UK is looking at it... how about considering the effects of Westerners or Americans on the sustainability of our planet? Population explosion scrutinised as scientists urge politicians to act
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Britain's premier scientific organisation has launched a two-year study into global population levels. A growing body of scientists believe the time has come for politicians to confront the problems posed by the future increase in human numbers. |
Sir John Sulston, the Nobel laureate who took a leading role in decoding the human genome, will lead the study. A failure to be open about the problems caused by the global population explosion would set back human development, he warned. |
"We really do have to look at where we are going in relation to population. If we don't do it, we may survive but we won't flourish," Sir John said. "We will be examining the extent to which population is a significant factor in the momentous international challenge of securing global sustainable development, considering not just the scientific elements but encompassing the wider issues including culture, gender, economics and law." |
*One measure of the environmental impact of human population is called the "ecological footprint". It was developed more than 15 years ago by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, at the University of British Columbia in Canada. It is a measure of the demand placed on the biosphere by human activity, calculating the amount of biologically productive land and water area required to produce all the resources that an individual, population or activity consumes, and also to absorb the waste they generate, given prevailing technology and resource management. The "footprint" is measured in global hectares, or average world productivity, allowing one area or population to be compared with another. Read more at www.biologicaldiversity.org |
Announcing a HUGE video campaign to fight Prop 16:
PG&E is spending over $30,000,000 to trick us into voting for Prop 16 (New Two-Thirds Requirement for Local Public Electricity Providers Act), a constitutional amendment that would virtually eliminate the right of our communities to create our own greener, cheaper power supply.
To fight it, a few friends and I are launching a funny viral video campaign on May 18th called, "1 Million Strong Against Prop 16, with 1 Millionth the Budget of PG&E".
We're literally spending just $30, counting on you -- people power -- to share the truth and overwhelm the propaganda of PG&E.
Check it out and comment!
The first vid is on youtube at http://bit.ly/Prop16Vids
like the Facebook Fan page http://bit.ly/NoProp16FanPg
and/or
follow our Twitter http://twitter.com/NoOnProp16
add this to all the energy, water, feed, ag land it takes to make beef, and it become apparent that beef is "a sometimes food." Like, once a month, max. American Meat Is Even Grosser Than You Thought |
In the focus on E. coli and salmonella, meat contaminated by heavy metals, veterinary drugs and pesticides has been slipping through the bureaucratic cracks. |
In 2008, Mexican authorities rejected a shipment of U.S. beef because the meat exceeded Mexico's regulatory tolerance for copper. The rejected meat was returned to the United States, where it was sold and consumed, because the U.S. has no regulatory threshold for copper in meat. |
Microbial contaminants can be killed by cooking, but chemical residues aren't destroyed by heat. In fact, some of these residues break down into more dangerous substances when heated, according to the FSIS National Residue Program for Cattle, a recent report by the USDA's Office of the Inspector General. |
| he meat from sick dairy cattle is low-grade, and is usually turned into burger and sold to the sorts of buyers who stretch their dollars furthest, like fast food chains and school lunch programs |
| The milk produced by medicated dairy cows is barred from sale to human consumers -- a sensible rule, given the dangers suggested above. Unfortunately, no law prevents this "waste milk" from being fed to veal calves, the meat of which sometimes tests positive for these drugs. Read more at www.alternet.org |
http://bit.ly/9ETG0f
I believe in tolerance above all, for all religions, no matter how wacky (most of them). So, when does wacky go too far? How about killing someone for showing an interpretation or satire of Mohammad? Not only is this possible, but likely. Let's stop being PC and call them out on this.
Muslims: take to the streets and say fundamentalist wacko-ism is over. Make it a couple of million of you, so the mainstream media will actually show up. Anything short of that, the murder of these artists will be further ammunition for the wacko religious freaks on the other side to use to justify the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
P.S. Yes, I am aware the US military and foreign policies kills perhaps over a million Muslims in the past 10 years, which is thus a million times more revolting than the actions taken out on artists for depicting your deity.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A U.S. Muslim group has issued a dire Internet "warning" to creators of the satirical animated TV show "South Park" over a depiction of the Prophet Mohammad in a bear outfit. |
The episode in question aired last week on cable channel Comedy Central of the 200th episode of "South Park", in which the Prophet Mohammad was depicted in a bear outfit. |
The website of Revolution Muslim was down on Wednesday because of what a leader of the group called a traffic overload. |
"How is that a threat?," he told Reuters. "Showing a case study right there of what happened to another individual who conducted himself in a very similar manner? It's just evidence." |
He described his group as an alternative media outlet with about 20 active posters to the website. Members also engage in demonstrations and lectures at mosques, he said. Read more at abcnews.go.com |
Fabrice "French Fab" Tourre co-orchestrated a bunch of worthless mortgages, sold them to you as super-low-risk packages, and behind your back he bought insurance of when they would fail, with 99% of them did.
But what's wrong with that? He was just capitalizing. It's capitalism. Goldman Sachs’s ‘Fabulous Fab’ Loses Bet He’s Sole ‘Survivor’ |
“The whole building is about to collapse anytime now,” Tourre, an executive director at Goldman Sachs in London, wrote to a friend in a January 2007 e-mail, according to the SEC’s complaint. “Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities!!!” |
April 16 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s “Fabulous Fab” saw himself as the “only potential survivor” when the housing market began to collapse in 2007. Instead he became the only person named today when regulators charged the firm with fraud. |
While we watch the Final Four, people are flying over Baghdad, waiting to see if people with guns (or in this case, cameras) are roaming the streets.
Watch the excitement of the soldiers so eager to "engage" them, then decide if you want to live in a society that trains men to not only kill civilians and potential "combatants" on sight, but to take such joy out of it.
Surely these soldiers didn't know they were killing journalists. Surely, if your job is to kill with such little regard, then a good way to stay sane is to gun down people walking through the street as if they were flesh-eating zombies on your X-Box 360. But don't tell me that God or Gaia or whatever you think revolves this Earth wants you to take such joy out of gunning down another human being, and don't tell me that entity wants you to shrug when you find out you gunned down a couple of kids on top of it.
Pay more at the pump or keep paying like this. Get out of Iraq, Get out of Afghanistan. Wikileaks today released a video depicting the slaying of more than 12 people – including two Reuters news staff – by two Apache helicopters using 30mm cannon fire. |
A corporation is a person, so this corporation has every right to run for office! Judeo/Christ bless 'Merica! | Murray Hill might be the perfect candidate for this political moment |
| Murray Hill is actually Murray Hill Inc. |
After the Supreme Court declared that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to funding political campaigns, the self-described progressive firm took what it considers the next logical step: declaring for office.
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William Klein, a "hired gun" who has been enlisted as Murray Hill's campaign manager, said the firm appears to be the first "corporate person" to run for office and is promising a spirited campaign that "puts people second, or even third."
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The corporate candidate already has its own Web site, a Facebook page with 2,600 fans and an online ad on YouTube that has drawn more than 172,000 hits.
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| The firm "wanted to run as a Republican because we feel the Republican Party is more receptive to our basic message that corporations are people, too," Klein saidRead more at www.washingtonpost.com |
I know Obama is in the pockets of the military industrial complex, but a socialist? The Antichrist?
It's not that these beliefs are going to far (which they are) that is the issue, but more that they're entirely missing the point: Obama's promised reforms have often been much more in the favor of those who who are harming out foundation -- the corporate machine. | On the heels of health care, a new Harris poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama: Two-thirds think he's a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim—and 24 percent say "he may be the Antichrist." |
- 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
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| 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim |
| 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president" |
| 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did" |
| Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist." |
| high percentages of Republicans—and Americans overall—believe that President Obama is "racist," "anti-American" "wants the terrorists to win" and "wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government."Read more at hellocitizens.posterous.com |
I don't think most folks know how much money is behind these organizations, or where it comes from, or how it started . | Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and
lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the
rainforests--and runaway global warming? |
| Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and
wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent
environmental destruction. |
| But Jay Hair--president
of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995--was dissatisfied.
He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters. |
| Shell and British Petroleum (BP) were delighted. They saw
it as valuable "reputation insurance" |
| To take just one example, when it was
revealed that many of IKEA's dining room sets were made from trees
ripped from endangered forests, the World Wildlife Fund leapt to the
company's defense, saying--wrongly--that IKEA "can never guarantee" this
won't happe |
| the addiction to corporate cash has changed
the green groups at their core. |
They needed 60 votes for the public option, but couldn't get them, so now they're going around Republicans with a bill that Republicans themselves whittled down to making things even worse for the typical American ( http://bit.ly/dhfGC3 ).
Now that the Democrats need only 50 votes they need to make any real reform happen -- the public option -- all of a sudden, they don't have the 50.
Glad there are people who could see this coming. The Democrats' scam becomes more transparent |
| all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster: sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, |
| In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation -- where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required -- but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting |
| reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous. |
| But all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation |
| As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Read more at www.salon.com |
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