Thursday, May 7, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/appeals-court-nsa-phone-surveillance-excessive/

Appeals Court: NSA phone surveillance excessive
CBS/AP 
May 7, 2015

Video – John Oliver interviews Edward Snowden in Russia

NEW YORK – A federal appeals court in New York has ruled that the bulk collection of Americans' phone records by the government exceeds what Congress has allowed.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued its decision Thursday.

In it, a three-judge panel said the case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union illustrated the complexity of balancing privacy interests with the nation's security.

"The text of (Section 215) cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it, and ... does not authorize the telephone metadata program," the court wrote, according to the Wall Street Journal. It did not weigh in on whether the program infringes on Americans' privacy rights, because the judges found the government's expansive data collection was simply not authorized by the law.

A lower court judge had thrown out the case. The appeals court said the lower court had erred in ruling that the phone records collection program was legal.

However, the 2nd Circuit declined to block the program, saying it is now up to Congress to decide whether and under what conditions it should continue.

It said a debate in Congress could profoundly alter the legal landscape.

Secret NSA documents were leaked to journalists in 2013 by contractor Edward Snowden, revealing that the agency was collecting phone records and digital communications of millions of citizens not suspected of crimes and prompting congressional reform.

Jesselyn Radack, an attorney who has represented Snowden, tweeted Wednesday that the ruling "demolishes Gov't argument that Congressional reauthorization of the Patriot Act means it is on board with bulk surveillance."

Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who published several of Snowden's biggest scoops,tweeted, "This decision is a vehement rejection of the Obama Admin's attempt to interpret Patriot Act for mass surveillance." He later noted that all three judges who ruled the program exceeds its authority "were appointed to the court by Democratic Presidents (1 by Clinton, 2 by Obama)."




“A federal appeals court in New York has ruled that the bulk collection of Americans' phone records by the government exceeds what Congress has allowed. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued its decision Thursday. In it, a three-judge panel said the case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union illustrated the complexity of balancing privacy interests with the nation's security. …. It did not weigh in on whether the program infringes on Americans' privacy rights, because the judges found the government's expansive data collection was simply not authorized by the law. A lower court judge had thrown out the case. The appeals court said the lower court had erred in ruling that the phone records collection program was legal. …. Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who published several of Snowden's biggest scoops,tweeted, "This decision is a vehement rejection of the Obama Admin's attempt to interpret Patriot Act for mass surveillance." He later noted that all three judges who ruled the program exceeds its authority "were appointed to the court by Democratic Presidents (1 by Clinton, 2 by Obama)."

“However, the 2nd Circuit declined to block the program, saying it is now up to Congress to decide whether and under what conditions it should continue. It said a debate in Congress could profoundly alter the legal landscape.” This is good news for our privacy rights and possibly the right to free speech and association, however the court didn't actually put a stop to the matter. The Patriot Act may now be amended by lawmakers, the article says. I hope to see more in the news about it soon.

What I want to see is a presidential move to pardon Snowden and allow him to come home without ending up in prison. He has always impressed me as an honest and courageous citizen for whom blowing the whistle was the only thing to do. Some feel that he shouldn't have gone to the press with it, but I think if all of our citizens had not become aware of the matter, nothing would have ever been done, and if there ever was a movement made for police state actions such as the taking of private citizens as prisoners, this NSA plan would be the basis for it. Ever since the USA Patriot Act was enacted under Bush, we have had problems relating to it.

Another thing that spooks me is the more recent use of technology to track license plates of cars on the roadways. Why do they want to know where I'm going to buy my groceries or to visit my sister? It is another case of massive data collection which, unless a specific criminal suspect is being sought, in which case there should be probable cause as to his guilt or illegal activities, this surveillance also should not be allowed. I wonder what other democratic nations are doing in such activities? One of these Wikipedia articles said that both the UK and Russia do the same thing.

As for this to be called “the Obama Administration's” surveillance, see the following. The NSA warrantless surveillance program was begun under George W Bush in 2001. It was, however, continued under Obama, still has not actually been stopped, and I think the tracking of license plates is new. I have no doubt that pressure from the NSA, DOD and others government bodies is that real cause of Obama's failure to end surveillance yet. He has promised, but nothing has happened. I can only hope that these data files have actually helped our government to track down jihadists and other serious criminals who were active threats to the people of the US.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_%282001%E2%80%9307%29

NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–07)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The NSA warrantless surveillance controversy ("warrantless wiretapping") concerns surveillance of persons within the United States during the collection of allegedly foreign intelligence by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the touted war on terror. Under this program, referred to by the Bush administration as theterrorist surveillance program,[1] part of the broader President's Surveillance Program, the NSA was authorized by executive order to monitor, without search warrants, the phone calls, Internet activity (Web, e-mail, etc.), text messaging, and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lies within the U.S. However, it has been discovered that all U.S. communications have been digitally cloned by government agencies, in apparent violation of unreasonable search and seizure. The excuse given to avoid litigation[citation needed] was that no data hoarded would be reviewed until searching it would be legal. But no excuse has been offered the initial seizure of the data which is also illegal[citation needed], according to the U. S. Constitution[citation needed].

Critics, however, claimed that the program was in an effort to attempt to silence critics of the Bush Administration and its handling of several controversial issues during its tenure. Under public pressure, the Bush administration allegedly ceased the warrantless wiretapping program in January 2007 and returned review of surveillance to the FISA court.[2] Subsequently, in 2008 Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which relaxed some of the original FISA court requirements.

During the Obama Administration, the NSA has allegedly continued operating under the new FISA guidelines despite campaign promises to end warrantless wiretapping.[3] However, in April 2009 officials at theUnited States Department of Justice acknowledged that the NSA had engaged in "overcollection" of domestic communications in excess of the FISA court's authority, but claimed that the acts were unintentional and had since been rectified.[4]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveillance

Barack Obama on mass surveillance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The U.S. presidency of Barack Obama has received widespread criticism due to its support of government surveillance. President Obama has released many statements on mass surveillance as a result.

As a senator, Obama condemned the Patriot Act for violating the rights of American citizens. He argued that it allowed government agents to perform extensive and in-depth searches on American citizens without a search warrant. He also argued that it was possible to secure the United States against terrorist attacks while preserving individual liberty.[1] In 2011, Obama signed a four year renewal of the Patriot Act, specifically provisions allowing roaming wiretaps and government searches of business records. Obama argued that the renewal was needed to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. However, the renewal was criticized by several members of Congress who argued that the provisions did not do enough to curtail excessive searches.[2] Obama also received criticism for his perceived reversal on privacy protection.[3]

On March 25, 2014, Obama promised to end the NSA's collection and storage of bulk phone-call data. Despite this promise, his administration continued to seek reauthorization of the telephony metadata program.[21] It is approved every 90 days by the FISC, with the most recent authority set to expire June 1, 2015.[22] In a plan submitted by the Obama Administration to Congress, the NSA would be required to conduct searches of data at phone companies. They would also need to receive a warrant from a federal judge to conduct the search.

The overhaul proposal received support from the American Civil Liberties Union.[23] A representative of the organization claimed that it was a crucial first step in reigning in NSA surveillance.[24] The overhaul was criticized by several officials, however, because it would force telephone carriers to store customers metadata that they previously not legally obligated to keep. Reactions from the carriers were generally positive.[citation needed] A representative of Sprint Corporation stated that the carrier was examining the president's proposal with great interest.[25]

As of March 2015, the administration's proposals have not been implemented and the NSA retains the authority to collect and store telephone record metadata.[26]





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/italian-crime-organization-ndrangheta-inflitrated-by-international-operation/

Joint U.S.-Italy raids net mafia big fish
CBS NEWS
May 7, 2015

Video – Raids target mafia drug smuggling in Italy and U.S.

The operation began just after 3 a.m. local time and involved 100 Italian police, along with FBI and Homeland Security agents. CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey watched the raids play out in Italy.

The targets were members of the N'Drangheta, considered one of the most powerful crime organizations in the world.

The N'Drangheta are so closely knit and so feared that they are almost impossible to infiltrate. That's why they have to be hit in the dead of night, under conditions of absolute secrecy -- and fast.

The principal focus was a modest apartment; an unlikely end point, says Pizzey, for a drug ring that involved hand-carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Central America to pay drug lords.

The pivot point was a pizza parlor in Queens, New York. The father, mother and son who ran it are now in custody.

Working with the notorious Gambino crime family, they imported cocaine in shipments of yucca plants from Costa Rica. The goods went from ports near Philadelphia to warehouses in the Bronx, where the cocaine was separated and sent on to the N'Drangheta for sale in Europe.

The prime catch in the Italian raid was Franco Fazio, but he seemed almost amused.

"Ah, so the TVs are here, too?" he said. "Now the Naples mafia will see me."

Fazio is known as "The Ambassador" because of his role in the smuggling chain. And in spite of the N'Drangheta's reputation for violence, the raid went off without a gun drawn.

The senior FBI case agent, who cannot be identified, said Fazio is in for a surprise -- he's facing up to 10 years in jail in the U.S.

"In his mind, he thinks he's innocent and he can prove that. I don't think knows the overwhelming evidence that we have in this case," the FBI case agent said.

Last February, Italian police and FBI agents in Italy conducted a major joint operation that robbed the N'Drangheta crime syndicate and the U.S. Sicilian Mafia of a new drug smuggling route from Latin America into Europe.

U.S. officials told CBS News FBI agents arrested seven people in the New York area raids in connection with that operation.

Cooperation between Italian police, the FBI and Homeland Security won high praise from the Italian officer in overall charge of the latest operation.

"This is only one of the success of this cooperation," he told Pizzey. In the past, he said, there have been "lots of success."

They hope, he said, it will be an ongoing process.

Both the Italians and Americans say the operation was a serious blow to the N'Drangheta, but by no means a knockout punch. As long as there is demand, the senior FBI agent said, they'll try to supply it.




“The targets were members of the N'Drangheta, considered one of the most powerful crime organizations in the world. The N'Drangheta are so closely knit and so feared that they are almost impossible to infiltrate. That's why they have to be hit in the dead of night, under conditions of absolute secrecy -- and fast. …. The pivot point was a pizza parlor in Queens, New York. The father, mother and son who ran it are now in custody. Working with the notorious Gambino crime family, they imported cocaine in shipments of yucca plants from Costa Rica. The goods went from ports near Philadelphia to warehouses in the Bronx, where the cocaine was separated and sent on to the N'Drangheta for sale in Europe. …. Fazio is known as "The Ambassador" because of his role in the smuggling chain. And in spite of the N'Drangheta's reputation for violence, the raid went off without a gun drawn. …. Both the Italians and Americans say the operation was a serious blow to the N'Drangheta, but by no means a knockout punch. As long as there is demand, the senior FBI agent said, they'll try to supply it.”

The criminal element in the world has its own ecosystem, with street distributors and “mules” to Kingpins. The huge and endless desire here for drugs fuels the traffic, and innocent bystanders are killed in the process. These particular people were managers of a pizza parlor, a legitimate business. The age of gangsters with machine guns as we had in the 1920s is over, thank goodness, but there are still crime bosses who have never been stopped. The effort to arrest them goes on with some successes like this one, but the activity is never ended completely. It's one of those depressing things that I see in the news, like wife beating, child molestation and the ever present teenage gangs, who are always busy at training new mob members.

I wish I could say that the drug users are all from poverty-stricken high crime areas, but actually lots of them are Middle Class and wealthy people. The desire for drugs stems from psychological maladjustments that can happen to anybody. If a person who is depressed and underconfident discovers the magical effects of a drug such as cocaine they are likely to become dependent on it quickly, and the market for drugs is fed. Life is a matter of individual wisdom and self-control, with each person adding to the societal problem. We have to keep arresting the criminals, but the flow of new mobsters is ongoing.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctors-complicit-costly-abuse-military-health-care-system/

​Doctors seen as "complicit" in costly abuse of military health benefit system
By JIM AXELROD & EMILY RAND CBS NEWS
May 6, 2015

Photograph – Major General Richard Thomas
 CBS NEWS

NEW YORK -- Marketers peddling pain and scar creams directly to military personnel are costing the Pentagon hundreds of millions of dollars a month, according to Major General Richard Thomas. Thomas, who oversees TRICARE, the military's health benefit system, says doctors are complicit in the process.

"They're getting providers, doctors or whomever to write scripts, fill in scripts without even seeing the patient," said Thomas.

To find out who these doctors are -- we filled out an online form requesting pain and scar creams from a website called Healing 4 Heroes.

Two weeks later -- without ever seeing a doctor or even talking to one -- we received a package from Haoyou Pharmacy in California. It contained pain and scar creams prescribed by Paul Bolger, a doctor who runs a weight loss clinic in Davenport, Iowa.

When we visited Dr. Bolger's office last week, he agreed to answer a few questions. When asked if he was doing something wrong Holger said: "I couldn't disagree with that."

"I'm not going to make excuses for what I was doing," said Dr. Bolger. "It's not that I had bad intentions, it was that I was under the mistaken impression that patients such as yourself were being spoken with by a qualified medical provider -- someone who's qualified to screen you, do a intake over the phone, and make sure you were safe to have these meds."

Dr. Bolger told us he's sent prescription requests like ours by a service that pays him to review patient files from states where he's licensed -- New York, the state of our request, is not one of them.

"I'm only supposed to be sent prescriptions from the states where I'm licensed. Unfortunately, in this case, one time I got a prescription from a state where I wasn't supposed to," said Dr. Bolger.

Dr. Bolger said that our prescription was the only one he's written for someone who lives in a state where he's not licensed. He said he had no idea the U.S. military was billed for prescriptions he writes, but that he does know he's not the only one writing them.

"You're coming to see me but I can tell you there are hundreds of physicians doing the same thing right now. I believe that probably almost none of them understand the process," said Dr. Bolger.

Dr. Bolger says since our interview he is only writing prescriptions for patients he calls himself. He says he's not paid to write prescriptions, only to review the files and earns less than $50 a piece. As for Hayou Pharmacy, the company did not respond to our requests for comment.




“Thomas, who oversees TRICARE, the military's health benefit system, says doctors are complicit in the process. "They're getting providers, doctors or whomever to write scripts, fill in scripts without even seeing the patient," said Thomas. …. Dr. Bolger told us he's sent prescription requests like ours by a service that pays him to review patient files from states where he's licensed -- New York, the state of our request, is not one of them. "I'm only supposed to be sent prescriptions from the states where I'm licensed. Unfortunately, in this case, one time I got a prescription from a state where I wasn't supposed to," said Dr. Bolger. Dr. Bolger said that our prescription was the only one he's written for someone who lives in a state where he's not licensed. He said he had no idea the U.S. military was billed for prescriptions he writes, but that he does know he's not the only one writing them. …. Dr. Bolger says since our interview he is only writing prescriptions for patients he calls himself. He says he's not paid to write prescriptions, only to review the files and earns less than $50 a piece. As for Hayou Pharmacy, the company did not respond to our requests for comment.”

Our society really has become too large to police effectively. So many criminal situations flourish under the cover of anonymity that there is no preventing their occurrence. Yesterday's TV news report said that these “creams” also are not guaranteed to be effective or safe, as the pharmacies are “compounding” pharmaceutical companies. They will mix the ingredients as requested by the doctor, and are not being watched by the USDA. They are also outrageously expensive, and the government's Tricare insurance plan has been paying out thousands of dollars per patient. I think giving out such quack remedies at all should be illegal, and the government certainly shouldn't be paying for them. I have tried pain creams in the past for arthritis, but they simply weren't very effective. The name that comes to mind is “Icy Hot.” It feels uncomfortable to me in that it burns my skin in a way that may distract some people from their joint pain temporarily, but in my experience it doesn't stop pain. Exercises, stretching and INSAIDs stop pain.







http://www.cbsnews.com/news/was-former-st-louis-hospital-site-for-baby-selling-ring/

Was former St. Louis hospital site for baby-selling ring?
CBS NEWS
May 7, 2015

More than a dozen women are trying to solve a heartbreaking mystery. They want to know if a now-closed St. Louis hospital stole their newborns and sold them.

Each mother was told her baby had died after birth, but now, decades later, they have reason to doubt that, and they're demanding an investigation, reports CBS News correspondent Vinita Nair.

The allegations of a baby-selling ring started with the reunion of a mother and daughter posted on the internet in March. All of the women say they gave birth back when the facility was Homer G. Phillips Hospital, 36 years ago.

For 49 years, Zella Price believed her daughter died moments after birth. But for the first time, she held her in her arms.

Price was 26-years old when she gave birth to girl she named Diane. The baby was three months premature, weighing about a pound.

Zella remembers the baby crying, then a nurse took her away.

"'Zella, your baby passed,'"Price remembers the hospital staff saying. "So it was believable and acceptable but at the same time it hurt. It bothered me."

She didn't ask to say goodbye.

Price went on to have three more children.

Last September, she received a message on Facebook from a girl living in Oregon.

"My name is Mahiska Jackson," the message read.

"So I answered her. I said, 'What makes you think that I'm your grandmother and that's my daughter?'" Price said. "And she said, 'Well, my mother believes that you're her mother.'"

It's her sense, she said, that her adoptive parents must have shared her name.

After a DNA test confirmed they were related, Mahiska and her two siblings set up a surprise video call for their mom, Diane, who is legally deaf. Diane's response was overwhelming.

"I love you. I love you," Diane said.

"They were all women who had babies at very young ages -- 15, 16, 17, 18, some in their young 20s," attorney Albert Watkins who represents the Price family said. "There was not one adoption agency in the 1950s and 1960s in the St. Louis area, that catered to African American couples seeking to adopt infants of color."

CBS News tried to contact a representative from the hospital, which closed in 1979, but no one could speak on its behalf.

The mayor of St. Louis released a statement to "CBS This Morning," saying: "The alleged events happened a long time ago, when records retention practices were very different. We are working with alleged victims."

Price believes her daughter was adopted, but was returned and placed in foster care because of her hearing problems.

Though nearly half a century has passed, Price hopes her future, with her newfound daughter, will help heal all wounds.

"I didn't know I had a child to look for. But thank God, a child was lookin' for me," she said.
All the joy aside, there is also anger, but Price says she handles that through prayer.

"There's a lot of sadness to look at. But I must focus on the joy. I must," she said.

Each mother was told her baby had died after birth, but now, decades later, they have reason to doubt that, and they're demanding an investigation, reports CBS News correspondent Vinita Nair.

The allegations of a baby-selling ring started with the reunion of a mother and daughter posted on the internet in March. All of the women say they gave birth back when the facility was Homer G. Phillips Hospital, 36 years ago. For wonderfully written, acted and produced movie on this subject see the true life story called “Philomena” in your public library or rent it on the Internet. In my opinion it is a “must see” movie. The following article recounts the modern-day recurrence of these hospitals, especially under newly enacted anti-abortion laws in Red states around the country.



http://jezebel.com/5896835/church-spent-decades-stealing-or-coercing-babies-from-unwed-mothers

Church Spent Decades Stealing or Coercing Babies from Unwed Mothers
Erin Gloria Ryan
3/27/12

Ever the bastion of mercy and forgiveness for wayward women, Catholic church-run charities around the world stand accused of forcing unwed mothers to give up their babies for adoption — or lying and telling them their babies had died and then giving the babies away, anyway. Depressingly, Operation Hand The Baby Over, You Hellbound Adultress wasn't a relic of Torquemada-era moralizing; the most recent cases of forced or coerced adoption are said to have occurred in the late 1980's. And punitive tactics used on pregnant women then sound oddly like language used in laws designed to be abortion deterrents today.

According to CBS, medical professionals and social workers at religious charities in countries like Spain, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the US would subject women who found themselves pregnant sans church-sanctioned fucking to a series of sadistic, deliberately traumatic experiences. Women were routinely shipped to homes for unwed mothers, where they were subjected to unnecessarily painful procedures, denied contact with their families, and told that they had no choice but to give up their baby for adoption. In some cases, women were told that their babies had died and were sent home childless.

The practice of "forced adoptions" was depressingly routine — according to some estimates, between the 1940's and the late 1980's, over a million and a half American women were punished for their pregnancies by entire Church-sanctioned teams of people who I'd like to be able to describe as "well-intentioned," but who actually sound kind of evil. One former unwed mother told CBS that a doctor grabbed her foot during labor and told her that he hoped she learned her lesson. Another woman says she was drugged up during labor and tricked into signing her baby away when she wasn't lucid enough to understand what she was signing. A third reported that social workers spent days trying to coerce her to give her baby up for adoption. Many women say they weren't allowed to touch, see, or find out the sex of their newborns.

While it's easy to sit back and congratulate ourselves for having moved on from the archaic attitudes of that old-timey era of sepia toned cruelty, the reality is that the same attitudes that led to forced adoption horror stories are alive and well today. They're alive in so-called "crisis pregnancy centers," where women considering abortions are occasionally told that they're going to hell unless they give birth, but encouraged to sign their babies away to good Christian couples if they do choose to carry their pregnancies to term. It's alive and well in the minds of lawmakers sponsoring bills requiring pregnant women to undergo medically unnecessary vaginal probing and excessive waiting periods before abortions, and in the anti-Planned Parenthood witch hunt being led by pitchfork-toting lawmakers claiming that by making health care less affordable and accessible to women, they're somehow "protecting life." This relishing of doling out medical discipline to women who don't behave properly is a bastion of the segment of the populace that sincerely believes that women should be back in the kitchen, with child and pot roast, minding their manners and their husbands.




http://www.vice.com/read/welcome-to-the-age-of-man-0000642-v22n5

We’ve Damaged the Planet So Badly It’s Entering a New Epoch
by Robert Eshelman
May 6, 2015

Photograph – This piece of Acasta gneiss is a sample of the oldest known rock in the world. It was found in northwest Canada and is approximately 4 billion years old, just 500 million years younger than the estimated age of the Earth. Photo by SSPL / Getty Images

When you or I look at a mountain range running alongside an interstate highway, we might see a series of majestic peaks. When Kirk Johnson looks at a mountain range, he sees hundreds of millions of years of history. In the layers of rock and the detritus of once living things, he can trace the imperceptibly slow workings of evolution and geologic time and identify the short shocks of five mass extinctions that have periodically wiped out nearly all life on Earth in the last half billion years. 

Johnson, a paleobotanist and geologist, runs the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. He explained the long arc of the Earth's physical changes—and his lifelong interest in rocks—as we strolled passed the encased dioramas and dinosaur skeletons that make his museum one of the world's best. 

"Museums are where we keep the evidence of life on our planet: fossils, rocks, specimens," he tells me. "They all end up in museums, and that's where our culture records all the oddities that have happened over the last four and a half, 4.6, or 4.7 billion years of Earth's history."

Since the mid 20th century, scientists have developed remarkably accurate methods for dating the emergence—and disappearance—of species and theories about how the world has taken the form it has: the continents scattered over the Earth's surface here and there, the particular way plants and animals are distributed across the globe. Carbon-dating technology and the theory of continental drift emerged only in the 1950s, Johnson said. So did methods for discerning how and why over the past 4.5 billion years most of life on Earth has disappeared. "All of these tools that allow us to tell the story of the planet have been growing up as I've been growing up," Johnson said. "And the last thing to enter the collective consciousness of the sciences," he added, "is that humans can impact the planet." 

Johnson was talking about the Anthropocene—the Age of Man—the existence of which is perhaps the most significant current debate about humans' relationship to nature. 

Human transformation of the environment has become so pronounced that Johnson, and researchers across dozens of scientific disciplines, now argue that we have entered a new phase in the history of the Earth. No longer are we in the Holocene epoch, the relatively warm period that began with the retreat of the glaciers about 12,000 years ago. Since the end of the last ice age and the proliferation of humans across the continents, our agricultural methods, our cities, our energy production, our transportation networks, our plastics, and our atomic tests are radically altering the biological and chemical composition of the air, soil, and water—and even leaving what some say will be a lasting impression on Earth's geology. The extraordinary rate at which these changes are occurring might even be bringing about the sixth great extinction in the history of the planet. 

The notion that humans can scar the environment is hardly new. In 1854, the Welsh geologist and theologian Thomas Jenkyn coined a term for the likely impact of human activities on the geologic record: anthropozoic. American polymath George Perkins Marsh argued in his bookMan and Nature, published in 1864, that by denuding the landscape of trees, humans bring about widespread ecological disruption, which in turn restricts the capacity of human societies to thrive and survive. Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius found in 1895 that if atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased, so too would the Earth's surface temperatures.

In the early 20th century, Ukrainian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and two Frenchmen—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Édouard LeRoy—proposed the term noösphere to describe the growing influence of human technological innovation in shaping the future and the environment. 

By the year 2000, Dutch Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen and his colleague Eugene Stoermer proposed in an issue of Global Change Newsletter that human influence over the physical world had reached such a tipping point that it required the designation of a new geologic age. 

The human population, they said, had grown tenfold over the previous three centuries, and along with it the cattle population had exploded to nearly 1.4 billion. Urbanization had also ballooned tenfold during the 19th century, and that growth would exhaust fossil-fuel supplies that were several hundred million years in the making. Humans had introduced nitrogen-infused fertilizers, they wrote, and—echoing Marsh—transformed up to 50 percent of the Earth's land surface. The rate of species extinction had gone up by at least a thousandfold. Greenhouse gases had substantially increased in the atmosphere, and other pollutants had punched a hole in the Earth's ozone layer. 

Their rundown reads like a technical account of a crime scene. But the terrain on which these transgressions were occurring wasn't the corner store—it was planetary in scale and reached into the fundamental biological, chemical, and physical properties of the world we all inhabit.

"Considering these and many other major and still growing impacts of human activities on earth and atmosphere, and at all, including global, scales," they wrote, "it seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term 'anthropocene' for the current geological epoch." 

The pair went further than just describing the characteristics of the Age of Man. They also proposed a start date in the latter part of the 18th century, specifically the invention of James Watt's steam engine in 1784, which was integral to the Industrial Revolution. 

The emergence of human influence on nature had come about swiftly, they concluded, and was likely to become a permanent fixture of the landscape. 

"Without major catastrophes like an enormous volcanic eruption, an unexpected epidemic, a large-scale nuclear war, an asteroid impact, a new ice age, or continued plundering of Earth's resources by partially still primitive technology," they said, "mankind will remain a major geologic force for many millennia, maybe millions of years, to come."

For many scientists, though, including Kirk Johnson, the question is no longer whether there's something called the Anthropocene but when it began. Did it start, as Crutzen and Stoermer suggest, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, or on some other date? 

Indeed, there is a scientific institution called the International Commission on Stratigraphy that is specifically tasked with making this decision. It's the kind of professional organization that one would normally never hear about, an obscure group with subcommittees on Precambrian stratigraphy, Ordovician stratigraphy, and Jurassic stratigraphy, among most of the other major geologic periods. 

It's likely that sometime next year a committee of the ICS will decide whether or not the commission should formally adopt the Anthropocene and, if so, suggest when it began. 

Jan Zalasiewicz is a lecturer in paleobiology at the University of Leicester and chairs the ICS committee that is weighing the merits of the Age of Man. 

"You know the joke about geologists," he told me. "Put three geologists in a room and you get five different approaches to a question.

"With the Anthropocene, we're dealing with the sum of human action," he said, "and geologists are not really good at judging human action."

They are, however, very good at looking at rocks.

And in those rocks they've identified the traces of human activity, specifically radiation stemming from atomic weapons tests. It was a historic turning point, according to Zalasiewicz, who along with members of the working group proposed in a journal article that the first nuclear test, on July 14, 1945, was the beginning of the Anthropocene. The atomic age brought about a new form of energy—and a novel source of waste, one that can linger for thousands of years. And the July date coincided with many of the phenomena outlined in Crutzen and Stoermer's original paper: an explosion in the human population, concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, species extinction, and production of concrete, plastics, and metals—often referred to as the "Great Acceleration." 

Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin of University College London, writing in the March issue of Nature, offered either 1610 or 1964 as the dawn of the Anthropocene. For them, the great mixing of the Old and New worlds that began in 1492 was the largest reorganization of people in the past 13,000 years and an unprecedented global biological exchange of plants and animal species. The "Columbian Exchange" marked a turning point. Old World crops like sugarcane and wheat were sown in newly settled lands of the Americas, while New World crops like corn, potatoes, and manioc were grown across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Pollen from New World corn first appears in marine sediment cores dating to 1600. In other words, it was a global reorganization of life without precedent. 

It also brought about a massive decline in the human population. The number of people in the Americas declined from an estimated 61 million people in 1492 to about 6 million in 1650 due to disease, famine, enslavement, and war. Fewer people meant less agricultural production and less slashing and burning of forests to make way for settlements and crops. That led, according to Lewis and Maslin, to a great expansion of the biomass of the Americas. With more trees and shrubs blanketing the landscape, more carbon dioxide was pulled from the atmosphere and, indeed, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dipped slightly between 1570 and 1620. 

Those two events—the appearance of New World pollen in Europe and the carbon dioxide dip—provide geologic markers that point to the onset of the Anthropocene, they say. 

But like Zalasiewicz, Lewis and Maslin see the increase in radionuclides from atomic tests as a plausible boundary between one geologic period and the next. Yet instead of the date of the first test—July 14, 1945—they see 1964, when levels of radioactive carbon spike in tree-ring samples, as a sound marker for the start of the Anthropocene. 

This might all seem academic. What difference does it make whether human influence on the environment began 12,000, 500, or 50 years ago, you might be asking. For Lewis and Maslin, the designation could impact our interpretation of what is driving all this unprecedented, global environmental change. 

"The [dip in atmospheric carbon dioxide] implies that colonialism, globalized trade, and coal brought about the Anthropocene," they say. "Choosing the bomb spike tells a story of an elite-driven technological development that threatens planet-wide destruction."

Back at the Smithsonian, Johnson is also concerned about the stories people tell—after all, millions of visitors pass through his museum each year. How Johnson and his staff choose to curate the 4.5-billion-year history of the Earth impacts the perceptions of young and old, who participate daily, whether actively or passively, in broader social and political debates about dinosaurs, extinctions, climate change, and the future of civilization. 

"The present rate of extinction is extraordinary—it's on par with the five major extinctions—and what's incredible is that we're causing it. There's no question," Johnson said, bringing us to a halt before a 1970s-era mural. 

The dimly lit scene is set 15,000 years ago in what is modern-day Alaska, he said. Mammoths and mastodons, a stag-moose, American lions, short-faced bears, and muskoxen roam through a green and brown tundra spotted with snow. It's a representation, Johnson said, of the end of the last ice age, when humans began to spread out over the continents, also known as the Holocene. 

Johnson points to the upper right corner of the mural, where four shaggy men with spears surround a large ground sloth. "In North America, people arrived around thirteen thousand years ago," he said, "and soon after, you start finding carcasses of mammoths with spear points in them. And shortly after that you don't find any more mammoths.

"We're well on our way to killing the elephant, the northern white rhino, the tigers. We're well on our way to killing major apex species," he said. "But we're also on our way to killing lots of smaller things. Even in the last hundred years we've lost Tasmanian tigers, certain types of antelopes. You start adding it up, and one hundred years is not very much time in the broad arc of geologic history, and the actual rate of extinction is well on its way to being on track with the other extinctions."

And those changes, he said, are ones brought about by the direct impacts of humans: deforestation, poaching, depriving predators of their prey. There are also the indirect impacts: levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, pollution in the oceans. 

"There are twice as many people on the Earth than when I was born, and whether you're poaching animals, eating a hamburger, or sitting in traffic, it all translates into the Anthropocene," he said. 

Is it an innate human urge to kill, the outcome of capitalist production, or the sheer explosion of the human—and cow—population? He didn't offer an answer. 

"We as humans can actually nudge this history toward a more pleasant outcome, rather than toward the less pleasant outcome," he said. "The past fifty years have demonstrated that humans can change the planet. Now the choice is whether we change it for better or for worse."




“This might all seem academic. What difference does it make whether human influence on the environment began 12,000, 500, or 50 years ago, you might be asking. For Lewis and Maslin, the designation could impact our interpretation of what is driving all this unprecedented, global environmental change. "The [dip in atmospheric carbon dioxide] implies that colonialism, globalized trade, and coal brought about the Anthropocene," they say. "Choosing the bomb spike tells a story of an elite-driven technological development that threatens planet-wide destruction." …. "The present rate of extinction is extraordinary—it's on par with the five major extinctions—and what's incredible is that we're causing it. There's no question," Johnson said, bringing us to a halt before a 1970s-era mural. The dimly lit scene is set 15,000 years ago in what is modern-day Alaska, he said. Mammoths and mastodons, a stag-moose, American lions, short-faced bears, and muskoxen roam through a green and brown tundra spotted with snow. It's a representation, Johnson said, of the end of the last ice age, when humans began to spread out over the continents, also known as the Holocene. …. You start adding it up, and one hundred years is not very much time in the broad arc of geologic history, and the actual rate of extinction is well on its way to being on track with the other extinctions." And those changes, he said, are ones brought about by the direct impacts of humans: deforestation, poaching, depriving predators of their prey. There are also the indirect impacts: levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, pollution in the oceans. …. Is it an innate human urge to kill, the outcome of capitalist production, or the sheer explosion of the human—and cow—population? He didn't offer an answer. "We as humans can actually nudge this history toward a more pleasant outcome, rather than toward the less pleasant outcome," he said. "The past fifty years have demonstrated that humans can change the planet. Now the choice is whether we change it for better or for worse."

We still have some choices – greatly limit our population growth, limit the amount of greenhouse gases that enter our one and only atmosphere, save existing trees and plant more where they have been stripped away, stop poisoning the honey bees with farm pesticides, become Buddhists and quit killing animals, stop driving cars and use fossil fuels only to heat our homes, go back to backyard gardens made up of native plants especially in places that are becoming more and more arid, entertain ourselves by conversation and games, install solar panels on every roof, etc. These things, none of them, are possible to perform perfectly, unfortunately. The worst problems with humans are the very characteristics that have “survival value.” Cleverness, fertility, assertiveness, group unity have made us what we are today. Working together down through the thousands of years we have produced great progress, but at the expense of peace and sustainable land use. If we could only eliminate our short-sightedness, lack of mercy, hatred and greed we could have some natural resources left and a peaceful society. Of course, we would have to place life over wealth and be content with what we need rather than what we want. Our problem is that we have “killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”




http://www.forwardprogressives.com/gop-congressman-throws-temper-tantrum-because-republican-cant-impeach-president-obama/

GOP Congressman Throws Temper Tantrum Because Republicans Can’t Impeach President Obama
By Allen Clifton 
May 2, 2015

Since before Barack Obama ever stepped foot into the White House, Republicans have been trying to find ways to either prevent him from becoming president or remove him from the office he was overwhelmingly voted into [sic] by the American people twice. 

From the ridiculous birthers who proclaimed that he wasn’t an American citizen, to those who believe his executive order on immigration is tantamount to treason, there has been no shortage of right-wing idiocy with conservatives crying about how Barack Obama should not be president.

Well, it seems the fact that the GOP has been unable to remove President Obama from the White House has caused Rep. Paul Gosar to snap. The Republican from Arizona basically threw the equivalent of a temper tantrum when during a speech he suggested that Republicans should flat-out refuse to confirm anyone appointed by this president since they can’t impeach him. “You may not be able to impeach a president,” Gosar said. “But boy I tell you what: remember, we have the right of advise and confer. Nobody gets confirmed. Nada. Nobody. None. I don’t care how good of a person you are. You’re not gonna get it.” In other words, he’s extremely upset because there’s no logical or legal grounds for his party to remove President Obama – a man elected to office by the American people via guidelines our Constitution lays out – from power. These are literally some of the most immature and childish comments I’ve ever seen uttered by someone from the Republican party. 

When you get right down to it, Rep. Gosar’s opinion that Republicans should refuse to confirm anyone appointed by this president isn’t based upon what’s best for the country or even the qualifications of the nominated person to do the job for which they need congressional confirmation, it’s entirely based on Gosar being upset that he’s not getting his way. Rep. Gosar outright admitted, without shame, that it doesn’t matter how qualified the person might be for the position for which they’re seeking confirmation – it’s only about his desire to see his party play petty partisan politics because they’ve been unable to find any Constitutional or legal grounds to impeach this president. Oh, and for the record, the House of Representatives doesn’t have anything to do with confirming presidential nominees. That’s a job that’s done entirely in the Senate.

So, while Gosar essentially has no say on whether or not the Senate will continue to confirm Obama nominees (to his credit Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said they would), his comments do showcase a tone among the GOP that I’ve heard for years. Republicans don’t really care about governing, what’s best for this country or anything else – all they really care about is opposing practically anything and everything President Obama supports. At the end of the day, they really do hate this president more than they love our country – if some of them even love it at all.




“You may not be able to impeach a president,” Gosar said. “But boy I tell you what: remember, we have the right of advise and confer. Nobody gets confirmed. Nada. Nobody. None. I don’t care how good of a person you are. You’re not gonna get it.” …. all they really care about is opposing practically anything and everything President Obama supports. At the end of the day, they really do hate this president more than they love our country – if some of them even love it at all.”

Aside from the fact that the phrase he was looking for is “advise and consent,” and as the article pointed out the House doesn't even do that, this is a clearcut exemplification of “the party of No!” Luckily not all Republicans are that extreme, or that dumb.





http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201504301920-0024725

#BlackWomenMatter marchers put spotlight on female police brutality victims
WEB ONLY
April 30, 2015

Activists say it's time to stop overlooking female victims of police violence against African Americans.

US protesters are highlighting black women's stories in the string of police violence against African Americans. Activists have organised marches in Washington, DC and other cities around the United States. They say names like Rekia Boyd, Tanisha Anderson and Natasha McKenna receive less media coverage and less outrage compared to men like Mike Brown and Eric Garner, who have become symbols of the fight against police brutality.

People on Twitter have been using #BlackWomenMatter and #BlackWomensLivesMatter to share photos from recent marches and join the discussion.




“US protesters are highlighting black women's stories in the string of police violence against African Americans. Activists have organised marches in Washington, DC and other cities around the United States. They say names like Rekia Boyd, Tanisha Anderson and Natasha McKenna receive less media coverage and less outrage compared to men like Mike Brown and Eric Garner, who have become symbols of the fight against police brutality.” There was one incident caught on a patrolman's dash cam of his brutally beating a woman – who happened to be white, but homeless and mentally disturbed – for “walking out into the traffic lane on a highway of some kind. It wasn't clear whether she was trying to cross, trying to commit suicide, or just confused, but she certainly shouldn't have been assaulted like that. He was disciplined by the department heads, thank goodness. It is reprehensible, however, that women and particularly black women are apparently considered to be of lesser value. I read years ago that when black women are raped and murdered it may not even make the evening news, but if that happens to a white woman or a child there will be a public outcry. All human – and animal – life has to be valued and preserved.

That incident with the homeless woman was one of the early cases before body cams. The trooper didn't seem to be aware that he was being watched. Cops are going to have to be more judicious in their behavior now that body cams, dash cams and the great possibility that a bystander will get out their cell phone and make a video of the event. As officers are caught in these acts and punished, there will be some improvement in number of brutality cases, I think. Now if the courts will back up the brass and convict them of the crime of assault, murder, etc. we can get rid of those “bad apples” that the police departments are always talking about. So far the departments haven't talked much about supervision, training and discipline of roque cops. We need police officers, but they need to obey decent rules, regulations and simply a higher standard of ethics. See the following article from Huffington Post for more information.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/01/targeting-black-women_n_7184578.html

Why We Must Not Forget Black Women Are Victims Of Police Brutality, Too
By Kira Brekke
Posted: 05/01/2015

Dani McClain, a contributor for The Nation, took issue with conclusions drawn from a recent New York Times article which estimated that incarceration and young deaths are largely responsible for 1.5 million "missing" black men who are no longer active participants in society. McClain told HuffPost Live on Wednesday that the article failed to address how black women are also targeted and victimized.

McClain recently published a piece in The Nation on the subject, in which she wrote that the Times concluded a "primary outcome of these 'disappeared' men is that black families are set up for dysfunction because too few men are around to be husbands and fathers. Through this lens, the systemic assault on black lives hurts black women because they’re left alone in to raise families on their own."

While she told HuffPost Live's Alyona Minkovski that the article was "fascinating and very important reporting," its conclusion is "problematic and quite short sighted" for implying that black women are "secondary casualties" of aggressive policing and racially-targeted criminal justice policies.

"It would imply that black women, ourselves, are not often victimized at the hands of officers, are not, ourselves, targeted by certain policies," McClain said, raising the case of Rekia Boyd, a young black woman killed in 2012 by an off-duty police detective in Chicago who was recently acquitted on all charges.

"What's interesting is that Rekia Boyd is not a household name the same way that Freddie Gray [is], in the same way Michael Brown [is], in the same way that Tamir Rice is," McClain said.

While McClain wrote in The Nation that black men are "more often victims" in the cases of police abuse, she told HuffPost Live that it's not a competition.

"Black communities as a whole, we are faced with challenges, and so it doesn’t need to get into this kind of tug of war about who’s suffering more," she said.