Government Pain = Drone Makers’ Gain | Mother Jones
►http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/drones-industry-uav-market-budget-cuts
At the conference, AUVSI president Mike Toscano showed a photograph of his toddler grandson on an iPad. “These [young] people know connectivity,” he said. “They don’t know privacy, because they’ve never had it. So we could just wait this thing out!” Everyone laughed. The crowd didn’t figure commercializing drones will take nearly that long.
Obama Administration Says President Can Use Lethal Force Against Americans on US Soil | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/obama-admin-says-it-can-use-lethal-force-against-americans-us-soil
Yes, the president does have the authority to use military force against American citizens on US soil—but only in “an extraordinary circumstance,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday.
The new colonialists http://warincontext.org/2013/02/07/the-new-colonialists
http://warincontext.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/new-colonialists.jpg
Global land and water grabbing
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/02/1213163110
La conférence de 2011 à Tirana de l’International Land Coalition a défini l’accaparement de terres comme les acquisitions de terres qui sont en violation des droits humains, sans le consentement préalable des utilisateurs des terres préexistantes, et sans tenir compte des impacts sociaux et environnementaux .
Dans de nombreux cas, l’accaparement des terres n’est pas le résultat d’un processus de décision transparent et démocratique.
Le manque de consultation avec les utilisateurs locaux des terres, la violation des droits humains, et les impacts sociaux ou environnementaux sont toutefois difficiles à vérifier.
Par conséquent, nous utilisons ici une définition plus large de l’accaparement des terres comme le transfert du droit de posséder ou d’utiliser les terres des communautés locales aux investisseurs étrangers grâce à des acquisitions foncières à grande échelle (plus de 200 ha par transaction).
Sur la base de ces définitions, l’accaparement des terres est une nouvelle forme de colonialisme ...
The Science of Why Comment #Trolls Suck | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/you-idiot-course-trolls-comments-make-you-believe-science-less
In a recent study, a team of researchers from the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and several other institutions employed a survey of 1,183 Americans to get at the negative consequences of vituperative online comments for the public understanding of science. (...) The researchers were trying to find out what effect exposure to such rudeness had on public perceptions of nanotech risks. They found that it wasn’t a good one. Rather, it polarized the audience: Those who already thought nanorisks were low tended to become more sure of themselves when exposed to name-calling, while those who thought nanorisks are high were more likely to move in their own favored direction. In other words, it appeared that pushing people’s emotional buttons, through derogatory comments, made them double down on their preexisting beliefs.
In These 22 States, Every House Republican Voted Against Sandy Aid | Mother Jones
In These 22 States, Every House Republican Voted Against Sandy Aid
—By Dana Liebelson
Almost three months after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast, the GOP-controlled House approved a bill that provides $50.7 billion in disaster relief for the storm’s victims. While passage of the bill is being hailed as a bipartisan success by some (the vote was 241-180), a closer look at how the parties voted by state lines indicates otherwise. GOPers overwhelmingly voted against funding—unless, of course, their state was hard hit.
Are We Heading Toward Peak Fertilizer ? | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/11/are-we-heading-toward-peak-fertilizer
You’ve heard of peak oil—the idea that the globe’s easy-to-get-to petroleum reserves are largely cashed, and most of what’s left is the hard stuff, buried in deep-sea deposits or tar sands. But what about peak phosphorus and potassium?
Your Smartphone’s Dirty, Radioactive Secret | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/11/rare-earth-elements-iphone-malaysia?page=1
Workers then boil off the liquid and separate out the rare earths from rock and radioactive elements. This is where things get dangerous: Companies must take precautions so that workers aren’t exposed to radiation. If the tailings ponds where the radioactive elements are permanently stored are improperly lined, they can leach into the groundwater. If they are not covered properly, the slurry could dry and escape as dust. And this radioactive waste must be stored for an incomprehensibly long time—the half-life of thorium is about 14 billion years, and uranium’s is up to 4.5 billion years. Reminder: Earth itself is 4.5 billion years old.
Not coincidentally, the refining tends to happen in areas where weak environmental rules mean that companies can process the elements on the cheap. Take the Baotou region of Inner Mongolia, where most of China’s rare-earth mines are clustered, and where waste has leached into waterways and irrigation canals, according to several independent investigations. Communities around one former mine in Mongolia blame at least 66 cancer deaths on leaked radioactive waste, and local people complain that their hair and teeth have fallen out.
http://www.motherjones.com/files/images/earths_hybrid_630.gif 
https://www.motherjones.com/files/earths_iphone_630.gif
#terres_rares #technologie #radioactivité #santé #cancer #travail
Posters: 180 Years of American Campaign Propaganda | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/slideshows/2012/03/presidential-campaign-posters/bobby-kennedyjpg-1
petit échantillon d’#affiches électorales américaines
Posters: 180 Years of American Campaign Propaganda
A great new collection from the Library of Congress showcases how much—and how little—has changed.
http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/photoessays/romney.jpg
http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/photoessays/bobby-kennedy.jpg
Chevron Subpoenas Google and Others for Private Email Info | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/11/chevron-subpoenas-google-and-others-private-email-info
In its latest effort, Chevron has effectively sucked a whole cast of environmental activists, attorneys, and journalists into the vortex of the litigation with a series of wide-reaching subpoenas for private email data. Most of the dozens of targets of Chevron’s massive “fishing expedition” are not directly tied to the original lawsuit against the company or its current legal claims; they include the plantiff attorney’s summer intern who only worked on the case briefly in 2007, a writer who worked for a non-profit on behalf of the affected Amazon communities, and an environmental activist in Ecuador who fears that Chevron could use information about his whereabouts to intimidate or harass him or pass it along to third parties “that could do the same or worse.”
Revealing data for more than a hundred private email accounts over the span of nine years will fall into Chevron’s hands if federal courts in New York and California fail to dismiss what legal experts call “sweeping” and “invasive” subpoenas the oil giant has issued to service providers Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.
Mother Jones: How the industry minimized (and minimizes) the health effects of sugars
http://www.foodpolitics.com/2012/11/mother-jones-how-the-industry-minimized-and-minimizes-the-health-effec
a detailed account of how the sugar industry manipulated scientists and government officials into overlooking the health problems caused by overconsumption of sugars and instead focusing on overconsumption of dietary fat (both removed from their caloric context, alas).
Their winning campaign, crafted with the help of the prestigious public relations firm Carl Byoir & Associates (...)
With an initial annual budget of nearly $800,000 ($3.4 million today) collected from the makers of Dixie Crystals, Domino, C&H, Great Western, and other sugar brands, the association recruited a stable of medical and nutritional professionals to allay the public’s fears, brought snack and beverage companies into the fold, and bankrolled scientific papers that contributed to a “highly supportive” FDA ruling, which, the Silver Anvil application boasted, made it “unlikely that sugar will be subject to legislative restriction in coming years.”
Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies | Mother Jones
►http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/10/sugar-industry-lies-campaign
America’s Top 10 Polluters | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/slideshows/2012/01/worst-emissions-pollutors/scherer-plant-juliette-georgia
It just got a whole lot easier for Americans to find out which power plants and industrial sites are releasing the most planet-baking emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday released its greenhouse gas database, and included some cool tools for tracking polluters.
The database includes the largest sources—the 6,700 power plants and heavy industries that are responsible for 80 percent of all emissions in the United States. It covers their emissions for 2010, the first year they were required to report to the EPA. The inventory, which we’ve written about before, is really just an exercise in taking stock and disclosing emissions. It doesn’t include any requirements to reduce those emissions. But it could be a first step in that direction.
2010 Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Large Facilities
http://ghgdata.epa.gov/ghgp/main.do
The Other Death Sentence | Mother Jones
►http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/massachusetts-elderly-prisoners-cost-compassionate-release
More than 100,000 Americans are destined to spend their final years in prison. Can we afford it?
—By James Ridgeway
USDA Prepares to Green-Light Gnarliest GMO Soy Yet | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/07/usda-prepares-ground-dows-herbicide-sucking-crops
In early July, on the sleepy Friday after Independence Day, the USDA quietly signaled its intention to green-light a new genetically engineered soybean seed from Dow AgroSciences. The product is designed to produce soy plants that withstand 2,4-D, a highly toxic herbicide (and, famously, the less toxic component in the notorious Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange).
Readers may remember that during an even-sleepier period—the week between Christmas and the New Year—the USDA made a similar move on Dow’s 2,4-D-ready corn.
Ayn Rand in Space | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/07/ayn-rand-elon-musk-spacex
http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_51/rand_space.jpg
#espace #libertariens #drôle via @opironet
House GOP Blocking Abortion Access for Soldiers Who Are Raped | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/shaheen-amendment-military-rape-abortion
Republican Senators John McCain, Scott Brown, and Susan Collins all support an effort by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, to expand abortion access for military women who are raped. But despite bipartisan support in the Senate, Shaheen’s proposal may not make it into the final version of the 2013 defense authorization bill—because House Republicans oppose it.
If Shaheen’s measure passes, military families will finally have the same access to abortion that other federal employees already receive. Unlike the rest of the federal government, the Department of Defense currently only provides abortion coverage if the life of the mother is at stake. Under current law, if a State Department employee is raped, her government health insurance plan will pay for an abortion if she wants one. But if an Army medic serving in Afghanistan is raped and becomes pregnant, she can’t use her military health plan to pay for an abortion. If she does decide to get an abortion, she will have to pay for it with her own money. And if she can’t prove she was raped—which is difficult before an investigation is completed—she may have to look for services off base, which can be dangerous or impossible in many parts of the world.
“We have more than 200,000 women serving on active duty in our military,” Shaheen tells Mother Jones. “They should have the same rights to affordable reproductive health services as all of the civilians who they protect.”
Is “Meat Glue” As Gross As It Sounds? | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/05/meat-glue-gross-it-sounds
Is “Meat Glue” As Gross As It Sounds?
—By Tom Philpott| Mon May. 7, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
31
Three strips of beef that have been bound together with “meat glue” and rolled into a log, in preparation for being sliced into steak-like pieces. The Boathouse at Sunday Park/Wikimedia Commons
Update (Friday, June 8): Tom Philpott joined Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air to discuss “meat glue”, “pink slime”, and other issues affecting the meat industry. Listen to the interview here.
Broadcast news and social-media sites have been aflame with reports about something called “meat glue.”
“If you were disturbed to hear about ’pink slime’ in your burger, you’ll want to know about ’meat glue,’ because a fat, rare-cooked filet mignon may not be what it seems,” ABC News’ Bay Area affiliate gasped last week.
First reaction: Ooh, gross. Reaction upon a bit of reflection: Meat glue, an enzyme known as transglutaminase, is indeed a trick up the meat industry’s sleeve, but a relatively minor one in the grand scheme.
(...)
But in a “steak” made up of several pieces bound by meat glue, surface meat (and any pathogens like salmonella clinging to it) ends up inside the final cut—so searing on both sides won’t do the trick. A rare real steak can be a pleasure to eat; rare meat-glued “steak” presents a potential health hazard.
(...)
And anyway, such labels only inform consumers when they’re shopping at the supermarket. But according to ABC News’ reporting, consumers are more likely to encounter transglutaminase-bound cuts when eating outside the home.
Pinning down who is using transglutaminase isn’t easy. One meat company owner told KGO-TV that gluing meat is common practice, and the most glued product by far is filet mignon destined for the food service industry. An industry trade group also said meat glue is most often used where filet mignon is served in bulk—at a restaurant, banquet, cafeteria or hotel.
God forbid, if I ever find myself at some cursed banquet where they’re serving “filet mignon,” I’ll eat around the entree—whether or not it’s cooked to the leather stage to kill pathogens. But honestly, I’ll probably be thinking more about the cow’s awful life and deplorable diet than I am about the meat glue.
Now, the other way consumers might find themselves eating glued meat is at a very different kind of meal: at a high-end restaurant run by a creative chef. The standard bearer for such chefs in the United States, Wylie Dufresne of Manhattan’s WD-50, loves the stuff. According to Meat Paper, he has “concocted all manner of playful and bizarre food products with meat glue, including shrimp spaghetti, which he made by mixing salt, cayenne, deveined shrimp, and meat glue in a blender.”
Would I eat Dufresne’s famous “shrimp spaghetti” if confronted with a plate of it?
Honestly, yes. I trust chefs on Dufresne’s level to use top-quality raw materials and cook them properly—even if I can rarely afford to eat their food. I guess, in the end, it’s not the glue itself I find particularly gross; it’s when it’s used to bind together industrial meat that that it gets me.
Human Languages Decline as Species Disappear | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/05/human-cultures-decline-alongside-species
#cartographie des #langues et des espèces en voie d’extinction ; la corrélation vient peut-être du fait que :
As for why the coexistence between areas with high concentrations of endangered species and endangered languages, the researchers aren’t sure. But possibly because indigenous cultures, supported by their languages, create conditions optimum to maintaining species and keeping ecosystems intact and working.
http://www.motherjones.com/files/images/biodiversity_hotspots_map.preview.jpg
2 Years Later, Grim Photos From the BP Disaster | Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/05/greenpeace-bp-photos
(via @opironet avec des tas de photos de tortues pleines de goudron…)
It’s been two years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil on the Gulf of Mexico. In the midst of the disaster, BP and its contractors did everything they could to keep people from seeing the scale of the disaster. But new photos released Monday offer some new insight to just how grim the Gulf became for sea life.
#bp #golfe #pétrole #environnement
#Noam #Chomsky : un Monde en soulèvement ou un Nouvel Âge des ténèbres ? ►http://www.larevuedesressources.org/noam-chomsky-un-monde-en-soulevement-ou-un-nouvel-age-des-tene
Si vous aviez suivi les protestations du Premier Mai à New York sur les principaux canaux médiatiques vous auriez pu à peine vous rendre compte que toutefois elles avaient lieu. Récits généralement gommés, minimalistes, centrés sur quelques arrestations, et barre placée à des « centaines » de manifestants dans les rues, ou peut-être, si un journaliste se sentit particulièrement généreux, à de vagues « milliers ». J’ai fait mon propre décompte sur la dimension approximative des protestations d’Occupy ce jour là.
J’ai quitté Union Square dans la soirée en direction du périmètre de Wall Street. J’ai remonté la manifestation jusqu’au bout à contre-courant, le calcul de deux ou trois mille protestataires lâchement assimilés à un groupe est monté à 15.000 personnes avec une évaluation de conservateur.
Ce n’était peut-être pas la manifestation du millénaire, mais d’un volume non négligeable pour Occupy, organisation sans structures solides mais fortement située, qui avait été poussée (littéralement) hors de ses camps de Zuccotti Park et d’autres endroits dans le pays, ou même cognée, en vue d’être oubliée.
Si vous aviez vérifié dans The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/blog/167666/tens-thousands-march-oakland-new-york-may-day) ou Mother Jones (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/occupy-may-day-new-york-march) , vous auriez obtenu une idée plus précise de ce qui se passait.
Pourtant, est-ce que le grand mouvement de protestation de notre moment américain (sur une planète tout de même en plein bouleversement) ne méritait pas mieux ce jour-là ? Et indépendamment de ce que vous avez lu dans le flux principal, voici ce que vous n’en auriez rien su : ce pays est de plus en plus un camp en arme et ces marcheurs, remarquablement détendus et paisibles, se dirigeaient parmi une concentration de policiers suffocante, ce dont on resterait interloqué.
Eurogenics: Sterilization Laws in Sweden - Politics - Utne Reader
http://www.utne.com/politics/sterilization-laws-zm0z12mjzros.aspx
Despite a reputation of social progressivism, Europe has some pretty archaic laws, including sterilization laws in Sweden that require the sterilization of transgender people.
Oregon man says FBI was behind his torture in Abu Dhabi [Video]
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/04/oregon-man-claims-fbi-was-behind-his-torture-in-abu-dhabi.html
An Oregon man is seeking asylum in Sweden, saying he was tortured while in the United Arab Emirates by interrogators cooperating with the FBI as it tried to investigate a Portland mosque.
Yonas Fikre says he was arrested in June and taken to an Abu Dhabi prison, where he was beaten, threatened and isolated during three months of detention. Fikre told reporters he was asked about the Masjid as-Sabr, spurring him to ask his interrogators whether they worked for the FBI.
The Associated Press quoted Fikre as saying that they first denied working with Americans, but later “when I was getting beaten, they did admit that the FBI knew exactly what was happening and they were working with the FBI."
Sweatshop Labor Is Back With a Vengeance | Mother Jones
►http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/sweatshop-labor-prisoners-penal-labor
Sweatshop Labor Is Back With a Vengeance
The new face of sweatshop labor: prisoners.
By Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman
Sweatshop labor is back with a vengeance. It can be found across broad stretches of the American economy and around the world. Penitentiaries have become a niche market for such work. The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain.
Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate. The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S (formerly Wackenhut), two prison privatizers, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.
The Internet Is a Major Driver of the Growth of Cognitive Inequality | Mother Jones
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/internet-major-driver-growth-cognitive-inequality
Moral of the story: the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter. If you don’t know how to use it, or don’t have the background to ask the right questions, you’ll end up with a head full of nonsense. But if you do know how to use it, it’s an endless wealth of information. Just as globalization and de-unionization have been major drivers of the growth of income inequality over the past few decades, the internet is now a major driver of the growth of cognitive inequality. Caveat emptor.
Khader Adnan and now-normalized Western justice | Glenn Greenwald (Salon.com)
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/20/khader_adnan_and_normalized_western_justice
Each year, the U.S. State Department, as required by law, issues a “Human Rights Report” which details abuses by other countries. To call it an exercise in hypocrisy is to understate the case: it is almost impossible to find any tyrannical power denounced by the State Department which the U.S. Government (and its closest allies) do not regularly exercise itself. Indeed, it’s often impossible to imagine how the authors of these reports can refrain from cackling mischievously over the glaring ironies of what they are denouncing (my all-time favorite example is discussed in the update here). Source: Salon.com
Will Malaysians Get #Cancer for Your #iPhone or Prius? | Mother Jones
http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/02/rare-earths-lynas-bukit-merah-malaysia
For the last few decades, China controlled the world’s market for rare earths, producing about 97 percent of the global supply. But in late 2010, China cut its exports by 35 percent to keep the valuable metals for its own manufacturers. The prices of rare earths shot up, and almost immediately mining outfits in other countries began cropping up.
One of the biggest to come on the scene is Lynas, an Australian company. Although the company will mine its materials in Australia, it hopes to build its refinery in Malaysia.
Voir aussi :
http://seenthis.net/messages/21273
Comment la Chine a gagné la bataille des métaux stratégiques