From the BBC:
Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.
Continue reading about Ancient site reveals signs of mass cannibalism
From the Venus Project:
The Venus Project presents a bold, direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture. There are many people today who are concerned with the serious problems that face our modern society: unemployment, violent crime, technological unemployment, over-population and the destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems. As you will see, The Venus Project is dedicated to confronting all of these problems by actively engaging in the research, development, and application of workable solutions. Through the use of innovative approaches to social awareness, educational incentives, and the consistent application of the best that science and technology can offer directly to the social system, The Venus Project offers a comprehensive plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology, and nature will be able to coexist in a long-term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium.
Designing the Future by Jacque Fresco of the Venus Project [PDF]
Venus Project FAQ
Continue reading about The start of civilization: redefining our culture, designing the future
From Mary Annette Pember at The Progressive:
This Thanksgiving, as an Ojibwe woman, I will grieve for what Europeans did to native peoples here. But I will also give thanks for life.
I will grieve because Europeans killed most of us quickly and directly at first and later resorted to more cunning means of forced assimilation, such as boarding schools and discriminatory land allotment. It is estimated that there were between 7 million and 10 million indigenous individuals inhabiting what is now America at the beginning of European contact in the early 15th century. By 1900, there were only about 230,000 of us left.
Some might wonder why a Native-American woman would give thanks on a holiday that highlights the beginning of the end for many tribes. I give thanks because that’s what we Ojibwe do. We express gratitude for the great gift of life given to us by the creator.
Traditional Ojibwe religion is deeply rooted in the understanding that life, ever moving, ever changing, is a tremendous gift. This understanding dates way back before the days when the Wampanoag Indians sat down with the Pilgrims for that now famous meal.
We also understand that there is no escaping life’s relentless nature. We are leaves on a tree, in various states of growth. At some time, we will turn color, fall from the tree, swirl colorfully around some kid’s feet and join the soil once again.
Continue reading about “As a Native-American, I’ll have mixed feelings about Thanksgiving”
From Lamar Hankins at Freethought San Marcos:
In America, most of us have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, though there are still plenty of people without enough food and shelter, especially since the great recession hit just over a year ago. Actually, the Great Recession has been going on much longer for those of us on Main Street and Side Street and Back Street. It was only when Wall Street started hurting that the politicians got concerned enough to respond to their needs. The needs of Main Street, Side Street, and Back Street have yet to be met, except for getting rid of a few clunkers for cash to stimulate moribund automobile and truck sales.
Congress has virtually ignored the high rate of unemployment, which exceeds 15%, if those job-seekers who have become discouraged from ever finding a job are included in the official unemployment figures. If the Works Progress Administration worked during the Great Depression, why wouldn’t it work during this Great Recession?
[...]
In the rest of the world, malnutrition, chronic hunger, famine, and death are greater concerns than food insecurity. In the world, ten children die of hunger every minute–one every six seconds–according to the United Nations World Food Programme, which adds that, “For the first time in humanity, over 1 billion people are chronically hungry.”
And America goes merrily along for over eight years now spending about $265 million per day in Afghanistan, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Associated Press figures reveal that the War in Iraq has cost American taxpayers about $400 million per day for the last six years. All of this is happening while about one-seventh of the world population is hungry or starving to death.
The United Nations has estimated the cost of ending world hunger at about $195 billion a year, less than $535 million per day–about $130 million less per day than the cost of prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These figures do not include the secondary costs of the wars for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, nor do they account for the money needed to take care of the physically and mentally wounded veterans and their families in the US and among our allies.
[...]
As most Americans sit down with friends and loved ones for Thanksgiving dinner this week, thanking god for our good fortune seems hollow, self-centered, and crass, an exercise in arrogant pride. A Thanksgiving Blessing more in keeping with our reality might read like the following:
A Universal Blessing for America’s Thanksgiving Dinners
For the blessings of the earth that gladden our lives, we give thanks.
Blessings are not shared equally. May we find within ourselves hearts of generosity and sharing.
Continue reading about Reflections on Thanksgiving in America 2009
From the National Journal:
Cyber-defenders know what to prepare themselves for because the United States has used the kinds of weapons that now target the Pentagon, federal agencies, and American corporations. They are designed to steal information, disrupt communications, and commandeer computer systems. The U.S. is forming a cyberwar plan based largely on the experience of intelligence agencies and military operations. It is still in nascent stages, but it is likely to support the conduct of conventional war for generations to come. Some believe it may even become the dominant force.
Senior military leaders didn’t come of age in a digital world, and they’ve been skeptical of computerized attacks. Mostly younger officers, who received their early combat education through video games and Dungeons & Dragons, wage these battles. To them, digital weapons are as familiar and useful as rifles and grenades. [...]
Today, cyber-warriors use the global telecommunications network to commandeer an adversary’s phones or shut down its Web servers. This activity is a natural evolution of the information war doctrine.
[...]
President Obama confirmed that cyber-warriors have aimed at American networks. “We know that cyber-intruders have probed our electrical grid,” he said at the White House in May, when he unveiled the next stage of the national cyber-security strategy. The president also confirmed, for the first time, that the weapons of cyberwar had claimed victims. “In other countries, cyberattacks have plunged entire cities into darkness.”
[...]
Military officers describe cyberspace as the fifth domain of war, after land, sea, air, and space. But cyberspace is unique in one important respect — it’s the only battlefield created by humans.
[..]
In a 2008 article in Armed Forces Journal, Col. Charles Williamson III, a legal adviser for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency, proposed building a military “botnet,” an army of centrally controlled computers to launch coordinated attacks on other machines. Williamson echoed a widely held concern among military officials that other nations are building up their cyber-forces more quickly. “America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere,” he wrote.
[...]
Presumably, China has no interest in crippling Wall Street, because it owns much of it.
[source: National Journal]
From the NYT:
There is water on the Moon, scientists stated unequivocally on Friday, and considerable amounts of it.
An Indian space mission claims to have found water on the moon, raising hopes that a manned base could be established there within the next two decades.
It has been widely believed that the moon was dry, but data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission allegedly found clear evidence of water there, apparently concentrated at the poles and possibly formed by the solar wind.
What’s more, water appears to still be forming, advancing the possibility that human life could be sustained there. Scientists hope that astronauts could one day not only drink the water but extract oxygen from it to breathe and hydrogen to use as fuel.
From the NYT:
About one-third of all adult homeless men are veterans, and an average night finds an estimated 131,000 of them from five decades bedding down on streets and in charity sanctuaries. About 3 in 100 of them are back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem of homelessness for Vietnam veterans is, shamefully, well known. But the men and women in this growing cohort took just 18 months to find rock bottom, compared with the five years-plus of the previous generation’s veterans.
Hmmmm.
From the Guardian (UK):
It is very hard for the average person in the street to come to a sensible conclusion on peak oil. It’s a subject that prompts a passionate polarisation of views. The peak oilists sometimes sound like those extraordinary Christians with sandwich boards proclaiming that the end of the world is nigh. In contrast, the the international economic establishment – including the International Energy Agency (IEA) – has one very clear purpose in mind at all times: don’t panic. Their mission seems to be focused on keeping jittery markets calm.
Faced with these options the majority of people shrug their shoulders in confusion and ignore the trickle of whistleblowers, industry insiders and careful analysts who have been warning of the imminent decline in oil for over a decade now.
Continue reading about The Guardian’s reality check: world running out of oil
Now that the hysteria has propagated from Western interpretations and distortions of the Mayan calendar, NASA has begun to debunk the Y2K12 madness.
Initial theories set the disaster for May 2003, but when nothing happened the date was moved forward to the winter solstice in 2012 to coincide with the end of a cycle of the ancient Mayan calendar.
But NASA insisted the Mayan calendar in fact does not end on December 21, 2012, as another period begins immediately afterward. And it said there are no planetary alignments on the horizon for the next few decades.
And even if the planets were to line up as some have forecast, the effect on our planet would be “negligible,” NASA said.
Among the other theories NASA has set out to debunk are that geomagnetic storms, a pole reversal or unsteadiness in the Earth’s crustal plates might befall the planet.
See also: Mayan Calendar and the End of the World?
As someone addicted to sci-fi, apocalyptic disaster flicks, and amazing special effects, I can’t wait to see the ‘2012′ film this Friday.
Continue reading about NASA crusades to debunk 2012 apocalypse myth
From The Age (Australia):
It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan’s space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves.
The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades.
With few energy resources of its own and heavily reliant on oil imports, Japan has long been a leader in solar and other renewable energies and this year set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.
But Japan’s boldest plan to date is the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometres (square miles) in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
“Since solar power is a clean and inexhaustible energy source, we believe that this system will be able to help solve the problems of energy shortage and global warming,” researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of the project participants, wrote in a report.
“The sun’s rays abound in space.”
Read the rest of this excellent article here.
Continue reading about Japan eyes solar station in space as new energy source
Here is the round up of today’s news on H.R.3962 – Affordable Health Care for America Act, which the House passed last night in a 220-215 vote (with only 1 Republican voting – Joseph Cao – R-La., calling it a “decision of conscience“). The bill contains a public option, however there is some debate over how “robust” the public option will be in practical terms (i.e., who will be eligible for the public option).
Democrats say the House measure — paid for through new fees and taxes, along with cuts in Medicare — would extend coverage to 36 million people now without insurance while creating a government health insurance program. It would end insurance company practices like not covering pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they become ill. [Source: Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House]
The passage of the bill came at the expense of reproductive rights, with restrictions on abortion “barring any insurance plan that is purchased with government subsidies from covering abortions” by a vote of 290-194 (see NYT: Abortion Was Heart of Wrangling; see also Reproductive Rights Prof Blog). Follow the links below to see how members of the House voted on the bill and the controversial Stupak/abortion restrictions amendment. Next up: passage of the bill in the Senate (the chamber of congress that has the greatest and most special kind of prima donnas and attention whores (read: Jackass Lieberman) who will undoubtedly find a number of ways to play politics with human rights, i.e., since health care is a human right). The culmination of this epic melodrama/circus show is expected to happen before the end of the year when President Obama hopes to sign the bill into law. This is so fun that I can hardly wait until we get to immigration reform.
In other news, the U6 has unemployment figures at 17.5%, as mentioned here last month.
Affordable Healthcare for America Act Headlines
Roll Call on Affordable Health Care for America Act
Roll Call on Stupak/Abortion Restrictions Amendment
Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House
Abortion Was at Heart of Wrangling
Gay Benefits in Health Bill (editorial comment: this NYT headline is so dumb — I didn’t know the “benefits” had a sexuality)
Available on Google Videos:
From the Economist:
THERE is a lot of water on Earth, but more than 97% of it is salty and over half of the remainder is frozen at the poles or in glaciers. Meanwhile, around a fifth of the world’s population suffers from a shortage of drinking water and that fraction is expected to grow. One answer is desalination—but it is an expensive answer because it requires a lot of energy. Now, though, a pair of Canadian engineers have come up with an ingenious way of using the heat of the sun to drive the process. Such heat, in many places that have a shortage of fresh water, is one thing that is in abundant supply.
Read the rest of the article here.
Continue reading about Cheaper desalination, fresh drinking water for the poor
From Science Daily:
A new report appearing in The Journal of Leukocyte Biology argues that human missions to Mars, as well as all other long-term space flights might be compromised by microbial hitchhikers, such as bacteria. That’s because long-term space travel packs a one-two punch to astronauts: first it appears to weaken their immune systems; and second, it increases the virulence and growth of microbes.
Donna Smith from commondreams.org writes:
Why does H1N1 call for a Presidential designation as a national emergency while the preventable deaths of 45,000 Americans every year (122 every day) is not?
Swine flu leads the news. You can die from swine flu, or should we say H1N1, even if you have no underlying health conditions. Young people have died, and pregnant women are at risk. People are lining up to be vaccinated. Health professionals are at risk due to poor preparations at some health facilities. As many as 1,000 deaths have occurred due to this flu outbreak. It’s scary out there.
But the swine flu is no match for the killing going on at the hands of the for-profit healthcare system in these United States. We bury kids, pregnant moms, babies, teens, young fathers, mid-lifers and older folks too without even batting an eye in the chambers of power in this nation.
Read the rest of this piece here.
Continue reading about Why Isn’t 122 Dead Americans Every Day a National Health Emergency?
International News agencies have been following the aftermath of the brutal killings in Conakry, and Secretary of State Clinton has spoken out strongly against the violence.
Here is the background on the events of Sept 28th, in a stadium in Conakry, Guinea.
Read the rest of this information-rich piece here.
Continue reading about Women gang raped by soldiers are speaking out
Being a woman is NOT a pre-existing condition.
From Robin at the National Women’s Law Center:
Written by Judy Waxman, Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights,
National Women’s Law CenterI don’t deserve health care that meets my needs.
I shouldn’t demand fairness in my health care coverage.
I can’t do anything about it anyway.That’s what the health insurance profiteers want you to think.
They aren’t thinking about the mother who is struggling to find insurance because she had a Caesarean section. Not the woman who survived domestic violence and now must face rejection by an insurance company for having a so-called “pre-existing condition.” Not the woman who pays more than a man for the same health coverage, even when maternity care isn’t covered.
Being a woman is NOT a pre-existing condition.
Being a woman is NOT a pre-existing condition.
Continue reading about A woman is not a pre-existing condition
From nojojojo over at Angry Black Woman:
“…25 million Americans are underinsured and I know full well I’m not the only brown one of those. Consider the number of us who are disproportionately affected by poverty, and compare that against the fact that health insurance premiums keep rising by as much as 150% per decade while wages remain essentially flat (note: PDF). Consider how little media attention, medical research, and government funding is accorded to health issues that primarily or disproportionately affect people of color, like sickle cell anemia. Consider also how the intersection of race with gender or other factors, and the lingering effects of colonialism, cause literal epidemics of poor health care, addiction and/or violence in some PoC communities, like ongoing rape and involuntary sterilization among American Indian women. (See also unusualmusic’s insightful linkspams on women in prison, intersexed women of color, and more.)
This is killing us. It is killing us. The current health care system of the US kills people across the board, yes. But it’s killing more of us. And it’s leaving a greater proportion of us in abject poverty or lifelong trauma if we survive.
So we, especially, need to fight back.”
From the Chicago Tribune:
Like many recent college grads, Steven Lee finds himself unemployed in one of the roughest job markets in decades and saddled with a big pile of debt. He owes about $84,000 in student loans for undergrad and grad-school costs.
But what Lee’s angry about isn’t the slings and arrows of an outrageous economy, and it isn’t the idea that he owes a ton of money for all the learning he’s received. It’s the interest rates on his government-backed student loans, which range from 6.8 percent to 8.5 percent.
“The rate for a 30-year mortgage is around 5 percent,” Lee said. “Why should anyone have to pay 8.5 percent?”
Well, because a deal’s a deal, and that’s the rate Lee accepted when he received his loan.
“I disagree,” he replied. “The government has bailed out homeowners. It’s bailed out big businesses. Why can’t it also help students?”
Vita Brevis at DailyKos writes:
Being half of an interracial couple, news items related to this subject tend to catch my eye. I had to do a double take on this one as well as check my calendar to make sure that some rip in the time space continuum hadn’t taken place and we weren’t somehow whisked back to June 11, 1967.
Why that date? For those who may not be aware (although I know a good many on this site are) that was the day before the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Loving v Virginia, striking down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws and also overturning Pace v Alabama and ultimately ending restrictions on interracial marriage in the United States. Had it not been for the Lovings, I wonder how much longer it would have taken for laws to be struck down that could have made my own marriage illegal in some states.
From Guy Adams of the Independent (UK):
[caption id="attachment_231" align="alignright" width="300" caption="FIONA WATSON/SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL Ururu, front left, with the last members of the Akuntsu, in a picture taken before she died this month. Most of the tribe was massacred by loggers in about 1990"]
[/caption]The last surviving members of an ancient Amazonian tribe are a tragic testament to greed and genocide
They are the last survivors: all that’s left of a once-vibrant civilisation which created its own religion and language, and gave special names to everything from the creatures of the rainforest to the stars of the night sky.
Just five people represent the entire remaining population of the Akuntsu, an ancient Amazonian tribe which a generation ago boasted several hundred members, but has been destroyed by a tragic mixture of hostility and neglect.
The indigenous community, which spent thousands of years in uncontacted seclusion, recently took an unwelcome step closer to extinction, with the death of its sixth last member, an elderly woman called Ururú.
Please read this excellent article in its entirety here.
Continue reading about Decline of Amazonian tribe; dwindles to just 5 members
From Queer Kids of Queer Parents Against Gay Marriage:
It’s hard for us to believe what we’re hearing these days. Thousands are losing their homes, and gays want a day named after Harvey Milk. The U.S. military is continuing its path of destruction, and gays want to be allowed to fight. Cops are still killing unarmed black men and bashing queers, and gays want more policing. More and more Americans are suffering and dying because they can’t get decent health care, and gays want weddings. What happened to us? Where have our communities gone? Did gays really sell out that easily?
As young queer people raised in queer families and communities, we reject the liberal gay agenda that gives top priority to the fight for marriage equality. The queer families and communities we are proud to have been raised in are nothing like the ones transformed by marriage equality. This agenda fractures our communities, pits us against natural allies, supports unequal power structures, obscures urgent queer concerns, abandons struggle for mutual sustainability inside queer communities and disregards our awesomely fabulous queer history.
