Utah climate activists infiltrate a truly unconventional energy summit

Members of Utah Tar Sands Resistance pose with Gov. Herbert’s Polluter of the Year award — a statue of a small child holding a bowl full of tar sands (right), and a large medallion covered in tar sands. (Peaceful Uprising / David Andreason)

Earlier this month, during the opening session of the 2013 Utah Energy Development Summit, two activists with Utah Tar Sands Resistance took to the stage in order to present Utah Gov. Gary Herbert — the host of the summit — with a very special award: Polluter of the Year. After commandeering the microphone, the presenters called upon “Dirty Herby” to accept the rather dubious distinction. After all, they argued, Herbert is working to grab more than 30 million acres of federal public lands in order to open them up to private fossil fuel development, which includes the first tar sands strip mine in the U.S.

Despite his dedication to the energy industry, Herbert was apparently late to his own summit and thus unable to physically accept the award. Instead, he tweeted: “Utah is committed to protecting our beautiful environment, so we want only RESPONSIBLE energy development.”

For more on this story, visit: Utah climate activists infiltrate a truly unconventional energy summit / Waging Nonviolence – People-Powered News and Analysis.

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Nobel laureate censures US, EU at Davos over equality-busting policies | RT

Noted American economist Joseph Stiglitz admonished US economic policies as fueling inequality at the World Economic Forum in Davos Thursday. Meanwhile the Nobel laureate said European leaders had no “sense of what they need to do and will do.”

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US economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.(AFP Photo / Josep Lago)

Stiglitz noted the fact that a full quarter of American wealth is owned by the richest one per cent of the country’s population.

The point was meant to illustrate growing inequality in the US, fabled to be an equal-opportunity society – but where the wealthy have seen their fortunes double since 1980 while wages have flatlined and housing and education prices have gone through the roof.

He pointed out that median US income has been roughly the same for two decades despite rising costs.

“America likes to think of itself as a land of equality and opportunity, the so-called American dream is very deep to our sense of identity,” Stiglitz, who served as the chief economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000, said in an interview with the BBC on the sidelines of the conference. “The stats show otherwise, the US has one of the worst opportunity rates of any of the advanced economies.”

For more on this story, visit: Nobel laureate censures US, EU at Davos over equality-busting policies — RT.

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Nine out of 10 Americans back Obama gun regulations – poll | RT

A customer looks over a Glock 29 10mm hand gun at the Guns-R-Us gun shop in Phoenix, Arizona (Reuters/Ralph D. Freso)

A sweeping majority of citizens support Obama’s initiative to install new gun laws in the US, a new Gallup poll reveals. Two thirds go as far as supporting restrictions likely to usher heated debate between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

 

­A ban is a major point of division between Democrats and Republicans which is likely to usher heated confrontation in Congress.

When given a chance to have their say on each of nine key proposals, made by US president Barack Obama, most respondents supported all nine. Interestingly, none of the participants knew they had actually been walked through the presidential proposals.

For more on this story, visit: Nine out of 10 Americans back Obama gun regulations – poll — RT.

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Obama to the Left? Most of this country is numb to the power of rhetoric!

If there was one consistent media message about the Obama inauguration ceremony, it was the idea that he was announcing a clear shift to the left. But coverage failed to provide much background on the president’s actual policies, which would have challenged that impression.

The inclusion of climate change was treated as a particularly big deal, given that inaugural addresses seldom dwell on policy. “Speech Gives Climate Goals Center Stage” read one headline in the next day’s New York Times (1/22/13). But that story, and much of the media commentary on his climate comments, failed to even mention the Keystone XL pipeline, currently under State Department review.

It is hard to fathom how meaningful action on climate change would be possible if Keystone were approved, but the White House has not spoken out in opposition to the pipeline (Nation.com, 1/22/13). Leaving out Obama’s most important upcoming climate policy decision when covering his climate agenda is a media failure.

For more on this story, visit: Obama to the Left? — FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

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Secret Ingredient for Success | NYTimes.com

… No one’s idea of a good time is to take a brutal assessment of their animating assumptions and to acknowledge that those may have contributed to their failure. It’s easy to find pat ways to explain why the world has not adequately rewarded our efforts. But what we learned from conversation with high achievers is that challenging our assumptions, objectives, at times even our goals, may sometimes push us further than we thought possible.

For more on this story, visit: Secret Ingredient for Success – NYTimes.com.

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Marc Johns: be kind

Kindness is underrated. We could always use more of it. We tend to worship visionaries and creative people (like Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso) and elevate them to the status of gods, even though they were often assholes (like Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso). Stop praising the jerks. It reinforces bad behaviour (all the parents in the house know this).

For more on this story, visit: Marc Johns: be kind.

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Living on Earth: New York Times to Close Its Environmental Desk

Some people read ideological motives into this decision to close the environmental desk, and I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think this is one element of a much bigger picture, and the bigger picture is that newsrooms are contracting. It’s a fact. When newsrooms contract, specialized coverage often suffers. And it’s not just environmental coverage that suffers. Science coverage is suffering, health coverage, some specialized business coverage…all of that specialized storytelling is at risk. It’s a real danger to democracy, I really feel that it is. So this is just one element of a much bigger story.

For more on this story, visit: Living on Earth: New York Times to Close Its Environmental Desk.

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10 problems President Obama could solve right now … The Second Coming | Foreign Policy

What can the 44th president really achieve in his second term? Here are 10 ideas.

If you were to print out all the white papers, op-eds, and think-tank reports urging U.S. President Barack Obama to do this or that in his second term, the sheer amount of paper produced would probably require chopping down the Amazon rain forest. There’s a reason these well-intentioned ideas generally sit on the shelf: They’re unrealistic. Wave a magic wand, and the president can do everything from make peace in the Middle East to reshape the entire world economy in America’s favor. What follows is something different: advice he can actually implement.

For more on this story, visit: The Second Coming | Foreign Policy.

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Library Democracy Forum with Arthur S. Meyers, 2 p.m. Sat. Feb. 2

In 1908 community learning took a new direction in Boston and spread across the country as the Open Forum Lecture Movement. Locally planned, transdenomenational lectures included Q&A and were characterized as “the Striking of mind upon mind”.

Generate some light with other audience members as author Arthur S. Meyers explores the power of community conversation.

Reviews of Democracy in the Making:

Meyers’ original and exciting investigation [and] deft, nuanced analysis….thoroughly explores the movement’s strengths and weaknesses, providing insights that will be valuable to historians—and to all who seek to develop inclusive solutions to social problems.
(Nancy C. Unger, associate professor of history, Santa Clara University; author, Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer )

…[A] clearly-drawn narrative….connect[ing] this non-sectarian, semi-secular movement to the Chautauqua and Lyceum movements of earlier generations.
(Richard D. Brown, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History, emeritus, University of Connecticut )

I recommend this book highly for students of adult education and for public officials and civic leaders who want a model of public discourse for civil conversation in a time of polarization.
(Harold W. Stubblefield, professor emeritus, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University )

For more on this story, visit: Library Democracy Forum with Arthur S. Meyers – Eventbrite.

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The Cancer Cash Cycle: The Causes of Cancer and Ill Health. GMOs seem to play a role.

Prior to undertaking his recent study into the health impacts of GMOs and incurring the wrath of the GMO sector for his findings, Gilles-Eric Seralini, professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, said it was absurd that only three months of testing allowed GM corn to be approved in over a dozen nations. Upon reviewing Monsanto’s raw data, he and his team found, among other problems, liver damage and physiological changes into a pre-diabetic condition among the rats which had eaten Monsanto’s GM corn. And that’s just from three months of eating such food. His new study was over a two year period.

The incidence of cancer is escalating and is expected to double by 2050, and it’s a global issue.

… The incidence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has increased by nearly 100 per cent in the US over the last few decades, and brain cancer by about 80 to 90 per cent. Breast cancer has gone up by about 60 to 65 per cent. Testicular cancer – particularly in men between the ages of 28 and 35 – has gone up by nearly 300 percent.

For more on this story, visit: The Cancer Cash Cycle: The Causes of Cancer and Ill Health | Global Research.

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Robert Scheer: The Inconvenient Truth About Jack Lew – Robert Scheer’s Columns – Truthdig

By Robert Scheer

I suppose that he can’t be much worse than Timothy Geithner, but that should be scant cause for cheer over the news that the president has nominated Jack Lew as Treasury secretary. Both championed the financial deregulation craze of the Clinton administration, and both are acolytes of Robert Rubin, the former Clinton Treasury secretary who unfettered Wall Street greed and then took his own considerable cut of the action.

President Barack Obama talks with Chief of Staff Jack Lew during an elevator ride in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Rubin went to work at Citigroup, the world’s largest financial conglomerate whose legality was enabled by legislation he advanced while in government. He made off with a salary of $15 million a year during his decade at that bank, which specialized in toxic mortgage derivatives and had to be bailed out by taxpayers to avoid bankruptcy.

For more on this story, visit: Robert Scheer: The Inconvenient Truth About Jack Lew – Robert Scheer’s Columns – Truthdig.

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Hightower Lowdown | Five ways we can make government work for We the People in 2013

We’ve been churning out Lowdowns each month for nearly 13 years now, and while we offer a lot of information in our four pages, we often hear back from readers that they especially appreciate the smallest feature we include in each issue: The Do Something section. Lowdowners tend to be doers. You don’t merely want to stew over the economic, political, and cultural outrages that afflict our society, but to connect with others to take action, or at least to find more information about possible fixes.

For more on this story, visit: Hightower Lowdown | Five ways we can make government work for We the People in 2013.

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Reading as resistance — a year-end book list that challenges the mainstream | Waging Nonviolence

Below is someone’s best-of list — with all its attendant biases — of books written by black women in 2012. You will find some literary giants, like Toni Morrison and Zadie Smith, who both released new work this year, as well as new writers like Laina Dawes, who wrote a fascinating exploration of black women in punk and heavy metal. As 2013 begins, let’s begin a year of resistance by listening to — and amplifying — the voices that too often went unheard and unappreciated last year.

For more on this story, visit: Reading as resistance — a year-end book list that challenges the mainstream / Waging Nonviolence – People-Powered News and Analysis.

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Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Time Is Not on Our Side

Physics doesn’t understand that rapid action on climate change threatens the most lucrative business on Earth, the fossil fuel industry. It’s implacable. It takes the carbon dioxide we produce and translates it into heat, which means into melting ice and rising oceans and gathering storms. And unlike other problems, the less you do, the worse it gets. Do nothing and you soon have a nightmare on your hands.

For more on this story, visit: Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Time Is Not on Our Side | TomDispatch.

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Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘Planetary Mind’ and Our Spiritual Evolution | On Being

The coming stage of evolution, Teilhard de Chardin said, won’t be driven by physical adaptation but by human consciousness, creativity, and spirit. We visit with his biographer Ursula King, and we experience his ideas energizing New York Times Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson.

For more on this story, visit: Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘Planetary Mind’ and Our Spiritual Evolution | On Being.

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Time Warner Cable Dumps Current TV Faster Than You Can Say ‘Al-Jazeera America’

Cable giant pulls channel just hours after announcement of acquisition

Following news on Wednesday that Qatari-based Al-Jazeera would acquire Current TV in the United States, cable giant Time Warner Cable dumped the channel.

Just hours after the announcement, subscribers to TWC found only this message when they switched to what was Current: “This channel is no longer available on Time Warner Cable.”

For more on this story, visit: Time Warner Cable Dumps Current TV Faster Than You Can Say ‘Al-Jazeera America’ | Common Dreams.

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Jacob Devaney: Idle No More: Hints of a Global Super-Movement

What started as a murmur in early October from First Nations People in Canada in response to Bill C45 has become a movement that echoes the sentiments of people all over the world, a battle cry of love for the planet, “Idle No More.” At first glance it might appear that this movement is isolated and doesn’t effect you if you are not native or if you don’t live in Canada, yet it does. It may appear that this resistance is not related to The Occupy Movement, The Arab Spring, The Unify Movement, Anonymous, or any of the other popular uprisings sparked by social unrest, but it is.

At its very core, all of these movements have very common threads and are born from common issues facing people everywhere. Those who represent financial interests that value money over life itself, that are devoid of basic respect for human decency, and for nature have dictated the future for too long and people everywhere are standing up to say, “No more.” This non-violent social uprising is viral in the minds and hearts of everyone across the planet determined to bring healing to our troubled communities, our planet, and the corruption that is eroding the highest places of governments around the world.

For more on this story, visit: Jacob Devaney: Idle No More: Hints of a Global Super-Movement.

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National Rifle Association vows to fight arms trade treaty at U.N.

(Reuters) – The leading U.S. pro-gun group, the National Rifle Association, has vowed to fight a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global arms trade and dismissed suggestions that a recent U.S. school shooting bolstered the case for such a pact.

The U.N. General Assembly voted on Monday to restart negotiations in mid-March on the first international treaty to regulate conventional arms trade after a drafting conference in July collapsed because the U.S. and other nations wanted more time. Washington supported Monday’s U.N. vote.

For more on this story, visit: National Rifle Association vows to fight arms trade treaty at U.N. | Reuters.

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Interval Song Examples Chart

Introduction

This page will help you find songs that you can use to identify intervals.

A common way to recognize intervals is to associate it with reference songs that you know well. For example, the song Amazing grace begins with a perfect fourth. So when you hear an interval that sounds like the beginning of Amazing grace, you can easily identify it as a perfect fourth.

How to use the EarMaster Interval Song Examples Chart

Select one song for each interval, and press the “Create interval examples chart” button at the bottom of the page to generate a printer-friendly page with your own interval song reference chart.

Each song includes a link to a video example hosted on YouTube, with the sole purpose of providing a musical exerpt to illustrate each interval.

For more on this story, visit: Interval Song Examples Chart.

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