Category Archives: organic

Trolls Attacked Ashley Judd for Tweeting About Sports. Now She’s Fighting Back.

by KattieVassallo Posted on March 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Actress Ashley Judd, a well known University of Kentucky basketball fan and alumnus of the Division 1 school, is striking back at Twitter users who launched a tirade of sexually violent tweets aimed at her while she attended a Wildcats game over the weekend.

The explicit messages, which include being called a cunt and suggestions that she “suck a dick,” were prompted by her Tweet saying the opposing team was “playing dirty.” Now Judd indicates that she hopes to pursue charges against her trolls.

“The amount of gender violence that I experience is absolutely extraordinary,” Judd said on the Today show Tuesday. “And a significant part of my day today will be spent filing police reports at home about gender violence that’s directed at me in social media.”

Judd’s harassment comes at a time when more women are speaking out against online abuse, whether via cyber-stalking and threats or movements such as #Gamergate. However, prosecuting such threats has proved notoriously difficult. Some members of Congress are asking the federal government to beef up enforcement of laws that already prohibit such threats of violence. From 2010-2013, federal prosecutors only investigated 10 cyber-stalking reports, despite 2.5 million cases of women being harassed online.

Former Major League pitcher Curt Schilling recently used an alternative strategy to punish the men who trolled his daughter on Twitter: He tracked down their identities and outed them. At least one man lost his job as a result; others were suspended from their college sports teams.

As for the uncomfortable kiss from ESPN’s Dick Vitale photographed during the same Wildcats game, Judd says they are friends, and that she’s “adored him” for 10 years.

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Trolls Attacked Ashley Judd for Tweeting About Sports. Now She’s Fighting Back.

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Obama: It’s "Disturbing" That a Climate Change Denier Runs the Senate’s Environment Committee

by GuillermoBatche Posted on March 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

President Barack Obama told Vice News in an interview released on Monday that it was “disturbing” that the chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works denied the existence of climate change. (Watch the video above.)

Obama was referring to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who threw a snowball on the Senate floor earlier this month to help make his case that climate change isn’t real. Even though Inhofe cited record low temperatures across the country as evidence that climate change was overplayed, the country has actually been experiencing a warmer than average winter.

“That’s disturbing,” Obama said when Vice’s Shane Smith pointed out that the stunt would have been funny if it weren’t for Inhofe’s chairmanship.

Inhofe, who wrote the book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, has also cited Scripture as part of his argument for why climate change isn’t real.

Obama said he couldn’t fault people who were concerned about gas prices and that climate change was a difficult political issue address because it had no immediate payoff. But he also attributed some of the challenge to the influence that the oil and gas industry holds with elected officials.

“In some cases, though, you have elected officials who are shills for the oil companies or the fossil fuel industry and there’s a lot of money involved,” he said. “Typically in Congress the committees of jurisdiction, like the energy committees, are populated by folks from places that pump a lot of oil and pump a lot of gas.”

As president, Obama said that he hoped to get the country to see climate change “as a serious, immediate threat, not some distant vague thing.”

Obama added that he recognized that even if he was able to secure international commitments on climate change and improve fuel and appliance efficiency standards, climate change would still be a big problem when he left office.

“If I’m able to do all those things now, when I’m done we’re still gonna have a heck of a problem, but we will have made enough progress that the next president and the next generation can start building on it and you start getting some momentum.”

The way that his daughters understood the science of climate change, Obama said, gave him hope that future generations would force politicians to take on the threat.

“I guarantee you that the Republican party will have to change its approach to climate change because voters will insist upon it,” he said.

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Obama: It’s "Disturbing" That a Climate Change Denier Runs the Senate’s Environment Committee

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Wind Energy Will Be Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels Within a Decade

by Patrici1131 Posted on March 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Wind energy is growing fast. While it still accounts for less than 5 percent of the United States’ total electricity mix, wind is by far the biggest source of renewable energy other than hydroelectric dams, and it accounted for 23 percent of new power production capacity built last year. Some experts think wind could provide a fifth of the world’s energy by 2030. But wind in the US is always in a perilous position, thanks to its heavy reliance on a federal tax credit that is routinely attacked in Congress; the subsidy was allowed to expire at the end of last year, and its ultimate fate remains unclear.

Fortunately, wind won’t be subject to the whims of legislators for much longer, according to a new analysis from the Energy Department. The new report found that within a decade, wind will be cost-competitive with fossil fuels like natural gas, even without a federal tax incentive.

From Bloomberg Business:

Cost reductions and technology improvements will reduce the price of wind power to below that of fossil-fuel generation, even after a $23-per-megawatt-hour subsidy provided now to wind farm owners ends, according to a report released Thursday.

“Wind offers a power resource that’s already the most competitive option in many parts of the nation,” Lynn Orr, under secretary for science and energy at the Energy Department, said on a conference call with reporters. “With continued commitment, wind can be the cheapest, cleanest power option in all 50 states by 2050.”

That would be a huge win for slowing climate change. The report finds that it could also lead to billions of dollars of benefits to the American public, from lower monthly electric bills to fewer air-pollution-related deaths.

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Wind Energy Will Be Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels Within a Decade

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What Benjamin Netanyahu and Mitt Romney Have in Common

by LucioK20ml Posted on March 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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As Tuesday’s national elections in Israeli neared, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was struggling to hold on to power, appeared to become more worried about his prospects and more desperate in his pitchmanship. Dropping all pretenses, he played the race card early on Election Day, posting a Facebook video with an explicit ethnic message: “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.” The intent was obvious—to scare the hell out of right-wing and anti-Arab voters who had not yet hit the polls. This brazen move followed another brazen sop to the right. On Monday night, Netanyahu declared that if he were elected, he would never permit the establishment of a Palestinian state. With this last-minute pander, Netanyahu reversed his previous public position—announced in a 2009 speech—that he supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

His back-flip was not much of a surprise. It’s an indicator of what was widely suspected at home and abroad: Netanyahu never really believed in the two-state solution, which has the been the foundation of Mideast diplomatic initiatives for two decades. But this issue is bigger than Netanyahu. Conservatives in his Likud party and Republicans in the United States have played the same game for years: expressing support for the two-state solution without meaning it. Why would they do that? Because there is a strong international consensus in favor of the two-party path to peace. Those who don’t buy it are not part of the mainstream debate; they’re outside the tent. Consequently, many Israeli conservatives and their comrades in the United States—who truly don’t want a Palestinian state—have figured out that if they mouth the words, they can gain entrance to the tent and piss away, or, at least, slyly obstruct.

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What Benjamin Netanyahu and Mitt Romney Have in Common

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Obama Just Officially Decided White House Emails Aren’t Subject to the Freedom of Information Act

by BradleyNigg Posted on March 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Civil liberties advocates are adding another strike to the Obama administration’s record on transparency: on Monday, the White House announced that it is officially ending the Freedom of Information Act obligations of its Office of Administration. That office provides broad administrative support to the White House—including the archiving of emails—and had been subject to FOIA for much of its nearly four-decade history.

In 2007, the George W. Bush administration decided that its OA would reject any FOIA requests, freeing it from the burden to release emails regarding any number of Bush-era scandals. When President Obama took office in 2009, transparency advocates were hopeful that he’d strike down the Bush policy—especially after he claimed transparency would be a “touchstone” of his presidency. In a letter that year, advocates from dozens of organizations urged Obama to restore transparency to the OA.

He never did, and Monday’s move from the White House makes the long-standing policy official. Coincidentally, March 16th was Freedom of Information Day, and this week marks the annual Sunshine Week, which focuses on open government.

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Obama Just Officially Decided White House Emails Aren’t Subject to the Freedom of Information Act

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DIY Non-Toxic Foaming Handsoap

by ChantalWills Posted on March 17, 2015

Follow this link – 

DIY Non-Toxic Foaming Handsoap

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Quick Reads: "Fire and Ice" by Jonathan Mingle

by RickLitchfield Posted on March 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Fire and Ice

By Jonathan Mingle

ST. MARTIN’S PRESS

What kills more people than HIV, malaria, and TB combined? The unlikely answer is soot and smoke from cookstoves and hearths. In Fire and Ice, Jonathan Mingle explains how this dirty residue, a.k.a. black carbon, is one of the world’s most dangerous and least understood pollutants, leading to millions of premature deaths annually and contributing more to glacial melting than carbon dioxide does. His narrative humanizes the casualties—from drought-stricken California farmers to Himalayan families losing their water sources—and makes a compelling case for how we can clear our skies.

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Quick Reads: "Fire and Ice" by Jonathan Mingle

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5 Must-See True Crime Documentaries to Catch After "The Jinx"

by DylanFreeling Posted on March 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sunday’s finale of the HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst ended with the eccentric protagonist muttering a seeming confession to three murders over the last 30 years.

“What the hell did I do?” Durst said. “Killed them all, of course.”

The revelation culminated an eight-year investigation into the life and trials of Durst, the estranged son of a New York real estate dynasty. He has maintained his innocence in the 1982 disappearance of his first wife and was acquitted in the 2001 slaying of Morris Black in Galveston, Texas. But Durst was arrested on Saturday, a day before the finale aired, in a New Orleans hotel after new evidence emerged that law enforcement officials allege linked him to the 2000 murder of confidante Susan Berman. On Monday, Los Angeles prosecutors charged Durst with first-degree murder in California, in addition to weapons charges in Louisiana.

All eyes will surely stay glued to Durst’s case as it unfolds, but The Jinx, a well-paced journalistic masterpiece, is over. The inevitable question for today’s budding Sherlock Holmes becomes: What to watch next?

Since True Detective reportedly won’t return until this summer, and the second season of Serial isn’t out yet, here are a few true-crime documentaries to check out now:

Central Park Five

The 2012 Ken Burns documentary looks into the 1989 case of five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park. The film, which is on Netflix, takes a look at the case and its aftermath from the perspectives of the accused, whose convictions were later tossed out after a convicted rapist confessed to the crime.

Into The Abyss

Acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog dives into the aftermath of a triple homicide in the small city of Conroe, Texas as part of a larger examination into capital punishment in the United States. This 2011 doc is still on Netflix.

The Imposter

A 13-year-old boy in Texas disappears in 1994, then reportedly resurfaces three years later in Spain. But that’s not the whole story. A French con artist tells all in this gripping 2012 documentary, which can be seen on Netflix.

The Paradise Lost trilogy

In this three-part series, renowned filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky focus on the infamous case of the “West Memphis Three,” a trio of teenagers who were convicted of the brutal triple homicide in 1993 of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. The three men were later freed after 18 years in prison. You can find this one on Amazon Prime.

The Thin Blue Line

A throwback from 1988, Errol Morris investigates the questionable conviction of Randall Dale Adams, who was wrongly sentenced to life in prison for killing a Dallas police officer in 1976. The film, which is on Netflix, played a role in exonerating Adams a year later.

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5 Must-See True Crime Documentaries to Catch After "The Jinx"

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Meet the New Endocrine-Disrupting Plastic Chemical, Same as the Old One

by ElvaYXZOzq Posted on March 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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By now, most people know about the common plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA), which behaves like estrogen in our bodies and has been linked to a range of health problems, including cancer, birth defects, and irregular brain development in kids. Like other endocrine-disrupting chemicals, BPA seems to cause hormonal damage at extremely low levels. In a 2014 story, my colleague Mariah Blake brought home an unsettling point: The chemical compounds that manufacturers have been scrambling to use in place of BPA might be just as bad.

And now a new paper, published on the peer-reviewed Environmental Health Perspectives, examines the science around two common chemicals used in “BPA-Free” packaging: BPS and BPF. The authors looked at 32 studies and concluded that “based on the current literature, BPS and BPF are as hormonally active as BPA, and have endocrine-disrupting effects.” In other words, the cure may be just as bad as the disease.

It’s not clear how widely these substitutes are being used, because manufacturers aren’t required to disclose what they put in packaging. But there’s evidence that BPS is quite common. BPA, for example, is widely used in paper receipts to make them more durable; and in a 2014 study, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency tested paper receipts from 19 facilities, and found that nine contained BPA and nine contained BPS. The researchers concluded that BPS is “being used as a common alternative to BPA in thermal paper applications, and in comparable concentrations.”

Because “BPS has also been found to be an endocrine active chemical,” the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency urges the state’s businesses to shift to electronic receipts. I’ve taken on a similar strategy—I’m even phasing out my beloved canned craft beer, because cans used by the food and beverage industries tend to be lined with BPA. Unlike the businessman in The Graduate, I’ve got two words, not one—at least until the chemical industry can prove it can create a genuinely safe BPA substitute: Avoid plastics.

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Meet the New Endocrine-Disrupting Plastic Chemical, Same as the Old One

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If You Own a Pitchfork, You Will Grab It When You See This Chart

by CharlaHoyt Posted on March 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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This statistic provides a pretty compelling snapshot of the severity of our income gap: In 2014, Wall Street’s bonus pool was roughly double the combined earnings of all Americans working full-time jobs at minimum wage.

That sobering tidbit came from a new Institute for Policy Studies report by Sarah Anderson, who looked at new figures from the New York State Comptroller and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average bonus for one of New York City’s 167,800 employees in the securities industry came out to $172,860—on top of an average salary of nearly $200,000. On the other side of the equation were about one million people working full time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

In a recent New York Times article, Justin Wolfers, a senior fellow for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, picked apart some of the uncertainties that go into creating such a calculation, and ultimately came up with a similar result:

The count of workers at federal minimum wage includes only those who are paid hourly, and so omits those paid weekly or monthly. On the flip side, the B.L.S. count is based on income before tips and commissions, and so may overstate the number of people with low hourly earnings. And while my calculation assumed that all minimum wage workers earn $7.25 per hour, in fact many earn less than this, including wait staff and others who rely on tips, some students and young workers, certain farmworkers, and those whose bosses simply flout the minimum wage law.

For all of these uncertainties, the broad picture doesn’t change. My judgment is that we can be pretty confident that Ms. Anderson’s estimate that the sum of Wall Street bonuses is roughly twice the total amount paid to all full-time workers paid minimum wage seems like a fair characterization.

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If You Own a Pitchfork, You Will Grab It When You See This Chart

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