

Thanks Carol for posting this info ...

There's no doubt Hawaii and the West Coast are getting hit the hardest

It's all simply greed and warmongering

New Study Is First to Show That Pesticides Can Induce Morphological Changes in Vertebrate Animals, Says Pitt Researcher

If you think that the poisons spewed out by Monsanto and the other death corporations just affect bees, please read this report. Tons of these toxins are being spread across the world, particularly in the U.S. What goes around, comes around. Millions will suffer so a few can get even richer. If you use lawn and garden products like Round-up... well, just read this report.

B. ROSE HUBER - University of Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH -- The world’s most popular weed killer, Roundup®, can cause amphibians to change shape, according to research published today in Ecological Applications.

Rick Relyea, University of Pittsburgh professor of biological sciences in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and director of Pitt's Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology, demonstrated that sublethal and environmentally relevant concentrations of Roundup® caused two species of amphibians to alter their morphology. According to Relyea, this is the first study to show that a pesticide can induce morphological changes in a vertebrate animal.

Relyea set up large outdoor water tanks that contained many of the components of natural wetlands. Some tanks contained caged predators, which emit chemicals that naturally induce changes in tadpole morphology (such as larger tails to better escape predators). After adding tadpoles to each tank, he exposed them to a range of Roundup® concentrations. After 3 weeks, the ...

Read More - http://www.news.pitt.edu/Pesticides_MOrph

Also related ~

Scientists Call for Global Ban On Bee-killing Pesticides




A possible ray of hope concerning the bees. I take it as a given that the corporations that make these awful toxins will require their vassals in the Congress to resist eliminating them. But it may finally be dawning on enough people that life without bees will be enormously more complicated and expensive that something will be done. I think there is an excellent chance they will be outlawed in Europe; I am much less certain when it comes to the U.S.

DAMIAN CARRINGTON - The Guardian (U.K.)/Raw Story

How valuable are bees? In the UK, about £1.8bn a year, according to new research on the cost of hand-pollinating the many crops bees service for free. If that sounds a far-fetched scenario, consider two facts.

First, bees are in severe decline. Half the UK’s honey bees kept in managed hives have gone, wild honey bees are close to extinction and solitary bees are declining in more than half the place they have been studied.

Second, hand-pollination is already necessary in some places, such as pear orchards in China, and bees are routinely trucked around the US to compensate for the loss of their wild cousins.

The new figure comes from scientists at the Reading University and was released by Friends of the Earth to launch their new campaign, Bee Cause. Paul de Zylva, FoE nature campaigner, said: 'Unless we halt the decline in British bees our ...

Read More - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/11/scientists-call-for-global-ban-on-bee-killing-pesticides/

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US Tops Global Clean Energy Investment Rankings



Here is some classic good news-bad news. The U.S. did something smart and forward thinking -- created tax policies to encourage solar --
but has now allowed them to expire, thanks to old energy deploying its lobbyists and whipping both the Obama Administration and the Congress back into place.

Of particular note in this report is the data showing that solar is now a larger energy contributor than nuclear.

Click through to see a chart comparing the various national investments.

Thanks to Jeff Vander Clute.

MARK KINVER, Environment Reporter - BBC News (UK)

The US has regained top spot from China as the biggest investor in clean energy in 2011, according to global rankings.

The table, published in a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, showed that US invested more than $48bn (£30bn) in the sector, up from $34bn in 2010.

China slipped to second place, the authors reported, with investment only increasing by $0.5bn to $45.5bn.

Globally, overall financial backing in clean energy technologies hit a record $263bn, up 6.5% from 2010 levels.

The report, Who is Winning the Clean Energy Race, showed that G20 nations accounted for 95% of the investment in the sector (which does not include nuclear power).

The data, compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ranked the UK as seventh in the world, with $9.4bn of investment in 2011.

Over the course of the year, an additional 83.5 gigawatts (GW) was added ...

Read More - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17662973

Also _______________________


Drought Expands Throughout USA

Climate change is beginning to seriously bite. And how ironic: it will disproportionately affect the Theocratic Rightist states whose representatives and senators block any attempt by the government to deal with climate change.
These changes are going to cause great misery in those states.

Click through to see a map showing what is going to happen in your state.

DOYLE RICE - USA Today

The USA hasn't been this dry in almost five years.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority won approval from Nevada's state engineer to pump up to 84,000 acre-feet of water from rural areas along the Nevada-Utah line, including Lake Mead, to quench the thirst of the Las Vegas Valley.

Still reeling from last year's devastating drought that led to at least $10 billion in agricultural losses across Texas and the South, the nation is enduring another unusually parched year.

A mostly dry, mild winter has put nearly 61% of the lower 48 states in "abnormally dry" or drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly federal tracking of drought. That's the highest percentage of dry or drought conditions since September 2007, when 61.5% of the country was listed in those categories.

Only two states - Ohio and Alaska - are entirely free of abnormally dry ...

Read More - http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drought/story/2012-04-11/mild-winter-expands-usa-drought/54225018/1

Jan Brewer Signs 'Life Begins at Menstruation' Bill, the Most Draconian Anti-abortion Law So Far

This trend against women just keeps rolling along. This one, I confess, is so over the top that it reads like something from the Onion. It isn't though, and it is going to create great hardship.

I am in Tucson right now. I wrote a book here, The Secret Vaults of Time, in the early 70s, and it is stunning how much the city has deteriorated. The roads are like something you would see in the third world. It never ceases to surprise me that people vote crazies like Jan Brewer and the choice specimens in the legislature who pass bills like this one into office and, then, tolerate the destruction of the quality of their own lives.

Daily Kos

Arizona can now claim the nation's worst assault on women's reproductive rights so far.

The law 'disregards women’s health in a way I’ve never seen before,” said Center for Reproductive Rights’ state advocacy counsel, Jordan Goldberg. 'The women of Arizona can’t access medical treatment that other women can.”

The fingerprints of policy group Americans United for Life are all over much of the bill’s language, according to Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute. She says the legislation is a mishmash of parts of other states’ bills, and predicted that still other conservative states looking to restrict and discourage abortions will now look to Arizona’s bill as model legislation.

'The point is to make it so difficult to provide abortions that no one will do it,” said Nash. 'Arizona likes to thumb their nose at ...

Read More - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/13/1083067/-Jan-Brewer-signs-life-begins-at-menstruation-bill-the-most-draconian-anti-abortion-law-so-far


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Tennessee Senate Approves Bill To Warn Students That Hand-Holding Is A ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’



Tennessee is falling apart, and this is what the state's duly elected representatives are spending their time on. This is the state, remember, that just passed a law giving official sanction to teaching Creationism. This government by bozoes is a trend that is sweeping across the Theocratic Right states. These people were elected, that's what one always has to remember. You get what you vote for. And you may have to live with the consequences for a generation of more.

SCOTT KEYES - Think Progress

Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding.

Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as 'gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.

Since the bill specifically bans teachers from 'demonstrating gateway sexual activity”, educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is. Breaking these laws could result in a lawsuit, as Hunter from Daily Kos notes:

If your teacher teaches you anything about sex that isn’t specifically on the approved curriculum, like demonstrating 'holding hands” for the class instead of quietly "tsking" about the dangers it poses, they can be sued.

Still, this anti-hand-holding push may only be the ...

Read More - http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/04/13/463317/tennessee-anti-hand-holding/?mobile=nc