Author Archives: gt67dx1

You Insult Henry Kissinger At Your Peril

by gt67dx1 Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Newly declassified documents show that Fidel Castro pissed off Henry Kissinger so badly that he drew up plans to “clobber the pipsqueak”:

Mr. Kissinger, who was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, had previously planned an underground effort to improve relations with Havana. But in late 1975, Mr. Castro sent troops to Angola to help the newly independent nation fend off attacks from South Africa and right-wing guerrillas.

That move infuriated Mr. Kissinger, who was incensed that Mr. Castro had passed up a chance to normalize relations with the United States in favor of pursuing his own foreign policy agenda, Mr. Kornbluh said.

“Nobody has known that at the very end of a really remarkable effort to normalize relations, Kissinger, the global chessboard player, was insulted that a small country would ruin his plans for Africa and was essentially prepared to bring the imperial force of the United States on Fidel Castro’s head,” Mr. Kornbluh said.

“You can see in the conversation with Gerald Ford that he is extremely apoplectic,” Mr. Kornbluh said, adding that Mr. Kissinger used “language about doing harm to Cuba that is pretty quintessentially aggressive.”

Yep, that’s everyone’s favorite geopolitical strategic master at work. Kissinger considered Castro’s actions to be a personal insult, so he began drawing up plans for the US military to blockade Cuba, mine its harbors, and potentially touch off a war with the Soviet Union. Because that’s what you do when a small country irritates Henry Kissinger. Amirite?

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You Insult Henry Kissinger At Your Peril

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By Painting Their Markings, This Scientist Disrupted Birds’ Social Structure

by gt67dx1 Posted on December 9, 2013

Photo: Sally

Remember the Sneetches?, our Dr. Seuss said:

“Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches
Had bellies with stars.
The Plain-Belly Sneetches
Had none upon thars.”

And the plain-bellied Sneetches, with one Sylvester McMonkey McBean,
painted stars on their bellies, to gain social esteem.

Now, there are species like Sneetches, but in very real places.
Pūkekos get status from shields on their faces.

On their foreheads emblazoned are bright shields of red.
The shields’ size affects everything—access to food, sharing of beds.

But like a mean Mr. McBean, Cody Dey had a plan.
With his big brush of black, he caught those birds and began.

Dey painted some, but he did not paint all.
He shrank some shields and some statuses, three sizes too small.

But while Dr. Seuss’ creatures learned that “Sneetches are Sneetches,”
the Pūkekos had trouble with Mr. Dey’s breaches.

Pūkekos’ shields can change size, a display of their might.
But by painting them down, Dey’d sealed their fates tight.

The painted Pūkekos never recovered their status;
their shields, shrunk for good, were now considered the saddest.

H/T CBC

More from Smithsonian.com:

Green Eggs and Salmonella?

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By Painting Their Markings, This Scientist Disrupted Birds’ Social Structure

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Unpacking the Dumbest Thing Said by a GOP Congressman About the Debt Ceiling

by gt67dx1 Posted on October 14, 2013

Mother Jones

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Congratulations, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.): You just said the most ridiculous thing anyone in the House of Representatives has uttered about the debt ceiling in…at least a few days. Griffith, asked by the Capitol Hill daily The Hill about the urgency of raising the debt ceiling, suggested the nation might be better off if it defaulted—even if that triggered a new recession and perhaps a global economic crisis—than if it continued to spend money at the current rate. He’s not the only Republican congressman to make this claim (Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) suggested a default would calm global markets). But Griffith’s spin was, to put it charitably, unique:

We have to make a decision that’s right long-term for the United States, and what may be distasteful, unpleasant and not appropriate in the short run may be something that has to be done. I will remind you that this group of renegades that decided that they wanted to break from the crown in 1776 did great damage to the economy of the colonies. They created the greatest nation and the best form of government, but they did damage to the economy in the short run.

This is an absolutely backward understanding of US history. Breaking away from Great Britain was indeed a hugely disruptive economic event—so much so that it almost proved to be the nation’s undoing. States were swimming in debt and unable to pay soldiers, who in turn staged open rebellions, which, in turn, prompted politicians to get together to come up with a better governing document.

The central problem was that the nation had basically no access to credit, because it was $77 million in debt with no real means to pay it back. (It owed about $12 million of that to foreign creditors.) The solution, as outlined in Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s First Report on the Public Credit, was to absorb all state-level debts (totaling about $25 million), issue new bonds to fund the federal government and allow it to start borrowing money again, and then raise tariffs to pay off the debt.

Griffith’s right that the revolution caused an economic mess, but he should’ve read the next chapter in his history book—America didn’t get out of that economic mess until it had demonstrated to foreign creditors it was good on its word. Whether that’s still the case is up to Griffith and his colleagues.

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Unpacking the Dumbest Thing Said by a GOP Congressman About the Debt Ceiling

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America’s Nuke Plants Are in Trouble

by gt67dx1 Posted on September 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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America’s fleet of nuclear power plants might be on the cusp of an industry crisis, according to an investigation by Inside Climate News and a recent report from Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. The industry has been plagued by a streak of plant closures, which come as regulations, expensive upgrades, and newly cheap natural gas have made nuclear increasingly uncompetitive in the energy market. Plants in Vermont, Wisconsin, California, and Florida—the first plants to close in 15 years—have announced this year that they’re shutting down. And more are on the chopping block. According to the report, the industry might shrink in the coming decades, sinking hopes of America being at the start of “nuclear renaissance.”

Six years ago, amidst tax credits and nuclear-friendly regulation, a flood of proposed nuclear projects appeared to be the end of the drought that followed the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant, when a partial meltdown stoked fears of a nuclear disaster and halted all new uranium power plant construction. But today, plans for more than half of the 28 new reactors that were proposed have been put on hold or canceled, and those that have gone ahead have suffered from delays and heaping budget overruns. Sixty-two percent of US plants have been operating for more than 30 years—and 20 percent for more than 40 years (the limit of their projected lifespan when they were built). And utility companies are becoming more reticent to pay for their expensive upgrades now that the natural gas boom has created a glut of cheap power.

The newly announced closures are just part of the grim picture the nuclear industry is facing. A 2012 court ruling blocked new permits from being issued until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can assess the risks of storing spent fuel at plant sites, and at least five projects that would boosted the output of existing plants have already been canceled this year. The projects that are continuing in Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee are beleaguered by delays and cost overruns.

The report from Vermont Law School’s Mark Cooper, a senior fellow at the school’s Institute for Energy and Environment, paints an even more dire picture. “With little chance that the cost of new reactors will become competitive with low carbon alternatives in the time frame relevant for old reactor retirement decisions,” the report intones, “attention will shift to the economics of keeping old reactors online, increasing their capacity and/or extending their lives.” Of the 99 operating nuclear plants, the report says, “in terms of basic economics, there are three dozen reactors that are on the razor’s edge.”

The culprit for nuclear’s shrinking margins is the glut of cheap natural gas. When the nuclear renaissance was being prophesied in the mid 2000s, natural gas prices were more than four times what they are today. In this more competitive climate, David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Inside Climate News, “you’re basically one surprise away—one component problem away—from not having the economics favor you.” Another major burden facing the industry, the question of what to do with reactor waste, and how to pay for it, is being argued by the Department of Energy Wednesday morning, defending a fee it imposed for a future nuclear waste repository.

According to Inside Climate News, “the U.S. industry has weathered tough times before. A similar combination of economic stresses led to the closure of ten reactors in the mid-to-late 1990s, prompting the Department of Energy to predict that 50 reactors would be mothballed between 1995 and 2015.” Despite the dire forecast, only 15 reactors were decommissioned since 1995.

There is light on the horizon, however, for a new generation of nuclear plants that could run on the spent fuel from the current fleet (which surely beats sprinkling it from airplanes). According to a story in Wednesday’s New York Times, Bill Gates has made this new breed of nuclear reactors a pet project. Terra Power, which is led by Gates and former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold, is shooting to build “a new kind of nuclear reactor that would be fueled by today’s nuclear waste, supply all the electricity in the United States for the next 800 years and, possibly, cut the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation around the world,” according to the Times. It’s courting China as a lead partner for the $5 billion prototype project.

Read the whole Inside Climate News story here.

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America’s Nuke Plants Are in Trouble

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Why the Positive August Jobs Report Is Not Actually Positive

by gt67dx1 Posted on September 6, 2013

Mother Jones

The US economy added 169,000 jobs last month, according to new numbers released Friday by the Labor Department, and the unemployment rate fell a tenth of a percent to 7.3 percent. But don’t be fooled. As has been the case in recent months, the unemployment rate fell mostly because more Americans stopped looking for work, and so were not officially counted as unemployed by the government. The jobs situation may actually be even worse than it was earlier this year.

In August, there were 312,000 fewer people in the labor force—defined as people who are either looking for a job or have a job; the size of the labor force is at its lowest level since 1978. And as of last month, 7.9 million Americans who wanted full-time work could find only part-time gigs. When you include these workers and those who have stopped looking for work, you get an underemployment rate of 13.7 percent.

The number of new jobs added to the economy per month has been on a downward trend over the past year. We averaged 148,000 new jobs a month for the last three months, but 160,000 jobs a month for the last six months, and 184,000 a month over the last year, Neil Irwin points out at the Washington Post. In order to make up for the jobs gap created by the recession within the next four years, about 300,000 jobs would need to be created per month, according to the Brookings Institution.

The jobs we are adding to the economy are of pretty poor quality; they are largely low-wage, service sector jobs in the health care, retail and food industries.

The unemployment rate for minorities remains disproportionately high: 13 percent for blacks, and 9.3 percent for Hispanics.

And yet the administration has been pointing to the falling unemployment rate as evidence of a recovery, and the Federal Reserve is expected to soon pull back on its stimulus measures in response to the superficially sunny jobs numbers. As Irwin writes, the administration seems to be ignoring the big picture: “This job report has enough signs of weakness embedded in enough places that it has to make economy-watchers—including those at the Federal Reserve who meet in less than two weeks—reassess their confidence that a solid, steady jobs recovery is underway… You don’t have to squint hard to see evidence that the ‘nice, steady improvement’ theme that has been the conventional wisdom is missing part of the story.”

It doesn’t look like jobs will come rushing back any time soon. The across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration that went into effect in March are one reason. As my colleague Kevin Drum pointed out in July, “a rough horseback guess suggests that the total effect of our austerity binge has been a GDP reduction of 2 percent and an employment reduction of nearly 3 million.”

And the coming fiscal battle in Congress could make matters worse. Republicans are threatening to refuse to raise the nation’s debt ceiling when we reach our borrowing limit in mid-October unless President Barack Obama agrees to more spending reductions. Last month, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned against this tactic. “What we need in our economy is some certainty,” he said. “We don’t need another self-inflicted wound.”

Especially because there isn’t much justification to continue shrinking spending—the deficit has shrunk by hundreds of billions of dollars in recent years. Via Drum:

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Why the Positive August Jobs Report Is Not Actually Positive

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Zimmerman Has Been Found Not Guilty. Now What?

by gt67dx1 Posted on July 14, 2013

Mother Jones

After more than three weeks of testimony and nearly 17 hours of deliberation, the jury in the Trayvon Martin case has found George Zimmerman not guilty.

Zimmerman shot and killed the 17-year-old after a scuffle in a gated condominium complex in Sanford, Fla., on February 26, 2012. The case became a racially charged national story almost immediately due to the circumstances of Martin’s death—a black, unarmed teen shot after being tailed by Zimmerman for merely looking suspicious—and the fact that Sanford police did not arrest Zimmerman until 46 days after the killing.

But the actual trial boiled down not to racism or police inaction but whether or not Zimmerman wanted to kill Martin and if Zimmerman’s life was in danger when he pulled the trigger. To get a murder conviction, the prosecution had to prove to the six women on the jury that Zimmerman acted with malice or intent when he killed Martin. This was tough to prove, given that the victim wasn’t around to offer his version of events. During the trial, the defense sought to paint Zimmerman as a poor fighter who was overpowered by Martin and who came to fear for his life during the scuffle. During his closing statement, attorney Mark O’Mara brought a slab of concrete into the courtroom, arguing that the teen used the sidewalk as a weapon.

More on the Trayvon Martin Killing:


The Trayvon Martin Killing, Explained


Trayvon Martin’s Death Extends Sanford’s Sordid Legacy


Here’s the Latest in Race-Baiting Conspiracy Theories From the Right


Verdict Nears in Trayvon Martin Caseâ&#128;&#148;and the Right Fixates on Race Riots


Why the Latest Zimmerman Race Riot Conspiracy Theory Is the Dumbest Yet

“That is cement. That is a sidewalk. That is not an unarmed teenager with nothing but Skittles trying to get home,” he said. “That was someone who used the availability of dangerous items, from his fist to the concrete, to cause great bodily injury.”

The prosecution contended that Zimmerman killed Martin not because he had to, but because he wanted to. On Thursday, the judge in the case ruled that the jury could find Zimmerman guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter. This option—described as a possible compromise by numerous legal observers—was not accepted by the jury.

For the people who believed that Zimmerman was guilty, this case±—and the Sanford police department’s reaction to it—was far more signficant than a local murder. It inspired deep emotions about the value of the lives of young black men, and this verdict will provoke deep feelings of disappointment and frustration for many who pushed for Zimmerman to be charged with murder.

But it’s not over. Now that the verdict is in, here’s what could happen next.

Federal charges: The Department of Justice launched an investigation last March to investigate whether Martin’s shooting amounted to a federal hate crime—that is, if Zimmerman followed and killed Martin because he was black. In July 2012, the FBI released a statement saying that investigators had found no evidence that Zimmerman was motivated by racism. The July statement indicates that federal charges are highly unlikely, but the DOJ has not announced that the case is closed. It’s still being brought up as a post-trial possibility. NAACP president Benjamin Jealous, for instance, said Saturday on MSNBC that “there are still additional legal avenues. He could still be charged with federal civil rights charges.”

Civil lawsuit: Martin’s family reached a settlement in April with the homeowners’ association of the subdivision where the killing occurred. The details of the settlement were not made public, but the Orlando Sentinel reported that the family was “said to” have been awarded at least $1 million. The suit did not include Zimmerman, but the family’s attorney Benjamin Crump has said that the family intends to sue their son’s killer at some point in the future. It’s not uncommon for families to seek a form of justice through civil courts, even when a the defendant is acquitted in criminal court. And the standards for judgments are different in such civil cases.

The public’s reaction: In the week leading to the verdict, speculation that people—specifically black people—would riot if Zimmerman were acquitted spread through the mainstream media, after taking off in the conservative press and cable news. What’s more likely, based on how Martin supporters have reacted initially—after the verdict was read, the crowd outside of the courthouse dispersed peacefully—is that protests (of the non-violent variety) against racial profiling will continue.

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Zimmerman Has Been Found Not Guilty. Now What?

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6 Summer Vacation Destinations to Avoid (Slideshow)

by gt67dx1 Posted on June 22, 2013

Cathleen K.

on

Male Lyrebirds Get Their Groove on

1 minute ago

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6 Summer Vacation Destinations to Avoid (Slideshow)

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This Is an Actual Photo of a Planet in Another Solar System

by gt67dx1 Posted on June 3, 2013

The little blue splotch is the planet HD95086 b. It’s about four or five times the mass of Jupiter and it orbits a star 300 light years away. The planet’s star doesn’t actually look like a clip art star–the astronomers had to cover the star so they could see the comparatively faint planet. Photo: European Southern Observatory

See that little blue smudge? That’s another planet.

It’s named HD95086 b, and it’s orbiting a star 300light years away. This is one of the first times in human history that we’ve ever laid eyes on a planet in another solar system, a planet that isn’t orbiting the Sun.

Thanks to the Kepler telescope we know that thousands, perhaps billions of planets exist out there in the universe. But we haven’t actually seen very many of them. Kepler found planets by looking for the absence of starlight—it registered a planet’s presence when the light from a star dipped, as a planet passed in front. Other techniques let astronomers measure the presence of a planet by calculating how the star wobbles because of the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet. But this is different. The photo above is of a planet in a different solar system as seen through a telescope.

It’s really, really hard to see planets like this one directly. You need a big, advanced telescope. To see HD95086 b, astronomers with the European Southern Observatory used the Very Large Telescope. (Yes, that’s its real name.) The movement of the atmosphere, which a telescope on the ground needs to look through, can perturb the view. The Very Large Telescope is equipped with adaptive optics, a way for the instruments to account for the atmospheric distortion and clean up the image. The astronomers also used a technique to bump up the contrast so that they could see the faint planet.

According to Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, the new planet is around four or five times as big as Jupiter and orbits its star at a distance about twice the distance between the Sun and Neptune. The star itself, says Howell, is a “baby” compared to the Sun: it’s just 17 million years old, compared to our star’s 4.5 billion years.

More from Smithsonian.com:

So Long, Kepler: NASA’s Crack Exoplanet-Hunter Falls to Mechanical Failure
17 Billion Earth-Size Planets! An Astronomer Reflects on the Possibility of Alien Life

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This Is an Actual Photo of a Planet in Another Solar System

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Ag-gag bill chokes in Tennessee

by gt67dx1 Posted on May 17, 2013

Ag-gag bill chokes in Tennessee

By John Upton

Shutterstock

It appears ag-gag bills can’t even hoof it in farm country: Tennessee joins a roster of states who are strangling ag-gag bills before they can reach the killing floor.

Tennessee lawmakers had narrowly approved a bill that would have required anybody who filmed animal abuses to turn over the footage to law enforcement within 48 hours or risk being fined. That would have prevented undercover animal activists from documenting systematic animal abuse by agricultural workers, helping factory farms get away with cruelty.

But Gov. Bill Haslam (R) called BS on the bill and said that he plans to veto it. From a statement issued by the governor on Monday:

First, the Attorney General says the law is constitutionally suspect. Second, it appears to repeal parts of Tennessee’s Shield Law [which protects journalism] without saying so. If that is the case, it should say so. Third, there are concerns from some district attorneys that the act actually makes it more difficult to prosecute animal cruelty cases, which would be an unintended consequence.

For these reasons, I am vetoing HB1191/SB1248, and I respectfully encourage the General Assembly to reconsider this issue.

Ag-gag bills have been spreading through the U.S. faster than mystery disease at a Chinese swine farm. Some have become law, but others are being withdrawn, defeated, or vetoed. Grist’s Susie Cagle produced this interactive map last month to provide an overview.

Food Safety News reports that Haslam’s veto might make it less likely that other states will adopt such questionable bills:

Six states have adopted “ag-gag” laws. Iowa, Utah, and Missouri passed such legislation last year. Kansas, Montana and North Dakota did so back in 1990-91. No one can find much in the way of prosecutions under these laws, but that could be because animal welfare groups might be less active in those six states.

This year, “ag-gag” bills have fallen short. Wyoming adjourned before there could be a vote in the second house. Indiana’s chambers could not agree after passing differing versions. The bill’s California sponsor dropped it in that state. And now Tennessee’s bill died in a gubernatorial veto.

State legislatures are quickly shutting down for the year. Of the 50, 20 have already adjourned sine die. Many others will do so before June. A couple that meet into the summer, such as Nebraska and Pennsylvania, could still pass another “ag-gag” this year.

But the Tennessee veto makes that less likely than it was before the Haslam veto.

Baaahhh-eautiful.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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California Gov. Jerry Brown blames climate change for early wildfires

by gt67dx1 Posted on May 7, 2013

California Gov. Jerry Brown blames climate change for early wildfires

By John Upton

CAL FIRE

Jerry Brown tells journalists what’s what on Monday.

California’s governor was quick to blame climate change for the early-season wildfires that are already wreaking havoc in his state.

Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has been an advocate for climate action and a fiery critic of climate deniers. On Monday, he visited the state fire department’s aviation management unit as firefighters battled the remains of what a couple days earlier had been a raging blaze in the Santa Monica Mountains. While he was there, he shared some choice words with reporters about the causes and consequences of a fire season that’s shaping up to be a big one. From the Los Angeles Times:

“Our climate is changing, the weather is becoming more intense,” Brown said in an airplane hangar filled with trucks, airplanes and helicopters used by the state to fight fires. “It’s going to cost a lot of money and a lot of lives.

“The big issue (is) how do we adapt,” Brown said, “because it doesn’t look like the people who are in charge are going to do what it takes to really slow down this climate change, so we are going to have to adapt. And adapting is going to be very, very expensive.”

With the snowpack in the Sierra mountains at just 17% of normal, state officials are bracing for a long, destructive fire season. State Natural Resources Secretary John Laird, who joined Brown at Monday’s press conference, said he was preparing for “a deadly year.”

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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California Gov. Jerry Brown blames climate change for early wildfires

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