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This chart of rising ocean temperatures is terrifying

by HarrisoMahan Posted on January 22, 2015

This chart of rising ocean temperatures is terrifying

By on 22 Jan 2015commentsShare

This year’s biggest climate change news was that 2014 was hottest year on record. Turns out, there’s bigger news: It was also the hottest year in the oceans, which are warming so fast they’re literally breaking the NOAA’s charts.

Don’t think you mind a little jacuzzification in your ocean? You’re wrong. Warmer oceans matter because “global warming” doesn’t just mean above average air temperatures over the course of a year — it actually refers to an increase in the total amount of heat energy contained in the Earth’s systems. While air temperatures can fluctuate on any given year, they are usually matched by an increase or decrease of the amount of heat stored in the oceans (which, by the way, absorb around 90 percent of total global warming heat). To know whether the system as a whole is getting warmer or not, scientists need to take into account the temperatures of the atmosphere, land, AND oceans.

Luckily, NOAA has been tracking ocean energy data for decades, updating its charts every few months. Unluckily, the newest data shows that, on top of 2014’s record-breaking air temperatures, ocean temperatures have also increased — to put it in layman’s terms — a shit ton. The spike is so significant that NOAA will have to rescale its heat chart.

Ocean heat content data to a depth of 2,000 meters

NOAA

OK, people. We don’t want to sound like a broken record about the reality of climate change … and actually this time we don’t have to. This is one broken record that speaks for itself.

Source:
The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists’ charts

, The Guardian.

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This chart of rising ocean temperatures is terrifying

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“Baby Turtle Eating Strawberry” Is the Most Adorable Thing I Have Ever Seen

by ToddLording Posted on January 18, 2015

Mother Jones

I don’t know if this is real. I don’t know the context. I saw it on Twitter and it appears to be from some fly-by-night viral Vine account. So full disclosure, that could very well be an ambitious USC undergraduate in a turtle costume. Maybe that strawberry was created by Industrial Light & Magic. Having said that, I don’t care. This is so adorable. I’ve never seen anything this adorable. And I’ve seen adorable things! I’ve seen bunnies hold hands and beagles wrestle. This baby turtle puts them all to shame. It makes the porcupine eating a pumpkin video look like Unforgiven. Unforgiven is not adorable! It’s a blood soaked black hole from which cuteness cannot escape. That is how adorable this vine is.

via Lauren Evans.

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“Baby Turtle Eating Strawberry” Is the Most Adorable Thing I Have Ever Seen

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Tom’s Kichen: Pasta Fagioli with Winter Vegetables and Bacon

by UlrikeFensterma Posted on January 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pasta makes a great showcase for a season’s bounty—and not just in spring, despite the famed dish spaghetti primavera. I recently found myself in possession of some excellent butternut squash and collard greens from Austin’s Boggy Creek Farm, as well as gorgeous bacon from the throwback butcher shop Salt and Time. So, sweet (squash), pungent (collards), smoky/umami (bacon): elements of a great dish. To round it out, I decided to add white beans to the mix, using a method I recently picked up from the Los Angeles Times’ Russ Parsons: Without any soaking, you cook the beans in a covered pot in an oven heated to 350 F. Within two hours, I had perfectly tender, flavorful beans to bolster my pasta. (You can also just open a can, of course.) Grate a little Parmesan cheese and open a bottle of sturdy red wine, and you’ve got a dinner satisfying enough to overwhelm the winter blues.

Vegetarians can forgo the bacon and cook the collard greens in olive oil along with a rehydrated and chopped-up chipotle pepper, maintaining the smoke while adding a blast of heat.

Pasta Fagioli with Winter Vegetables and Bacon

1 large or two small butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces (a tricky task, but easily accomplished with a sharp knife and proper technique, laid out here)
Some extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 or 5 slices of bacon, preferably from pastured hogs, cut into half-inch chunks
3-4 cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, and minced
1 large bunch of collard greens, stemmed and chopped
1 pound of pasta (I used Bionaturae whole wheat spaghetti)
1 1/12 cups cooked white beans (Russ Parsons’ no-soak method here; you can also substitute 1 can of beans)
Plenty of fresh-ground black pepper
1 bunch parsley, chopped, and crushed chile flakes, to garnish
A chunk of Parmesan or other hard cheese, for grating.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Dump the squash cubes onto a baking sheet and give them a few glugs of olive oil, a good pinch of salt, and a lashing of black pepper. Using your hands, toss them to coat them evenly with oil, and then arrange the cubes in a single layer. Bake them, turning once or twice, until they are tender and beginning to brown, about 40 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, put a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat and add the bacon. Cook it, stirring often, until it is brown and crisp. Remove the bacon from the skillet with a slotted soon, setting it aside. With the bacon fat still in the skillet, add the garlic. Cook it for a few seconds, stirring often, and add the chopped collards. Using a spatula or tongs, toss them well, coating them with fat and garlic. Add a pinch of salt and a dash of water. Turn heat low and cover the skillet, and let the collards cook, stirring occasionally, until they are tender.

When the squash and collards are both well underway, cook the pasta using the low-water method. Reserve about a cup of the cooking liquid before draining the pasta.

In a large bowl, combine the squash, collard greens, beans, and the cup of pasta cooking liquid. Dump the hot pasta over, and gently combine everything using a tongs or two big spoons. Add the parsley, a pinch of chile flakes, and several grinds of pepper, and taste for salt, correcting if necessary. Pass the Parmesan and a grater at the table.

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Tom’s Kichen: Pasta Fagioli with Winter Vegetables and Bacon

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Evil Cannibal Squirrels Could Make California’s Drought Less Terrible

by CharmaiMcNess Posted on January 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared at Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Among alfalfa farmers in Northern California, Public Enemy No. 1 is a promiscuous, photogenic fur ball that weighs only half a pound and spends most of its life asleep. But with the critter helping the state weather its worst drought in 1,200 years, that perception may soon be a thing of the past.

The diminutive Belding’s ground squirrel, an important link in the food chain for coyotes, bobcats, foxes, weasels, and raptors, has a long and troubled history as a major agricultural pest.

Blame the squirrel’s voracious appetite for alfalfa. Blame its fleas, which can carry plague. Above all, blame the complex network of burrows it digs, which trip up livestock and damage farm machinery.

All told, there are few animals in greater need of an image makeover than the rodent known to biologists as Urocitellus beldingi, and to detractors as pot gut, sage rat, and picket pin.

But now, courtesy of climate change and California’s record-setting drought, Belding’s ground squirrels may be on the brink of a reversal of fortune. The same rodents responsible for millions of dollars’ worth of lost crops and damaged equipment might just turn out to be highly valuable ecosystem engineers, a designation reserved for organisms that modify their habitats, improving ecosystem stability and health.

In this case, the same burrowing behavior that wreaks havoc on cultivated land can be of enormous benefit to the high-altitude meadows that are the Belding’s ground squirrels’ natural habitat. These meadows play a key role in storing and filtering the parched Golden State’s water supply.

“Belding’s are beneficial to the meadows if, as we suspect, they act as ecosystem engineers and help aerate and otherwise affect the soils of the meadows they specialize in,” says Toni Lyn Morelli, adjunct assistant professor and program manager with the Department of Interior Northeast Climate Science Center based at the University of Massachusetts.

“These meadows are then more effective at filtering and holding the water that eventually trickles down, so to speak, to be the water that is drunk and used by the majority of the state of California,” says Morelli.

Unfortunately, the prospect of newfound favor comes at a time when Belding’s ground squirrels may be scampering toward extinction. While few farmers would mourn their demise, scientists see it as part of a disturbing pattern clearly driven by climate change.

When biologist Joseph Grinnell set out a century ago to document it, California’s natural diversity was already diminishing. The founding director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley believed human activity—irrigation, cultivation, and deforestation—was to blame.

Along with setting the standard for modern biological field work, Grinnell’s detailed field journals, photographs, and specimens provide an unrivaled basis for modern biological comparison.

A research team led by Morelli revisited some of the sites documented by Grinnell in search of the Belding’s ground squirrel. Their findings were most unexpected: The animal had disappeared from nearly half of the sites where Grinnell had reported them.

“We were surprised to see such a dramatic decline in this species, which is well-known to Sierran hikers and was thought to be fairly common,” Morelli says. “In fact, the rate of decline is much greater than that seen in the same region for the pika, a small mountain-dwelling cousin of the rabbit that has become the poster child for the effects of global warming in the contiguous United States.”

Morelli saw a clear connection between the Belding’s disappearance and climate change. The areas where the squirrels could no longer be found were the ones that had gotten hotter. They were also the areas where precipitation patterns had markedly changed.

There was one exception, however: The squirrels had made themselves at home on lower-lying cultivated land such as alfalfa fields and other irrigated areas that serve as an oasis amid hotter, drier conditions.

In some of these human-modified habitats, the squirrels have not only survived, but thrived. To the chagrin of farmers, Belding’s have achieved a density of more than 100 per acre while feasting on crops of alfalfa, rye, wheat, barley, and oats.

Besides California, Belding’s ground squirrels can be found in parts of Oregon, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. Like the much larger prairie dogs they resemble, they’re highly social creatures that depend on their numbers for survival and their burrows for safety.

They’re among few species that engage in altruistic behavior, standing upright and whistling to alert others to impending danger even as the whistle-blower becomes an easy target for predators.

While a single squirrel will sacrifice itself to warn others of danger, the disappearance of the species is a warning humanity would be wise to heed. The Sierra Nevada’s approximately 17,000 high altitude meadows are drying out, which exacerbates California’s ongoing water crisis while making survival harder for the Belding’s squirrel.

Normally, the annual winter snowpack protects the soil from degradation caused by fluctuations in temperature and precipitation. But after years of excessive variations in both, the soil is becoming less porous. This makes it less able to trap moisture and slowly release it into the streams.

The Belding’s ground squirrel also relies on an insulating blanket of snow to protect it during a hibernation that can last up to nine months, the longest of any mammal. Without consistent snow cover, Morelli suspects, the squirrels froze in their burrows. Others likely drowned, she says, since rain and snow that fall on dry soil are poorly absorbed and therefore more apt to cause flooding.

Early thaws followed by more winter weather can be equally deadly, as researchers discovered in the 1970s when a Sierra Nevada snowstorm hit eight days after the Belding’s ground squirrels had begun to emerge from hibernation.

The squirrels stopped mating, their weight dropped sharply, and they became more susceptible to predators. Some depleted their fat reserves and starved. Similar scenarios may have played out in other sites from which the squirrels have vanished. With climate change expected to bring greater swings in temperature and extreme weather, these patterns are likely to continue.

Even apart from the challenges of extreme weather and shrinking habitat, Belding’s ground squirrels face precarious odds in their struggle for survival. Hibernation takes an enormous toll. Biologists who tracked a population of Belding’s ground squirrels in the central Sierra Nevada for 11 consecutive seasons found that more than one-third of adults and two-thirds of young never re-emerge from their long winter’s nap.

Those that do can live four or five years, relatively long for a rodent. But on average, males live only half as long as females, partly because they severely injure one another fighting for the right to mate on the one day a year when the female is fertile. On that day, the female mates with multiple males, producing an average litter of eight a month later.

During their active period in the summer, they gorge on leaves, stems, bulbs, fruits, and occasionally each other, doubling their body weight. In the cultivated fields where squirrels have taken up residence, “there are areas that have been chewed to the soil,” Morelli says. “They look like crop circles, like aliens have landed.”

In one study by the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, an estimated 123 squirrels removed 1,800 pounds of crop per acre in 44 days.

By treating farm fields as a free buffet, the squirrels have curried no favor with their human landlords who rely on those fields for their livelihoods.

“I’ve talked to locals and been told, ‘I hire high school kids, give them a box of 22’s, and a dollar a tail for their efforts,'” says James Patton, emeritus professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley, and curator of mammals at the museum founded by Joseph Grinnell.

“Burrowing animals provide tremendous positive benefit that is completely ignored by everyone,” says Patton, who places soil restoration at the top of the list. “In addition, they eat grasses, which keeps grass on the landscape. Because of that, they keep more water in the landscape. And that also prevents erosion.”

With climate change and the California drought throwing its ecosystem services into sharp relief, the crop-eating pest may be recast from reviled rodent to high elevation hero—provided the species survives.

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Once Again, American Weapons-Makers Are Making a Killing in Iraq

by RandallCallaway Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

The current American war in Iraq is a struggle in search of a goal. It began in August as a humanitarian intervention, morphed into a campaign to protect Americans in-country, became a plan to defend the Kurds, followed by a full-on crusade to defeat the new Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS, aka ISIL), and then… well, something in Syria to be determined at a later date.

At the moment, Iraq War 3.0 simply drones on, part bombing campaign, part mission to train the collapsed army the US military created for Iraq War 2.0, all amid a miasma of incoherent mainstream media coverage. American troops are tiptoeing closer to combat (assuming you don’t count defensive operations, getting mortared, and flying ground attack helicopters as “combat”), even as they act like archaeologists of America’s warring past, exploring the ruins of abandoned US bases. Meanwhile, Shia militias are using the conflict for the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis and Iran has become an ever-more significant player in Iraq’s affairs. Key issues of the previous American occupation of the country—corruption, representative government, oil revenue-sharing—remain largely unresolved. The Kurds still keep “winning” against the militants of IS in the city of Kobani on the Turkish border without having “won.”

In the meantime, Washington’s rallying cry now seems to be: “Wait for the spring offensive!” In translation that means: wait for the Iraqi army to get enough newly American-trained and -armed troops into action to make a move on Mosul. That city is, of course, the country’s second largest and still ruled by the new “caliphate” proclaimed by Islamic State head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. All in all, not exactly inspiring stuff.

You can’t have victory if you have no idea where the finish line is. But there is one bright side to the situation. If you can’t create Victory in Iraq for future VI Day parades, you can at least make a profit from the disintegrating situation there.

Team America’s Arms Sales Force

In the midst of the December holiday news-dumping zone, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) quietly notified Congress of several pending arms deals for Iraq. DSCA is the Pentagon office responsible for coordinating arms agreements between American defense contractors and foreign buyers.

Before those thousands of not-boots-on-the-ground troops started hemorrhaging back into Iraq late last year, DSCA personnel made up a significant portion of all US military personnel still there. Its staff members are, in fact, common in US embassies in general. This shouldn’t be surprising, since the sales of weaponry and other kinds of war equipment are big business for a range of American companies, and the US government is more than happy to assist. In fact, there is even a handbook to guide foreign governments through the buying process.

The DSCA operates under a mission statement which says the “US may sell defense articles and services to foreign countries and international organizations when the President formally finds that to do so will strengthen the security of the US and promote world peace.” While the Pentagon carries out the heavy lifting, actual recommendations on which countries can buy US gear are made by the secretary of state, and then rubber-stamped by Congress.

As for countries that can’t afford US weaponry, Washington has the Foreign Military Finance program up its sleeve. This opens the way for the US government to pay for weapons for other countries—only to “promote world peace,” of course—using your tax dollars, which are then recycled into the hands of military-industrial-complex corporations.

Iraq’s Shopping List

Here’s part of what the US is getting ready to sell to Iraq right now:

* 175 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks;

* 15 Hercules tank recovery vehicles (you can’t have a tank without the tow truck);

* 55,000 rounds of main gun ammunition for the tanks (the ammo needed to get the biggest bang for your bucks)

And what will all that firepower cost? Just under $3 billion.

Keep in mind that these are only the most recent proposed sales when it comes to tanks. In July, for example, General Dynamics received a $65.3 million contract to support the existing Iraq M1A1 Abrams program. In October, the US approved the sale of $600 million in M1 tank ammunition to that country. There have also been sales of all sorts of other weaponry, from $579 million worth of Humvees and $600 million in howitzers and trucks to $700 million worth of Hellfire missiles. There are many more examples. Business is good.

While the collapse of the Iraqi army and the abandonment of piles of its American weaponry, including at least 40 M1s, to IS militants, helped create this new business opportunity for weapons-makers like General Dynamics, the plan to cash in on Iraq can be traced back to America’s occupation of that country. Forward Operating Base Hammer, where both Private Chelsea Manning (she collecting State Department cables for WikiLeaks) and I (supervising State Department reconstruction efforts) lived for a year or so, was built across the street from the Besmaya Firing Range. That testing grounds was US-outfitted not just for the live firing of artillery, but for—you guessed it—M1 tanks. It was to be part of the pipeline that would keep an expensive weapons system heading into Iraq forever. In 2011, as US troops left the country, both facilities were “gifted” to the Iraqis to serve as logistics bases for training in, and the repair of, US-sold weapons.

As I write this, American contractors still live on the remnants of Hammer, supporting the Iraqi army’s use of whatever M1 tanks they didn’t turn over to the Islamic State. On a contractor job-review site, “job work/life balance” at the base gets an acceptable 3.5 stars from those working there and one American trainer even praises the fact that work starts and ends before the heat of the day (even if another complains that the only toilets available are still port-a-potties).

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Once Again, American Weapons-Makers Are Making a Killing in Iraq

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How Companies Like Walmart Are Fighting to Keep Workplace Injuries Secret

by MariaGJIUlateds Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Nearly four years ago, while lifting pallets of blankets during an overnight stocking shift at Walmart, Barb Gertz began to notice a dull pain in her arms. She kept on lifting and stocking, but by the time her lunch break rolled around she could no longer raise her arms. Her doctor told her she had tendinitis in her biceps, and that it was most likely caused by her job. Walmart disagreed. The retailer contested Gertz’s workplace-injury claim—and won.

If Gertz had worked in a factory, she could have bolstered her case with evidence from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s national database of manufacturing workplace injuries. But no such database exists for retail workers like Gertz. A new regulation that OSHA is scheduled to finalize this year would change that. OSHA wants to create a public database of workplace injury and illness data from all industries, not just manufacturing. This would help workers, the government, researchers, and journalists identify companies with safety problems. But the trade groups that represent some of America’s biggest chains—including Walmart, Target, and McDonald’s—are fighting back hard.

The National Retail Federation—a group that represents Walmart, McDonald’s, and The Container Store—spent $2.4 million lobbying on this measure and other issues between January and September of last year. In a letter to OSHA last March, the group complained that the rule would require disclosure of confidential information, lay blame on employers for non-work-related injuries, be too costly, and empower unions. Last year, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which counts Walmart, Target, and Home Depot among its more than 200 members, also urged the agency to kill the rule. The US Chamber of Commerce spent more than $28 million between July and September of last year on lobbying—including on this regulation, which the Chamber says is more burdensome on industry than OSHA will admit. And the Coalition for Workplace Safety, an association of trade groups that includes the Chamber, the NRF, and NILA, has asked OSHA to scrap the rule.

Walmart did not respond to a request for comment on whether the lobbying groups’ stance on the regulation reflects its own. Nor did McDonald’s, The Container Store, Home Depot, or Target.

All workplaces are already required keep internal paper records of worker injuries and illnesses. The new OSHA rule would simply require that all companies electronically submit that information to OSHA each quarter—just like manufacturing plants do already. “Industry says, ‘Oh my God, we can’t do that, it’s really burdensome.’ Well, they already have to keep these records,” says Robyn Robbins, the assistant director of the occupational health and safety office at the United Food and Commercial Workers, a labor union that supports the change. She adds that many employers have already moved away from old-fashioned paper records and are keeping internal records electronically. All companies would have to do is submit those e-records to OSHA.

The regulation would apply to companies with more than 250 employees as well as smaller companies in high-hazard industries, such as freight trucking, construction, and waste collection. Businesses would be required to submit data including the job title of the employee, the type of injury, where it occurred, what the worker was doing before the incident, and the number of workdays the employee had to miss as a result. With the information, OSHA and employers “will be better able to…abate workplace hazards,” an OSHA spokeswoman said in an email.

If such a database had existed when Gertz submitted her claim, it could have helped her build the case that her injury was work-related. “It will be easier to prove that it’s not just the worker, it’s a company thing,” she says. The OSHA measure “has great potential to allow workers to make the connection between the dangerous work they’re doing and the work-related injuries that are occurring,” Robbins says.

“I really hope the regulation goes through—for the benefit of all workers,” Gertz says.

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How Companies Like Walmart Are Fighting to Keep Workplace Injuries Secret

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Pope Francis: Climate Change Is Real and Humans Are Causing It

by JudeStoutds Posted on January 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pope Francis made headlines Thursday when he told reporters that he believes climate change is largely caused by humans. “I don’t know if it human activity is the only cause, but mostly, in great part, it is man who has slapped nature in the face,” said Francis, according to the Associated Press. “We have in a sense taken over nature.”

But how does the pope know that humans are responsible for most of the unprecedented warming that has occurred in recent years? How can he be sure it wasn’t caused by solar cycles? Or volcanoes? Or “global wobbling“? Here’s a hint: The AP mentions that some of Francis’ top aides have recently noted “that there is clear-cut scientific evidence that climate change is driven by human activity.”

That’s right. Unlike much of the US Congress, the pope seems seems to be relying on science to inform his opinions about climate change. And indeed, his remarks Thursday echoed the scientific consensus on the issue. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for instance, recently declared it “extremely likely”—that is, at least 95 percent certain—that “human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

Still, all the science in the world won’t help much if we don’t actually do something to reign in the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the problem. And the pope is pushing for action. According to the AP, Francis criticized world leaders for failing to accomplish enough at a recent climate conference in Lima, Peru, and he called for them to be “more courageous” when they reconvene in Paris later this year.

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Pope Francis: Climate Change Is Real and Humans Are Causing It

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Charlie Hebdo Unveils First Cover Since Paris Massacre Featuring Image of Muhammad

by MeganCamarena Posted on January 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Warning: An image of the controversial cover appears below.

Charlie Hebdo unveiled the cover illustration for its first issue following last week’s deadly attack on the magazine. The cover, for what is being dubbed the “survivors’ issue,” features an image of the Prophet Muhammad holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign. The words “Tous Est Pardonné”—”All Is Forgiven”—hang above. A tear is falling from his eye.

“We don’t feel any hate to them,” cartoonist Zineb El Rhazoui, who survived the attack and worked on the new edition, told the BBC, referring to the terrorists. “We know that the struggle is not with them as people, but the struggle is with an ideology.” Asked if the cover might alienate Muslims who have spoken out against the violence and in support of the satirical magazine—after all, Islam prohibits the portrayal of Muhammad—she said that Islam ought to be treated like any other religion and that anyone who is offended need not buy the issue.

Charlie Hebdo‘s decision to print an image of the prophet appears to be in direct defiance of the two terrorists who executed 12 of the magazine’s staff members last week. Past covers in which the prophet was illustrated, many times in crude or offensive light, have drawn the ire of Muslims throughout the world, prompting repeated threats of violence against the controversial publication. Since the attack in Paris, various news outlets, including the New York Times and the Associated Press, said they would not be publishing Charlie Hebdo images depicting the prophet because of its “deliberately provocative” intent. Other publications, including the Washington Post and the Guardian, have gone ahead and published the latest cover, citing freedom of speech, the covers’ newsworthy element, and the special role that scorching satire has in French political and cultural life. For the Post, it is the first time a depiction of the prophet has appeared. Executive Editor Martin Baron said that although the paper prohibits material that is “deliberately” offensive, Charlie Hebdo‘s newest cover did not meet that measure; the Guardian explained it would be publishing this cover because of its “news value.”

While Charlie Hebdo has historically skewered all religions and various government figures, in the past few years, its editors have specifically targeted Islam. Given France’s fraught relations with its Muslim population, many have questioned whether Charlie Hebdo went too far, or as one French politician once put it, chose to “pour oil on the fire.” Following last week’s attack, Adam Shatz wrote in the London Book of Review:

Charlie Hebdo had an equal opportunity policy when it came to giving offense, but in recent years it had come to lean heavily on jokes about Muslims, who are among the most vulnerable citizens in France. Assia a pseudonym Shatz refers to in his piece does not believe in censorship, but wonders: “Is this really the time for cartoons lampooning the Prophet, given the situation of North Africans in France?”…If France continues to treat French men of North African origin as if they were a threat to “our” civilisation, more of them are likely to declare themselves a threat, and follow the example of the Kouachi brothers. This would be a gift both to Marine Le Pen and the jihadists, who operate from the same premise: that there is an apocalyptic war between Europe and Islam. We are far from that war, but the events of 7 January have brought us a little closer.

The issue is set for release January 14, with an estimated 3 million copies being printed. The normal circulation for the magazine has been 60,000.

Click for larger version. Charlie Hebdo

Update, January 14, 2015, 8:50 a.m. EST: After copies sell out in France, Charlie Hebdo raised its print run to 5 million.

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Charlie Hebdo Unveils First Cover Since Paris Massacre Featuring Image of Muhammad

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The House Is Set to Pass a GOP Bill Wiping Out Wall Street Reforms

by OnitaBledsoe Posted on January 12, 2015

Mother Jones

The Republican-dominated House is poised to approve legislation this week that would obliterate a slew of important Wall Street reforms. The legislation arrives just weeks after Congress and the Obama administration gave Wall Street two big handouts, and serves as an opening salvo in what will be a sustained Republican assault on financial reform over the next two years.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), is called the Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act, but its name obscures what it would actually do. The legislation is a compilation of deregulatory bills that failed to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate in the last Congress. It would alter nearly a dozen provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, loosening regulation of Wall Street banks. Here’s a look at the details of what the bill would do.

Delay the Volcker rule. The Volcker rule—one of the most important bits of Dodd-Frank—generally forbids the high-risk trading by commercial banks that helped cause the financial crisis. One high-risk product banks are supposed to stop trading are collateralized loan obligations, which are bundles of loans that are broken into pieces and sold to investors. In December, the Federal Reserve extended banks’ deadline to stop trading CLOs from 2015 to 2017. The Fitzpatrick bill would extend that deadline to 2019.

Water down rules on private equity firms. Private equity firms are required to register as brokers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) if they get paid for providing investment banking services such as merger advice. Brokers are subject to additional rules and more regulatory oversight. The bill would exempt some private equity firms from having to register as brokers.

Loosen regs on derivatives. Derivatives are financial instruments with values based on underlying numbers, such as crop prices or interest rates. The Fitzpatrick bill would allow Wall Street firms that own commercial businesses such as oil or gas operations to trade derivatives privately instead of in central clearinghouses, which are subject to more oversight. The bill would also forbid regulators from requiring that banks take collateral from companies that buy derivatives. Collateral can help offset losses if one of the parties involved in the transaction defaults.

Weaken transparency rules. The bill exempts about 60 percent of publicly traded companies from certain rules regarding how those companies must file financial statements with the SEC. The measure would also allow certain smaller companies to omit historical financial data in their financial statements. “This allows firms to choose a convenient history as they promote their securities,” the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen noted last week.

Last week, House Republicans tried to force Fitzpatrick’s bill through the House using a procedure typically used for uncontroversial bills or technical fixes. This process, known as fast-tracking, requires the bill to receive a yes vote from two-thirds of the chamber, or at least 290 members. But on Friday, just 276 of the 435 members of the House voted for the measure—well short of the two-thirds majority required. Now GOP leaders have resurrected the bill, and will push it through under the normal rules, which require just a simple majority. The bill is expected to pass the House easily, although it’s unclear whether the Senate would approve it. President Barack Obama would likely veto it. But GOPers could force the legislation into law by attaching bits of it to must-pass bills—such as spending legislation—later this year.

Fitzpatrick is a member of the House financial services committee. Between 2013 and 2014, he received more than $310,000 in donations from the finance and banking sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Fitzpatrick legislation signals the beginning of a sustained assault on Dodd-Frank by the new GOP Congress. Up next: the consumer protection bureau that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) helped create. (More about that here.) “We’re going to see repeated attempts to go in with seemingly technical changes that intimidate regulators and keep them from putting teeth in regulations,” Marcus Stanley, policy director at the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform told the New York Times this weekend. “If we return to the pre-crisis business as usual, where it’s routine for people to accommodate Wall Street on these technical changes, they’re just going to unravel the post-crisis regulation piece by piece. Then, we’ll be right back where we started.”

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The House Is Set to Pass a GOP Bill Wiping Out Wall Street Reforms

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The Keystone XL Pipeline Is One Step Closer to Approval

by DaciaStillings Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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

In a victory for proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the pipeline’s proposed route through the state can go forward.

The decision means that TransCanada, the company seeking to build the pipeline, can build the route that Nebraska’s former governor approved in 2013. The court ruling was split, with four of the court’s seven judges agreeing with a lower court that the 2012 law used to grant TransCanada that permission was unconstitutional. However, Nebraska requires a supermajority of at least five judges to strike down the law. “We believe that Nebraska citizens deserve a decision on the merits. But the supermajority requirement…coupled with the dissent’s refusal to reach the merits, means that the citizens cannot get a binding decision from this court,” the court wrote in the majority opinion.

In 2012, the Nebraska legislature passed a law that gave the governor authority to approve both the pipeline and the use of eminent domain to access land along the pipeline route. In January 2013, then-Gov. Dave Heineman (R) said yes to TransCanada’s proposed route through his state. But some landowners along the route sued, arguing that the legislature’s action violated the state constitution and that the decision should have been left to the Public Service Commission.

The plaintiffs won in county court early last year, and the state appealed to the Nebraska Supreme Court, which held oral arguments this past September.

Given the ongoing state-level fight, the Obama administration announced last April that it was delaying a federal decision on the pipeline until after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled.

But the newly Republican-controlled Congress is pushing legislation that would override the Obama administration’s process, which GOP lawmakers say has dragged on too long, and force approval of the pipeline. The House is slated to vote Friday on its legislation, while the Senate plans to vote next week.

The State Department said previously that it would give federal agencies at least 14 more days to comment on the route once Nebraska reached its decision, which the Obama administration would then need to consider before making up its own mind on whether to approve the pipeline. That means a final decision is probably still weeks in the making.

Nebraskans who filed the lawsuit over the route said they want TransCanada to follow state laws.

“We’ve always thought that if the pipeline is going to be built, it has to be built in compliance with Nebraska law and make sure that Nebraska landowners are fully and fairly paid for an easement with reasonable terms,” David Domina, a lawyer representing landowners who sued, told the Huffington Post before the Nebraska Supreme Court decision was issued.

The focus now turns to President Barack Obama for a final decision—for both pipeline supporters and opponents.

“President Obama has no more excuses left to delay or deny the Keystone XL pipeline,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, in a statement.

“Today’s ruling was a loss for propriety rights, and sends the signal that a foreign corporation can buy its way through our state legislature,” Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska, which opposes the pipeline, told HuffPost. “We now turn to our president, who knows that this route is too risky to approve.”

UPDATE—The White House announced Friday that it still intends to veto the House Republican bill authorizing Keystone, even after the Nebraska ruling. From spokesman Eric Schultz comes the following statement:

Today, the Nebraska Supreme Court denied a challenge to the validity of the route for the Keystone XL Pipeline under Nebraska law. The State Department is examining the court’s decision as part of its process to evaluate whether the Keystone XL Pipeline project serves the national interest. As we have made clear, we are going to let that process play out. Regardless of the Nebraska ruling today, the House bill still conflicts with longstanding Executive branch procedures regarding the authority of the President and prevents the thorough consideration of complex issues that could bear on U.S. national interests, and if presented to the President, he will veto the bill.

Read the Nebraska Supreme Court’s decision below:

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The Keystone XL Pipeline Is One Step Closer to Approval

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