This Cat's Account Of Our Current Predicament Feels Oddly Correct: Farming Pathogens

Be sure to peep Rob Wallace's Twitter

yasha.substack |  Since the coronavirus started making news here in America, it’s been portrayed as a foreign pathogen. It’s not just Donald Trump and his the MAGA fan club. Starting with the Chinese bat soup meme, all kinds of nativist political theories and racist conspiracies have been oozing out of centrist, rightist, and progressive media and political circles — making it seem like the virus is primarily a foreign problem and quite possibly a foreign conspiracy against the United States. 

Just check out this crazy viral xenophobic theorizing that ties the disruption caused by corona closures to Russia and Putin. It’s pushed by a respected liberal academic — someone who regularly gets space in the New York Times. Americans love their insane nativist conspiracies about foreign plots by shady asiatics. Don’t deny them this basic right!

This stuff is infectious and has already led to sporadic violence against Chinese-Americans and people from Asia in America. But this nativist blaming isn’t just happening here. 

China’s been trying to pin the virus on the American government, and so has Russia. A few weeks back, Russian state news broadcast a segment that tied the virus to an American plot against China. 

Channelling Brass Eye, the host of the news program laid out his logic like this: China is America’s greatest enemy. “Corona” means “crown.” And Donald Trump “crowned” the winners of his Miss Universe pageant. It all added up. Trump unleashed a bioweapon. The clue is in the etymology!

And really, who knows? Maybe the virus is some shadowy American chemical warfare program that backfired. It wouldn’t the first.

I’m sure that xenophobic panics have always followed pandemics and outbreaks of disease, going back to origins of human history. It’s a natural response when faced with a mysterious, deadly calamity. You blame the out-group — a different ethnic or religious or minority group. You blame whoever your official enemy is, or whoever it is most politically useful to blame. It happened during the Spanish Flu that decimated humanity a century ago. And it hasn’t changed today — in our age of supposed rationality. 

And what’s politically useful today about blaming the coronavirus on a specific country? It helps obscure the real origin of the pathogen — which is not national, but international. It’s economic and political.

That Which Wiped Out the Megafauna, Wiped Out the Clovis...,

nature |  The Younger Dryas (YD) impact hypothesis posits that fragments of a large, disintegrating asteroid/comet struck North America, South America, Europe, and western Asia ~12,800 years ago. Multiple airbursts/impacts produced the YD boundary layer (YDB), depositing peak concentrations of platinum, high-temperature spherules, meltglass, and nanodiamonds, forming an isochronous datum at >50 sites across ~50 million km² of Earth’s surface. This proposed event triggered extensive biomass burning, brief impact winter, YD climate change, and contributed to extinctions of late Pleistocene megafauna. In the most extensive investigation south of the equator, we report on a ~12,800-year-old sequence at Pilauco, Chile (~40°S), that exhibits peak YD boundary concentrations of platinum, gold, high-temperature iron- and chromium-rich spherules, and native iron particles rarely found in nature. A major peak in charcoal abundance marks an intense biomass-burning episode, synchronous with dramatic changes in vegetation, including a high-disturbance regime, seasonality in precipitation, and warmer conditions. This is anti-phased with northern-hemispheric cooling at the YD onset, whose rapidity suggests atmospheric linkage. The sudden disappearance of megafaunal remains and dung fungi in the YDB layer at Pilauco correlates with megafaunal extinctions across the Americas. The Pilauco record appears consistent with YDB impact evidence found at sites on four continents.

Baking Soda Anti-Inflammatory

healthimpactnews |  There was a time, decades ago, when doctors would prescribe bicarbonate of soda, aka baking soda, mixed with water to patients suffering from influenza or other temporary ills. By the way, baking soda does not contain aluminum, baking powder usually does.

Now its efficacious use is known by only a handful of holistic medical practitioners. Though not part of the medical establishment’s “standard of care,” which if not followed can result in an MD’s loss of license to practice, bicarbonate of soda has been used by paramedics and ER attendants for extreme emergencies. A handful of MDs have even discretely used it on kidney patients to augment or avoid dialysis.

Now a medical study has reported indications of dampening inflammation that bring on autoimmune diseases. The study was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Immunology in April of 2018 to confirm the hypothesis that bicarbonate of soda does have medical merit, and can be a simple cure to autoimmune diseases.

The Study and What It Means

The research report is titled Oral NaHCO3 Activates a Splenic Anti-Inflammatory Pathway: Evidence That Cholinergic Signals Are Transmitted via Mesothelial Cells. (Abstract)

Time for a few nomenclature explanations:

NaHCO3 is the chemical makeup of bicarbonate of soda, commonly known as baking soda. Splenic refers to the spleen. Cholinergic refers to choline, a primary component of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine found in nerve fibers, are thin plate-like calls that cover the walls of fluid containing cavities within the body.

The study was conducted at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health. The researchers’ message is:

Our data indicate that oral NaHCO3 activates a splenic anti-inflammatory pathway and provides evidence that the signals that mediate this response are transmitted to the spleen via a novel neuronal-like function of mesothelial cells.

The Georgia Medical College study determines the mechanics of how baking soda manages all of the wonderful things it does despite its efficacy not being heralded by the “orthodox” medical industry.

Their research discovered the spleen’s role in mitigating inflammation beyond raising acidic pH levels to higher alkaline levels, which is a recognized attribute of baking soda even in mainstream medicine.

The spleen creates macrophages, large white blood cells that clear cellular and microbial debris, and lymphocytes or killer cells that go after bacterial and viral infections. This is an aspect of the immune system, which if unnecessarily overstimulated, creates chronic inflammation

The Georgia Medical College researchers observed that when rats or healthy people drink a solution of small amounts of sodium bicarbonate it ironically becomes a trigger for the stomach to make more acid to digest the next meal.

Regarding the inflammation/autoimmune disease link, after drinking water with baking soda for two weeks, the population of macrophages shifted from those that promote inflammation, (M1), to those that reduce it (M2).

The researchers became aware that the little-studied mesothelial cells sitting on the spleen receive cholinergic messages telling the fist-sized organ that there’s no need to mount a protective immune response.

This eliminates an unnecessary inflammatory response, which may become an endless immune response feedback loop leading to a cytokine storm, which can be fatal, or chronic inflammation, the precursor to almost all autoimmune diseases.  Fist tap Dale.

As Goes Blackness - The Parable

thisisinsider |  Like much of Glover's work, "This is America" is cryptic and loaded with shocking imagery and metaphor. The track's tone swerves from happy-go-lucky psalmic readings to more alarming verses. In typical Glover fashion, he dismissed close readings of his work in an interview at the Met Gala Monday night. 

"I just wanted to make a good song," Glover told E!. "Like something that people could play on Fourth of Julys." 

Directed by his frequent "Atlanta" collaborator Hiro Murai and choreographed by Sherrie Silver, the music video touches on gun violence, the precarious state of black bodies in the US, and how we've historically used entertainment to distract us from pervasive cultural and political problems. But the music video's iconoclastic images and many layers deserve close examination to fully parse. 

Here are 24 things you may have missed.  Twitter moments.

lest you think I'd forgotten about that other psychopathocratic trash - jes cuz Jeb is so lame...,

ian56 |  Booz Allen Hamilton is owned by the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group are a private equity fund that invests in lots of companies that make money out of the business of war - arms companies, private spy contractors etc. 

Significant board members, associates and "consultants" of the Carlyle Group include the Bush's and a who's who of ex US government war hawks for the last 40 years. 

Significant investors in the Carlyle group include the House of Saud and the Bin Laden Family. 

Saudi Arabia wants a very high oil price - it sells lots of oil.

Saudi Arabia's foreign policy is directed at increasing the price of oil. Mostly this is done by destabilizing and starting conflicts and wars in, other countries that have oil (or are major distribution routes).

This is done in two main ways:-

By funding, arming and recruiting Islamic Extremist terrorists to attack other countries

By bribing the American government to conduct policy that is in the interests of Saudi Arabia and not in the interests of America.

Having a high oil price is directly against the interests of America and it's main export market - Europe. Every $1 rise in the price of a barrel of oil makes everyone in America, Europe and over 99% of the rest of the world poorer (except for the major owners & CEO's of oil companies and oil assets).

Some of the wealth of evidence for the involvement of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States in funding, arming, recruiting and supporting Islamic terrorism:- 

If the NSA is actually fighting terrorism why haven't they stopped Saudi Arabia, Qatar & Kuwait funding Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS and Al-Nusra?
http://ian56.blogspot.com/2014/06/if-nsa-is-actually-fighting-terrorism.html

Saudi Royal Family and Saudi government involvement in 9/11
http://ian56.blogspot.com/2014/06/saudi-royal-family-and-saudi-government.html

It is also in the interests of the Carlyle Group, in order to boost their profits, that there is more war, conflict and Islamic terrorism.

Some of the details of the major players in Booz Allen and the Carlyle Group

Tawûsê Melek

What is the Peacock Angel?

wikipedia |  The Yazidi consider Tawûsê Melek an emanation of God and a benevolent angel who has redeemed himself from his fall and has become a demiurge who created the cosmos from the Cosmic egg. After he repented, he wept for 7,000 years, his tears filling seven jars, which then quenched the fires of hell.

Tawûsê Melek is sometimes transliterated Malak Ta'us, Malak Tawus, Malak Tawwus or Malik Taws. Melek was borrowed from the Arabic term "king" or "angel". Tawûs is uncontroversially translated "peacock"; in art and sculpture, Tawûsê Melek is depicted as peacock. However, peacocks are not native to the lands where Tawûsê Melek is worshipped. Among early Christians, the peacock represented immortality on account of the folk belief that its flesh does not decay after death, and this symbolism has passed into Yazidi beliefs.^[6] Consequently, peacock imagery adorns Yazidi shrines, gateways, graves, and houses of worship.

The Kitêba Cilwe "Book of Illumination", which claims to be the words of Tawûsê Melek, and which presumably represents Yazidi belief, states that he allocates responsibilities, blessings and misfortunes as he sees fit and that it is not for the race of Adam to question him. Sheikh Adî believed that the spirit of Tawûsê Melek is the same as his own, perhaps as a reincarnation. He is believed to have said:

I was present when Adam was living in Paradise, and also when Nemrud threw Abraham in fire. I was present when God said to me: 'You are the ruler and Lord on the Earth'. God, the compassionate, gave me seven earths and throne of the heaven.

Yazidi accounts of creation differ from that of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They believe that God first created Tawûsê Melek from his own illumination (Ronahî) and the other six archangels were created later. God ordered Tawûsê Melek not to bow to other beings. Then God created the other archangels and ordered them to bring him dust (Ax) from the Earth (Erd) and build the body of Adam. Then God gave life to Adam from his own breath and instructed all archangels to bow to Adam. The archangels obeyed except for Tawûsê Melek. In answer to God, Tawûsê Melek replied, "How can I submit to another being! I am from your illumination while Adam is made of dust." Then God praised him and made him the leader of all angels and his deputy on the Earth. (This likely furthers what some see as a connection to the Islamic Shaytan, as according to the Quran he too refused to bow to Adam at God's command, though in this case it is seen as being a sign of Shaytan's sinful pride.) Hence the Yazidis believe that Tawûsê Melek is the representative of God on the face of the Earth, and comes down to the Earth on the first Wednesday of Nisan (April). Yazidis hold that God created Tawûsê Melek on this day, and celebrate it as New Year's Day. Yazidis argue that the order to bow to Adam was only a test for Tawûsê Melek, since if God commands anything then it must happen. (Bibe, dibe). In other words, God could have made him submit to Adam, but gave Tawûsê Melek the choice as a test. They believe that their respect and praise for Tawûsê Melek is a way to acknowledge his majestic and sublime nature. This idea is called "Knowledge of the Sublime" 

(Zanista Ciwaniyê). Sheikh Adî has observed the story of Tawûsê Melek and believed in him.^[7]

Yazidis believe that good and evil both exist in the mind and spirit of human beings. It depends on the humans, themselves, as to which they choose. In this process, their devotion to Tawûsê Melek is essential, since it was he who was given the same choice between good and evil by God, and chose the good.

The Yazidi believe that the founder of their religion, Sheikh Adi Ibn Musafir, was an incarnation of Tawûsê Melek.

two different worlds we live in: lawfulness and perceived police misconduct

ssrn | What should we make of this? At least three points are important:

First, people’s ordinary intuitions about rightful police behavior do not comport with the law. That is, people do not seem to care very much at all about police adherence to constitutional rules when assessing whether the police should be punished. They care instead primarily about the procedural justice and fairness of the way the police act when dealing with people in the community. This could result from at least two conditions. The first condition is one in which people are aware both of legality and fairness factors, but consciously choose to credit fairness over legality. A second condition is one in which people choose fairness over legality because they are unaware of -- or perhaps more precisely -- untutored in legality. If this condition holds, then we would expect people’s assessments of legality and fairness to be coextensive.

To put this point another way, people rely on fairness to evaluate police conduct because they do not know the law. On this account procedural justice is a kind of “everyday lawyering.”62 As best we can tell, the second condition is a better descriptor of our data.63 People do not know the law and apparently judge police behavior with reference to their procedural justice judgments.

Second, that people “know” fairness and not the law means, we think, that it is extremely important to separate lawfulness from unlawfulness on the one hand, and fairness and unfairness on the other while specifying a relationship among them as we do in the model presented above. Perhaps the most important reason to do this is that police are creatures of law and are trained in it. Police are not everyday lawyers. They strive to conform their behavior to set of norms and scripts heavily influenced by formal law.

The bifurcation we see on the spectrum of evaluations that ordinary people make regarding police behavior represents a social psychological disjuncture in police-citizen engagement that is damaging to citizens, counterproductive for policing agencies and ultimately inconsistent with the police accountability project that is critical to so many cities today. Of course, one way to respond

to the fact that citizens are unaware of the law is to educate them about constitutional law in the hope that they may comport their internal assessment processes in ways that are much more consistent with articulated law. To be blunt, this is likely a fool’s errand. The resources involved would be enormous, and the project bumps up against the natural inclination that people have to choose evaluative methods that are consistent with and affirm their social identity.

Constitutional law, as it is currently composed, does not emphasize the importance of quality of police treatment, but rather places a premium on the police officer’s intention when she decides to exercise her discretion to engage someone. The values that the law protects are not those that ordinary folks, at least in this area, regularly look to when constructing individual or group identity as decades of social psychology make clear. Nothing about constitutional law prohibits a police officer from being rude, and very little of constitutional criminal procedure promotes the kinds of dignity concerns that people tend to care about.

Indeed, as our review of the constitutional imperative of suspicion which highlights much of the law is even at odds with concerns about human dignity.64 When the police deal with people in the community their legal framing encourages them to look at people as potentially engaged in “suspicious” activity. It is identifying signs of such activity that justifies police officer intervention into people’s life. Hence, when people deal with the police their experiences are tinged with mistrust and a demeaning tone. The police already suspect those they deal with are “up to no good” and they adopt the tone on inquisitors to gather data in support of these suspicions.

One possible reform strategy is to advocate change in the legal rules that shape police conduct – perhaps along the lines that Bill Stuntz has suggested.65 We worry that this approach is an exercise in futility. Thus, we may be better served by educating police officers about procedural justice. Police officers need to comport their behavior with constitutional rules, yes, but they also need to be encouraged to treat people with dignity and respect regardless of whether the rules require it.

Third, that the approach we have outlined likely leads to safer streets is only one of its benefits. As British legal scholar, Neil Walker, notes “the police are both minders and reminders of community – a producer of significant messages about the kind of place that community is or aspires to be.” Taking Walker seriously promotes an understanding of the policing enterprise that is different from is different from the usual conception that emphasizes solution of collective action problems, which in turn emphasizes police primarily as crime control agents. We do not doubt the positive benefits of policing agencies casting themselves as necessary utilities for the production of safe, functioning communities akin to well-lit streets, clean water, and cheap, widely available electricity. One must be careful in making the public utility analogy,

however. A consequential conception of a public good, which the utility analogy clearly is, conceives of production of the good as one that can be enjoyed by individuals and aggregated up, so to speak. Thus its benefits – and costs – can always be assessed in terms of efficiencies at the individual level, and it is possible to imagine the good’s production by some entity other than the state.

We think our account of the way in which people assess the rightfulness of policing behavior is more consistent with Waldron’s account of a public good which acknowledges that "no account of [its] worth to anyone can be given except by concentrating on what [it is] worth to everyone together." Truly good policing then, is enjoyed by all people in common whether or not they experience positive outcomes as individuals. Generation of it is “wholly, directly and reciprocally dependent upon its simultaneous generation for and enjoyment by certain others.”66

We can go further and say that our argument not only implies a demand for policing that is assertedly social as Waldron suggests, but constitutive, too, in the way that Ian Loader and Neil Walker claim. It is not enough for policing to simply solve collective action problems associated with the project of crime reduction. Policing also can and should play a role in the production of positive feelings of self-identity that helps to “construct and sustain our ‘wefeeling’—our very felt sense of common publicness.”67 Legitimacy, then, can be a key driver of a healthy and properly functioning democratic government. We need to do more work to fully justify this last potentially normative claim. No doubt many are made uncomfortable by the notion that police should be involved in this work. What we know, however, is that they are involved in it. The empirical distinctions we demonstrate between lawfulness assessments of police conduct on the one hand and fairness assessments on the other, powerfully suggest that people understand police treatment of citizens in the constitutive manner that Loader and Walker describe.

The focus that people place upon the procedural justice of police actions points first to the potentially negative consequences of an exclusive focus on lawfulness. If the police are not cognizant of and responsive to public concerns they are blind to the source of public feelings that police actions are inappropriate and should be sanctioned. Further, the police miss the opportunity to be involved in the broader effort to build people’s ties to their communities that build healthy and vibrant communities that are both more open to cooperation with the police and better able to generate the types of social and other forms of capital that can help communities to “build their way out of crime”.68

everything is a remix...,

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Everything is a Remix Part 3 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Everything is a Remix Part 4 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Fist tap Dale.

profgeo leads the class to the root cause analysis

SFGate | What was the real cause of the Great Recession? More importantly, in a country accustomed to robust rebounds from burst bubbles, why is our economy stuck in neutral?

In his latest book, The Third Industrial Revolution, economist and author Jeremy Rifkin argues that the crash of the US housing market was not the proximate cause of the Great Recession, but was instead an aftershock of crude oil hitting a price of $147 per barrel oil in July 2008 – 60 days prior to the crash of the financial markets.

Mr. Rifkin makes a compelling case that our economy reached the end of the second industrial revolution in the 1980’s, and has been largely sustained by debt and the consumption of savings ever since. He argues that the kind of growth witnessed after the first and second industrial revolutions will be impossible to achieve without a third energy-communications revolution – one that leverages Internet-esque smart grids to transition from a centralized “elite” energy paradigm to a highly granular, lateral model. He contends that, as was the case with the first two industrial revolutions, the third revolution will be the foundation of the next great wave of economic growth.

Our energy infrastructure may not be the only thing that requires a rethink. In his book, Mr. Rifkin takes on Adam Smith, challenging classical economic theory with the contention that it does not take thermodynamics into account. The Third Industrial Revolution presents economic theory that incorporates entropy and the relationship between commerce and the planet.

Mr. Rifkin is the principle architect of the European Union’s Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change. The Third Industrial Revolution was formally endorsed by the European Parliament in 2007 and is now being implemented by various agencies within the European Commission as well as in the 27 member-states. He has served as an advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, and Prime Minister Janez Janša of Slovenia, during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security.

Mr. Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of seventeen bestselling books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. He has been a senior lecturer at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania since 1994, where he instructs CEOs and senior management on transitioning their business operations into sustainable Third Industrial Revolution economies.

Todd: So if we can, can we start by framing the discussion with the cause of the Great Recession. And I understand that your contention is that the Wall Street crash was not the proximate cause of the recession but was actually an aftershock of the real economic earthquake, which was $147 barrel oi

Jeremy: Yes. I spend the whole first chapter on the book on it because I’m at real odds with my colleagues as to what’s going on here. I think what happened is that when oil hit $147 a barrel back in July of 2008, purchasing power plummeted all over the world and the economy totally shut down in July – completely shut down.

And the reason, of course, is that everything’s made out of fossil fuels or run by them – pesticides, construction materials, pharmaceutical products, synthetic fiber, power, transportation – everything.

So what happened is, in late 2007, crude oil started going over $75 a barrel. What we saw is all the prices started going up across the supply chain. And then at $120 a barrel you remember we had food riots in 22 countries because 40 percent of the human race is living on $2.00 a day or less. Wheat, rye, barley and rice were doubling and tripling. And you remember, the UNFAO put out a report saying “We have an alert. We’ve got a billion people who could be in big trouble here.”

So what happened is speculators came in to game the market around $100 a barrel. But the reason this is happening, this is peak globalization – at least in the business community. I chair a group of 120 global companies that are involved in this. We now know the outer limits of how far we can globalize this economy based on fossil fuel energies, the technologies that go with them, and the infrastructure. It’s about $150 a barrel, and it’ll shut down every time.

This is an end game. And the reason it’s happening is we’ve hit peak oil per capita, and now peak oil production – both. Peak oil per capita no one talks about much.

Global peak oil production per capita is not well known. It happened in 1979, it’s not controversial. BP did the original study, and it’s been confirmed by everybody else since. If we had distributed all the crude oil we had at that point to everyone alive in the planet, that’s the most each person could have. We’ve found more oil since then but population rose quicker.

So if you distributed all the crude oil we have now to 6.8 billion people, there’s enough to go around. But then add to this – we hit global peak oil production as well. That’s when half the crude oil was used up by the geological bell curve. When half your crude oil is used up, you can’t afford it. Prices aren’t affordable. And that’s been pretty controversial about global peak oil when it would hit. The optimists’ spot maybe mid-2020’s to 30s, the pessimists’ models show 2010 to 2020.

Well, the IEA dropped the bombshell last December. That’s the International Energy Agency, and they’re the authoritative body for the oil industry and the energy industry. They said “It looks like we now peaked in 2006 at 70 million barrels a day. And we’re going to plan for around 69 billion barrels of crude oil for the next 20 years, but it’ll cost $7 trillion to get the remaining oil out.

So what happened is this. When China and India made a bid to drag a third of the human race into the game in the last 10 years, at an 8, 10, 12 percent growth rate, the actual aggregate demand for oil has just shot through the roof – and then all the other prices went up.

So what I’m suggesting is every time we try to regrow the global economy at the same rate we were growing before July 2008, oil prices go up – all the other prices made out of crude oil go up – purchasing power goes down – we collapse.

That’s what’s happening right now today. The economy was dead flat in 2009, so oil was $30 a barrel. Nobody was using it. As soon as we started to try to restart the engine, to replenish it towards 2010, oil shot to $100 a barrel for crude. Brent crude. That’s how we measure – not Texas crude.

And now what’s happened is all the other prices are going up, and purchasing power is going down, and we’re headed toward a second collapse right now. Fist tap and double-dap to ProfGeo.

personal stories inform political action

Video - On the ground from Liberty Square

The Nation | As mangy tent settlements spring up across the nation, it’s clear that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are gaining an unwieldy momentum, and that no one particularly knows what they want. Critics have noted their lack of an agenda, then gone on to bemoan or excuse it. Nick Kristof and other liberal columnists have suggested a variety of platforms that the protests should adopt. In the meantime, Fox News is arguing that John Lennon look-a-likes who play pipe organs while dressed like zombies should not be taken seriously, and are using such antics to dismiss the protests altogether.

We can't help but think that pundits in search of Occupy Wall Street's political agenda are missing a fundamental component of the protest's ethos; like so many organic populist movements, the Occupyers appear to be emotionally, rather than politically, driven. Many of the protesters we interviewed were motivated by their personal experiences in the economic downturn, and a vague but unshakeable sense that their experiences were the result of much larger structural problems.

Our second interview was with Gaia, a young teacher in Brooklyn who's been personally effected by systemic socioeconomic problems. For more personal stories on how how young people have been effected by the economy, we recommend you take a look at We are the 99 percent.

You can watch our first video from Liberty Square here.

the root of the problem

The Scientist | New research suggests that the flow of carbon through plants to underground ecosystems may be crucial to how the environment responds to climate change. Human beings have inexorably altered the world’s ecosystems. We’ve plowed and seeded more than 40 percent of the Earth’s land surfaces, introduced alien species into new territories, poured carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, disrupted natural climate cycles, and polluted aquatic ecosystems with excessive nitrogen and other contaminants.

These far-reaching changes have spurred scores of researchers to examine the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and to devise management strategies that might lessen the damage. Scientists have scoured ecosystems from the ocean’s depths to the highest mountain peaks searching for signals of global change. But only recently has this attention extended under the Earth’s surface to the soil, and the linkages between plants and belowground microbial and animal communities. This realm of research is of paramount importance because the impact of human-induced disturbances on the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems is often indirect: they tend to operate via changes aboveground that cascade belowground to the hugely complex and diverse, soil-bound biological community, driving biogeochemical processes and feeding back to the whole Earth-system.

And these studies may be overturning a commonly held view of how plants help mitigate the impacts of global warming. Indeed, it is widely thought that vegetation, especially trees, will respond to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by growing more vigorously, and thus help to moderate climate change by locking up more carbon in their leaves, branches, and trunks. But research into the intricate dynamics occurring just below the soil surface, where carbon, nitrogen, and other elements flow through plant roots into the soil and react with the microbial and animal communities living there—including bacteria, fungi and a host of fauna—is complicating this simplistic view. In fact, some work suggests that as plant growth increases because of elevated CO2, more carbon not only flows into the plants themselves, but also exits their roots to impact the growth and activity of soil microbes. This causes a net increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases escaping from the soil and entering the atmosphere, thus adding to anthropogenic levels.

These insights indicate that a combined plant-microbial-soil approach can lead to a more holistic understanding of the consequences of global change—including climate change—for the health and functioning of both terrestrial ecosystems and the whole Earth-system. Most importantly, the role that plant-microbial-soil interactions, and specifically carbon transfer from roots to soil, play in governing climate change and its impact on ecosystem carbon cycling is coming to light.

social class as culture

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Jordan Carlos - Preppy Black Guy
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ScienceDaily | Social class is more than just how much money you have. It's also the clothes you wear, the music you like, the school you go to -- and has a strong influence on how you interact with others, according to the authors of a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People from lower classes have fundamentally different ways of thinking about the world than people in upper classes -- a fact that should figure into debates on public policy, according to the authors.

"Americans, although this is shifting a bit, kind of think class is irrelevant," says Dacher Keltner of the University of California-Berkeley, who cowrote the article with Michael W. Kraus of UC-San Francisco and Paul K. Piff of UC-Berkeley. "I think our studies are saying the opposite: This is a profound part of who we are."

People who come from a lower-class background have to depend more on other people. "If you don't have resources and education, you really adapt to the environment, which is more threatening, by turning to other people," Keltner says. "People who grow up in lower-class neighborhoods, as I did, will say,' There's always someone there who will take you somewhere, or watch your kid. You've just got to lean on people.'"

Wealthier people don't have to rely on each other as much. This causes differences that show up in psychological studies. People from lower-class backgrounds are better at reading other people's emotions. They're more likely to act altruistically. "They give more and help more. If someone's in need, they'll respond," Keltner says. When poor people see someone else suffering, they have a physiological response that is missing in people with more resources. "What I think is really interesting about that is, it kind of shows there's all this strength to the lower class identity: greater empathy, more altruism, and finer attunement to other people," he says. Of course, there are also costs to being lower-class. Health studies have found that lower-class people have more anxiety and depression and are less physically healthy.

Upper-class people are different, Keltner says. "What wealth and education and prestige and a higher station in life gives you is the freedom to focus on the self." In psychology experiments, wealthier people don't read other people's emotions as well. They hoard resources and are less generous than they could be.

One implication of this, Keltner says, is that's unreasonable to structure a society on the hope that rich people will help those less fortunate. "One clear policy implication is, the idea of nobless oblige or trickle-down economics, certain versions of it, is bull," Keltner says. "Our data say you cannot rely on the wealthy to give back. The 'thousand points of light' -- this rise of compassion in the wealthy to fix all the problems of society -- is improbable, psychologically."

the funeral will not be televised...,

Video - Gil Scott Heron's most memorable poem.

vine of the soul

Video - Vine of the Soul: Encounters with Ayahuasca: A Documentary

blacks and egyptians

The Root | The people of Egypt are looking to African Americans for solidarity in their struggle, just as we once looked to them in our own efforts to gain freedom and civil rights. When will we speak up for them?

When protesters in Egypt called for a "Million Man March" to mark the one-week anniversary of their Jan. 25 uprising against Hosni Mubarak's 30-year autocratic rule, they did what many African-American public figures have yet to do: draw on the history and example of the black freedom movement to express support for the ongoing global struggle for democracy. With some exceptions (Cornel West being the most notable), members of the black intelligentsia have yet to provide significant commentary on the democratic aspirations being expressed so strongly and courageously in recent months in Arab countries in Africa and Asia. But even if some of us in America remain slow to take up the mantle of our own historical legacy, people around the world are taking note (just as Black History Month commences, no less).

Freedom fighters in Egypt wasted no time. They seized on the example of the 1995 Washington, D.C., Million Man March, organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, to galvanize their own compatriots in drawing attention to their plight and generating momentum for their struggle. The Egyptians' adoption of the Million Man March is not the first time the black freedom movement or its strategies have inspired struggles abroad; nor has this historically been a one-way exchange -- especially in the case of Egypt.

Long before Egypt was a partner of the U.S. government in its foreign policy objectives in the Middle East, Egypt was a partner with black America. Egypt has figured in the black religious imagination for centuries, and more recently in the work of African-American historians and political activists throughout the 20th century.

The Old Testament story of Hebrew slaves' exodus from the oppression of a wicked pharaoh provided Africans enslaved in America with a coded language in Scripture and song. They used it to talk about their own yearnings for freedom from their white slave masters. Later, Egypt would become the source of pride for African Americans as Afrocentrist scholars claimed a kinship with the African identity of Egypt and its contributions to Western civilization.

Even President Barack Obama underscored this kinship when visiting the pyramids of Egypt after his 2009 Cairo speech. Looking upon some of the hieroglyphics, he remarked about one drawing of a man with prominent ears: "That looks like me!"

Midcentury, as Egypt was throwing off the remnants of British colonialism, it continued to inspire political activists. In a speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered in Montgomery, Ala. (pdf), to mark the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956, he included the "nationalistic longings of Egypt" as an example of a new age where "[a]s a result of their protest more than one billion three hundred million … of the colored peoples of the world are free today. They have their own governments, their own economic system, and their own educational system."

meetings with remarkable men

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 1 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 2 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 3 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 4 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 5 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 6 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 7 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 8 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 9 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 10 of 11)

Video - Meetings With Remarkable Men (Part 11 of 11)

mass mirroring - isn't it kewl...,

wikileaks.ch | In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, we need your help.

if you have a unix-based server which is hosting a website on the Internet and you want to give wikileaks some of your hosting resources, you can help!

Please follow the following instructions:

* Setup an account where we can upload files using RSYNC+SSH (preferred) or FTP
* Put our SSH key in this server or create an FTP account
* Create a virtual host in your web server, which, for example, can be wikileaks.yourdomain.com
* send the IP address of your server to us, and the path where we should upload the content. (just fill the form below)

We will take care of all the rest: Sending pages to your server, updating them each time data is released, maintaining a list of such mirrors. If your server is down or if the account don't work anymore, we will automatically remove your server from the list.

Our content is only html/css/javascript/png static files, so we don't require much resource to host it.

The complete website should not take more than a couple of GB at the moment (with base website and cablegate data)

In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.

If you want to add your mirror to the list, see our Mass Mirroring Wikileaks page
Mirror List

Wikileaks is currently mirrored on 1334 sites (updated 2010-12-08 22:43 GMT)

zenger farm

Video - Class on slaughtering a chicken at Zenger Farm.

CookingUpAStory | It is a treasure hidden in plain sight. You could easily miss it, speeding along the four-lane trajectory that is Foster Road. At this outskirt of Portland the view is mostly auto parts stores, wrecking yards, industrial parks; only patches of feral land and stands of mature Douglas Firs hint at an earlier, much more rural time. Not much of the farm is visible from behind the wheel of a car, just a glimpse of the red, refurbished farm house and bit of garden. But sloping down behind is a six-acre organic farm (one of the only working farms in the city limits), flanked by ten acres of wetland that is home to a richly-diverse ecosystem.

When the city of Portland purchased Zenger farm in 1994, it was in alignment with the dream and intention of Ulrich Zenger Jr. that the land be preserved as a farm and protected from the urban development that was rapidly advancing. In 1999 a fifty-year lease was granted to Friends of Zenger Farm, securing its future as a model of land stewardship and sustainable urban agriculture accessible to the public.

This is a unique and invaluable opportunity, especially for Portland’s kids, who visit the farm and get real lessons in where fresh food comes from, and how good it can taste. During the school year, yellow busses regularly pull into the parking lot at the farm; the air is full of the calls and shouts of discovery, of kids exploring a world without concrete beneath their feet. They visit and feed the chickens, maybe get to taste the fresh, raw honey from the farm’s hives. They weed and tend and harvest vegetables. This is not a curriculum-simulation of a farm: the work they’re doing is real, and they understand the difference. For many, this is the first time they have seen vegetables somewhere other than a fluorescently-lit grocery store. There is great pride and ownership in the harvesting of vegetables they helped grow.

In 2009, a record-breaking 4500 children visited the farm. The fees are nominal, but no one is turned away for lack of funds. Adults are encouraged to sign up to do volunteer work on the farm, and this has helped supply meaningful nutritional support to low-income residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, one which has long been underserved in terms of ready access to community gardens, farmers markets and full-service grocery stores.

In 2010, a seven-acre property adjacent to the farm was acquired, and promises exciting possibilities for the future of Zenger Farm. “This will allow us to launch our Neighborhood Food Innovation Program,” says Executive Director Jill Kuehler. Fist tap Dale.

how hitler won over germans

Bloomberg | In their neatest handwriting, hundreds of children wrote to Adolf Hitler congratulating him on his 43rd birthday in 1932. One letter is on Mickey Mouse writing paper; others enclose photos of their diminutive authors posing in “Heil Hitler” salutes or waving swastikas.

“I hope that you will save Germany in the election on April 24!” writes 12-year-old Elga. “Here in Liebenburg, 90 percent of the people are Nazis and voted for you!”

More than 65 years after Hitler’s death and the collapse of the Third Reich, the German Historical Museum is seeking answers to a question that each generation asks anew: How did Germany, known as a nation of poets and thinkers, fall under Hitler’s spell and let him commit some of the worst crimes in history?

The new exhibition, called “Hitler and the Germans, Nation and Crime,” is the first in Berlin to focus exclusively on the dictator and his influence over the people. That is not to say that Hitler is still a taboo topic in Germany, as some of the international coverage of the exhibition would have it.

Far from it. Hitler sells. Television news channels such as N-TV and N-24 broadcast Hitler documentaries back-to-back in non-peak hours. Der Spiegel news magazine has put him on its cover no fewer than 40 times since 1947. The first academic biography of Eva Braun, published this year, became a bestseller. The fascination extends beyond Germany: the English- language film rights to the book have already been snapped up. Fist tap Nana.

alternative realities...,

Video - Commercial from Confederate States of America.

FGF | Through no fault of their own, most Americans study American history in school. This is why they have so many misconceptions about American history.

One of these misconceptions is that the Civil War was a noble struggle against slavery and that Abraham Lincoln finally abolished slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation.

The United States and civilized warfare
If you accept this mythology, you have to wonder why some previous president didn’t just abolish slavery with a stroke of the presidential pen. In fact, Lincoln knew he had no such power; he merely claimed the power, as commander in chief of the armed forces, to strip rebels of their property. So he announced that slaves in the rebellious states were to be released.

Some observers gibed that Lincoln had freed all the slaves over whom he had no authority, while doing nothing for those over whom he did have authority. But this is to misunderstand what Lincoln thought he had authority to do, since he claimed authority over the “rebel” states. In his view, there had been no legal secession from the Union, and the so-called Confederate States were still subject to the United States.

Europe was shocked by Lincoln’s brutal treatment of the South, which violated traditional rules of civilized warfare, according to which civilians and their property were to be spared any molestation. But in Lincoln’s view, citizens of the Confederate States who were loyal to the Confederacy weren’t entitled to any such exemption. They were all “rebels” and “traitors” to the United States and could be justly treated as criminals.

Idealizers of Lincoln have blamed the brutality of the war on generals like William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan, who devastated civilian areas, destroying crops and property. But they were merely executing Lincoln’s policy, with his full approval. Responsibility for Sherman’s March to the Sea and Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley campaign rested with Lincoln.

By Lincoln’s Manichaean logic, it could have been much worse. Since most of the people of the South were guilty of the crimes of rebellion and treason, millions of them could have been executed after the war. But that would have been too much even for Lincoln.

The South, much more attuned to European culture than the North, had assumed that Lincoln would be inhibited by the rules of civilized warfare. They underestimated the factor and the fanatical logic of Northern ideology, according to which the holy end of “preserving the Union” justified nearly any means of subduing “rebels.”

When Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, many war-crazed Northerners were furious that Lee wasn’t arrested, tried, and executed as a traitor. But Grant, to his credit, still adhered in part to the old code of honor. He had given his word to Lee, whom he deeply respected, and he kept it. The Southern officers and soldiers were allowed to go home in peace.