Dean Baker: Robert Samuelson Tells the Middle Class and Poor that They Should Stop Expecting to Have Decent Lives Because His Rich Friends Want All the Money

That is the best way to describe Robert Samuelson's column in Monday's Washington Post. I could go through the piece in detail and offer point by point rebuttals, but what's the point in killing innocent electrons? We've been here before.

Let's just take the first and most obscene of his inaccuracies. He tells readers that the idea that the non-rich could enjoy decent living standards rest on unrealistic assumptions beginning with this one:

"First, that economists knew enough to moderate the business cycle, guaranteeing jobs for most people who wanted them. This seemed true for many years; from 1980 to 2007, the economy created 47 million non-farm jobs. The Great Recession revealed the limits of economic management."

Exposed: How Murdoch, Bill Gates and Big Corporations are Data Mining our Schools

Thursday, 02 May 2013 11:58 
By Peter Rugh, Occupy.com | Report 

Last week, students across New York finished a set of tests taken over a two week period designed to measure their proficiency at reading and math against new federal college readiness standards known as Common Core. Some parents opted their children out of the exams in protest against what they described as the school system's over-emphasis on testing and its use of data as the principle indicator of their children's achievement.

Starting next year, those scores, along with students' personal information – race, economic background, report cards, discipline records and personal addresses – will be stored in a database designed by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

6 Insidious Ways You’re Getting Ripped Off, and How to Fight Back

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

April 29, 2013  |  In the wake of the financial crisis, there was a momentof hope that predatory businesses would no longer be able to pick at our bones like vultures. Instead, we've seen Dodd-Frank weakened and stalled, and the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stymied at every turn. In the latest round, Republicans are thwarting the confirmation of Richard Cordray to lead the Bureau. Meanwhile, we continue to get fleeced. Here are a few egregious scams to watch out for, along with ways to protect yourself.

 

The Federal Reserve Shifts Language, Signals New Concern Over Sequester

Thursday, 02 May 2013 09:23  
By Kevin G Hall, McClatchy Newspapers | Report 

Washington - The Federal Reserve, in a carefully worded shift in language, signaled new concern Wednesday that constraints on federal spending are slowing the economy.

The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee concluded its May meeting by continuing to keep near zero its benchmark federal funds rate, an overnight rate that banks charge one another that influences the costs of borrowing for consumers and businesses alike.

Paul Krugman: Not Enough Inflation

Ever since the financial crisis struck, and the Federal Reserve began “printing money” in an attempt to contain the damage, there have been dire warnings about inflation — and not just from the Ron Paul/Glenn Beck types.

Thus, in 2009, the influential conservative monetary economist Allan Meltzer warned that we would soon become “inflation nation.” In 2010, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development urged the Fed to raise interest rates to head off inflation risks (even though its own models showed no such risk). In 2011, Representative Paul Ryan, then the newly installed chairman of the House Budget Committee, raked Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, over the coals, warning of looming inflation and intoning solemnly that it was a terrible thing to “debase” the dollar. 

Big Banks Are Knee-Deep in the Dirty Money-Laundering Business

By Michael Hudson

May 2, 2013  |  Money-laundering issues at U.S. and UK financial firms shed light on role of rich nations and elite banks in the offshore world.

 

In the summer of 2009, Jennifer Sharkey was moving in select company. As a Manhattan-based vice president at JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Private Wealth Management group, she juggled relationships with 75 "high net worth" clients with assets totaling more than half a billion dollars.

Things changed for her, she claims, after she raised doubts about a "suspect" foreign client who had millions stashed in various accounts at the bank.

A Bigger, Darker Rightwing Funder

By Ruth Conniff, April 30, 2013

It's "the most powerful organization in America that no one seems to know about."

That's how Scot Ross, executive director of the progressive think tank One Wisconsin Institute, describes the Bradley Foundation.

Unlike David Koch of the Koch Brothers, whose cover was blown when a gonzo blogger named Ian Murphy (editor of the Buffalo Beast and a frequent contributor to The Progressive), impersonated him in a prank call to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Troubling levels of toxic metals found in lipstick

Berkeley — A new analysis of the contents of lipstick and lip gloss may cause you to pause before puckering.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health tested 32 different lipsticks and lip glosses commonly found in drugstores and department stores. They detected lead, cadmium, chromium, aluminum and five other metals, some of which were found at levels that could raise potential health concerns. Their findings will be published online Thursday, May 2, in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Prior studies also have found metals in cosmetics, but the UC Berkeley researchers estimated risk by analyzing the concentration of the metals detected and consumers' potential daily intake of the metals, and then comparing this intake with existing health guidelines.

How a Much-Heralded Bank Reform Proposal Could Actually Blow Up the American Economy

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

May 2, 2013  |  It sounds like a fabulous idea: a bipartisan bill to end big commercial bank bailouts. Though it probably won’t pass, there are certainly many good things in the freshly minted Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness Act, co-sponsored by Sherrod Brown (OH-D) and David Vitter (LA-R).

Greater transparency? Like it. Juggernauts like JPMorgan Chase with over $500 billion in assets forced to hold more capital to protect against losses? This is a terrific proposal, the one big idea that would at a stroke make bank bailouts a lot less likely. No more taxpayer funds to bail them out? Three cheers, even if one doubts that federal authorities will ever dare to let another behemoth go down after their ghastly experience with Lehman.

But there’s more to this bailout bill than meets the eye – much more than many progressive cheerleaders realize. Some things in the bill could hurt us, and even increase overall risk in the financial system.

Another Government Is Necessary: The People Can Rule Better Than the Elites

Tuesday, 30 April 2013 20:40 
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Truthout | Op-Ed

More people are taking action in their communities to meet their basic needs because of government corruption at all levels that protects the status quo when urgent change is needed. People are moving on many fronts to challenge the system and create the world they want to see. 
 
On Earth Day, another step was taken to challenge elite rule. A new alternative government was announced. It is an extension of the Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala Green Party campaign for president and vice president. The Green Shadow Cabinet currently consists of more than 80 activists, scientists, lawyers, advocates, economists, health professionals, labor leaders and artists who are independent of the corporate duopoly and are actively working on solutions to the crises we face. These top-level people in their fields have taken on this responsibility as volunteers. (Full disclosure: Margaret Flowers serves as secretary of health and Kevin Zeese as attorney general, and both serve on the administrative committee of the Shadow Cabinet.)

How Planet Money, This American Life and NPR Have Become Key Players in the Bankers’ Propaganda War on What's Left of Our Social Contract

By Mark Ames

April 26, 2013  |  This article first appeared at Not Safe for Work Corporation [3].

 

Just over a week ago,  my Twitter feed started getting bombarded with links to the latest — and quite possibly the scummiest — Planet Money/This American Life propaganda piece on NPR for the financial industry, disguised as highbrow progressive journalism.

The piece was called "Unfit For Work: The Startling Rise of Disability in America" [4] and it essentially argued — using wildly flawed research and straight-up lies — that our Social Security program is burdened by a glut of freeloader disability queens, faking their disabilities in order to live high on the Social Security disability insurance hog.

Why would NPR run such a flawed, biased story? The answer takes us right to the heart of Wall Street’s plans to privatize government benefits, which Wall Street bond holders want to slash for their own profits. This battle pits powerful Wall Street interests and their media and political lackeys on the one side, versus an overwhelming majority of Americans — Republicans and Democrats both — on the other. In the middle stands a radio piece from a trusted source, NPR/This American Life/Planet Money, telling its progressive, educated audience that there is in fact a problem with Social Security, and that problem is a bunch of human parasites faking disability to suckle from the Social Security teat.

Gaius Publius: The climate crisis in three easy charts

I’m preparing to pivot back to climate crisis, starting with some reformatting of the earlier Climate Series posts — the transition to WordPress wasn’t kind to them — and the organization of this material into book form. (There’s also a climate-themed novel in the works; thriller fans, stay tuned.)

As a result, I’m doing serious study to refine both the concepts (or rather, the explanation of them) and the dating of coming events (the crisis in its various stages).

"Declaration": An Excerpt

Wednesday, 01 May 2013 00:00  
By Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Argo-Navis Publishing | Book Excerpt 

In their insightful and pathbreaking book, "Declaration", Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri analyze the diverse conditions of subordination produced under global capitalism and point to the agents of change who have raised their voices in protest globally against a range of injustices that mark the failures of a really existing democracy. They also explore the ways in which such protests have led to challenging existing zones of exclusion and disposability through the production of new social movements that are inventing a new politics and mode of collective power that affirm and reclaim the principles, truths, conditions, and associations necessary for a sustainable society. Part of the book explores and critiques what they label as four dominant forms of subjectivity that have created the context for the current social and political crisis. At the same time, they go beyond a language of critique and offer a declaration of principles for constituting what they call a “new global project for the common.” The section below draws upon two of the four figures of subjectivity that have emerged under neoliberal regimes and are considered integral to the forms of subordination, injustice and (mis)educative politics that characterize the existing social and economic order. - Henry A. Giroux

The Indebted

Being in debt is becoming today the general condition of social life. It is nearly impossible to live without incurring debts - a student loan for school, a mortgage for the house, a loan for the car, another for doctor bills, and so on. The social safety net has passed from a system of it welfareit  to one of it debtfare, it as loans become the primary means to meet social needs. Your subjectivity is configured on the foundation of debt. You survive by making debts, and you live under the weight of your responsibility for them.

Debt controls you. It disciplines your consumption, imposing austerity on you and often reducing you to strategies of survival, but beyond that it even dictates your work rhythms and choices. If you finish university in debt, you must accept the first paid position offered in order to honor your debt. If you bought an apartment with a mortgage, you must be sure not to lose your job or take a vacation or a study leave from work. The effect of debt, like that of the work ethic, is to keep your nose to the grindstone. Whereas the work ethic is born within the subject, debt begins as an external constraint but soon worms its way inside. Debt wields a moral power whose primary weapons are responsibility and guilt, which can quickly become objects of obsession. You are responsible for your debts and guilty for the difficulties they create in your life. The indebted is an unhappy consciousness that makes guilt a form of life. Little by little, the pleasures of activity and creation are transformed into a nightmare for those who do not possess the means to enjoy their lives. Life has been sold to the enemy.

Dean Baker: Political Corruption and the “Free Trade” Racket

In polite circles in the United States’ support for free trade is a bit like proper bathing habits. It is taken for granted. Only the hopelessly crude and unwashed would not support free trade.

There is some ground for this attitude. Certainly the United States has benefited enormously by being able to buy a wide range of items at lower cost from other countries. However this doesn’t mean that most people in the country have always benefited from every opening to greater trade.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that the country will benefit from everything that those in power label as “free trade.” That is the story we are seeing now as the Obama administration is pursuing two major “free trade” agreements that in fact have very little to do with free trade and are likely to hurt those without the money and power to be part of the game.

William K. Black: Why Economic Criminals View Bangladesh as a Model for Workers Everywhere

April 30, 2013  |  As I write, there are terrible reports [3] indicating that the death toll in Bangladesh, where the building housing garment factories collapsed, is far greater than currently reported.  The initial reports from a disaster often prove inaccurate in important ways so I urge caution and the need to confirm whether the newer reports are accurate.

 

The higher death toll is not what prompts this article.  I write to discuss the intersection of control fraud, austerity, globalization, labor “reform,” and economic development. Control frauds, for those new to the term, is a type of fraud in which the person controlling a seemingly legitimate entity uses it as a “weapon” to defraud the unsuspecting public. The targets of fraud are often employees.

'Catastrophic' malpractice payouts add little to health care's rising costs

Still, study suggests, efforts needed to reduce errors that lead to claims

Efforts to lower health care costs in the United States have focused at times on demands to reform the medical malpractice system, with some researchers asserting that large, headline-grabbing and "frivolous" payouts are among the heaviest drains on health care resources. But a new review of malpractice claims by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests such assertions are wrong.

In their review of malpractice payouts over $1 million, the researchers say those payments added up to roughly $1.4 billion a year, making up far less than 1 percent of national medical expenditures in the United States.

"The notion that frivolous claims are routinely resulting in $100 million payouts is not true," says study leader Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "The real problem is that far too many tests and procedures are being performed in the name of defensive medicine, as physicians fear they could be sued if they don't order them. That costs upwards of $60 billion a year. It is not the payouts that are bankrupting the system — it's the fear of them."

Environmental Labels May Discourage Conservatives from Buying Energy-Efficient Products

Prof Rick Larrick looks at how political ideology affects how people buy energy-efficient products

April 30, 2013

When it comes to deciding which light bulb to buy, a label touting the product's environmental benefit may actually discourage politically conservative shoppers.

Dena Gromet and Howard Kunreuther at The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Rick Larrick at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business conducted two studies to determine how political ideology affected a person's choice to buy energy-efficient products in the United States.

Now That You Know Wall Street Can Eat Up Two-Thirds of Your 401(k) With Fees, You Should Also Know It Formed a Coalition to Block Full Disclosure of That Fact 

By Pam Martens: April 30, 2013

Last week we reported on a PBS Frontline program showing that a 2 percent mutual fund management fee can gobble up two-thirds of your nest egg for retirement over a span of 50 years of saving. Now comes an equally ugly truth.

Since at least 1998 the U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees the nation’s 401(k) plans, has known that fee gouging was eroding the ability of workers to adequately build wealth for retirement in 401(k) plans. It took more than a decade for the Federal agency to pass a regulation mandating that 401(k) recipients receive fee disclosure in an annual mailing. Leading the charge against full disclosure was a coalition of trade associations dominated by Wall Street.

Extreme Political Attitudes May Stem From an Illusion of Understanding

Having to explain how a political policy works leads people to express less extreme attitudes toward the policy, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The research suggests that people may hold extreme policy positions because they are under an illusion of understanding — attempting to explain the nuts and bolts of how a policy works forces them to acknowledge that they don’t know as much about the policy as they initially thought.

Paul Krugman: The Story of Our Time

Those of us who have spent years arguing against premature fiscal austerity have just had a good
two weeks. Academic studies that supposedly justified austerity have lost credibility; hard-liners in
the European Commission and elsewhere have softened their rhetoric. The tone of the
conversation has definitely changed.

My sense, however, is that many people still don’t understand what this is all about. So this seems
like a good time to offer a sort of refresher on the nature of our economic woes, and why this
remains a very bad time for spending cuts.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor: Maybe Bush v. Gore Wasn't the Best Decision

By Ian Millhiser

April 29, 2013  |  Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the conservative retired justice who provided the fifth vote to install George W. Bush as president [2], is now having second thoughts [3] about that decision:

Looking back, O’Connor said, she isn’t sure the high court should have taken [Bush v. Gore].

“It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue,” O’Connor said during a talk Friday with the Tribune editorial board. “Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye.’”

The case, she said, “stirred up the public” and “gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation.”

“Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision,” she said. “It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn’t done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.“

If nothing else, Bush v. Gore demonstrates how justices who are determined to reach a certain result are capable of bending both the law and their own prior jurisprudence in order to achieve it. In Bush, the five conservative justices held, in the words of Harvard’s Larry Tribe, that “equal protection of the laws required giving no protection of the laws to the thousands of still uncounted ballots [4].”

How Americans Became Exposed to Biohazards in the Greatest Uncontrolled Experiment Ever Launched

Monday, 29 April 2013 09:42  
By David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, TomDispatch | News Analysis 

A hidden epidemic is poisoning America.  The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them.  We can’t escape it in our cars.  It’s in cities and suburbs.  It afflicts rich and poor, young and old.  And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name -- and no antidote.  

The culprit behind this silent killer is lead.  And vinyl.  And formaldehyde.  And asbestos.  And Bisphenol A.  And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).  And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment.

Dean Baker: NYT Uses News Story to Express Dislike of Danish Welfare State

Sunday, 21 April 2013 07:50

The NYT appears to be following the pattern of journalism practiced by the Washington Post in openly editorializing in its news section. Today the news section features a diatribe against the Danish welfare state that is headlined, "Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault." There's not much ambiguity in that one. The piece then proceeds to present a state of statistics that are grossly misleading and excluding other data points that are highly relevant.

The first paragraphs describe the generosity of the welfare state, then we get this ominous warning in the 5th paragraph:

"But Denmark’s long-term outlook is troubling. The population is aging, and in many regions of the country people without jobs now outnumber those with them."

US & France Intervene in Mali To Protect Land & Resource Grabs, Not Because of Al Qeda

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

 

by Bruce Dixon

On March 15, former General and AFRICOM commander Carter F. Ham testified before the House Armed Services Committee that the situation in the West African republic of Mali is, along with that in Nigeria and Somalia, “a direct threat to the national security of the United States.” In plain language, claiming a direct threat to US national security is the standard justification for murderous French troops and American planes, fuel, supplies and air support bound for Mali. (Photo: Africom)military intervention around the world, and Mali has just been added to the hit list.

Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution

By Gar Alperovitz

April 24, 2013  |  Editor's note: Historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz remembers the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when people thought the dark days would never end. But then came the 60s, which changed many things in a burst of human energy that no one expected. Today a lot us are feeling deep despair. Elections happen, debates drone on, but the most pressing problems of our time go unaddressed. So what do we do? What organizing and system-shaking strategies can really work to transform our future?  Alperovitz puts aside the pessimism and talks about possibilites – not with rose-colored glasses, but with a clear-eyed view of the fundamental changes we need and the methods that could work to acheive them. The following is an excerpt from his compelling new book, What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next Revolution [3]. Think of it as a primer in possibility. A breath of fresh thinking from one of our most respected progressive voices.

 

Chapter Five: A Note About Systems and History and Prehistory
And Also About Just Plain Useful Change

If the long and painful trends are likely to continue, if they are deeply rooted in the way the underlying corporate-dominated system is designed, and if the old ways of hoping the trends might be altered are pretty much illusions—what then?

Yes, lots of folks are doing very creative things; lots of wonderful organizing, great local projects, and important experiments with self-organizing and open-source theory are under way. Some are testing out civil disobedience. Exciting green projects, in particular, are exploding around the country. All part and parcel of getting serious about real movement building. All important, all part of where we need to go.

But if the box we are in is truly systemic, will this, in fact, get us where we need to go? What do we really need to do to change the largest, most powerful system in the world? How, really, do we proceed?

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

by Matt Taibbi

APRIL 25, 2013

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

It’s the Media, Stupid!

April 26, 2013

 

Exclusive: Rich right-wingers, including the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch, are eying the purchase of the Los Angeles Times and other major regional newspapers to create an even bigger platform for their propaganda, a media strategy that dates back several decades, as Robert Parry explains.


By Robert Parry

The U.S. news media was never “liberal.” At most, you could say there were periods in the not-too-distant past when the major newspapers did a better job of getting the facts straight. There also was an “underground” press which published some scoops that the mainstream media avoided.

So, reporters revealed the evils of racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s; war correspondents exposed some of the cruel violence of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s; major newspapers defied the U.S. government in printing the leaked history of that war in 1971; the Washington Post uncovered some (though clearly not all) of Richard Nixon’s political crimes in 1972-74; and the New York Times led the way in publicizing some of the CIA’s dirty history in the mid-1970s.

Paul Krugman: The 1 Percent’s Solution

Economic debates rarely end with a T.K.O. But the great policy debate of recent years between Keynesians, who advocate sustaining and, indeed, increasing government spending in a depression, and austerians, who demand immediate spending cuts, comes close — at least in the world of ideas. At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics.

Yet two big questions remain. First, how did austerity doctrine become so influential in the first place? Second, will policy change at all now that crucial austerian claims have become fodder for late-night comics? 

The Neoliberal Assault on Academia

by Tarak Barkawi
April 25, 2013

The New York Times, Slate and Al Jazeera have recently drawn attention to the adjunctification of the professoriate in the US. Only 24 per cent [3] of university and college faculty are now tenured or tenure-track.

Much of the coverage has focused on the sub-poverty wages [4] of adjunct faculty, their lack of job security and the growing legions [5] of unemployed and under-employed PhDs. Elsewhere, the focus has been on web-based learning and the massive open online courses (MOOCs [6]), with some commentators celebrating and others lamenting their arrival.

The two developments are not unrelated. Harvard recently asked its alumni to volunteer their time as "online mentors" and "discussion group managers" for an online course. Fewer professors and fewer qualified - or even paid - teaching assistants will be required in higher education's New Order.

How One Tweet Almost Broke US Financial Markets

When a phony Associated Press tweet reported explosions in the White House, Wall Street's computers reacted as if it were real.

—By Nick Baumann  | Thu Apr. 25, 2013 2:23 PM PDT

In the January/February issue of Mother Jones, I wrote about Wall Street's embrace of high-speed computer programs that execute thousands of trades per second. These algorithms, some of which can teach themselves and operate almost entirely without human interference, present a new and challenging danger to the stability of global financial markets because they work in timeframes that people can't begin to perceive. By the time an actual person realizes something is wrong, it might already be too late to fix the problem. The concern isn't that one firm's high-speed trading program will make a mistake, but rather that a bunch of them will make the same mistake at once, launching a chain reaction that could undermine the financial system.

On Tuesday, the world saw exactly how fast these sorts of programs can respond to bad news. Many high-speed trading algorithms are designed to read headlines and trade based on that information before human traders can react. So when the Associated Press Twitter account tweeted at 1:07 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday that two explosions were reported in the White House and President Barack Obama was injured, the market fell immediately.

"Human Beings Have No Right to Water" and Other Words of Wisdom From Your Friendly Neighborhood Global Oligarch

Friday, 26 April 2013 00:00  
By Andrew Gavin Marshall, Andrew Gavin Marshall's Blog | Op-Ed 

In the 2005 documentary, We Feed the World, then-CEO of Nestlé, the world’s largest foodstuff corporation, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, shared some of his own views and ‘wisdom’ about the world and humanity. Brabeck believes that nature is not “good,” that there is nothing to worry about with GMO foods, that profits matter above all else, that people should work more, and that human beings do not have a right to water.

Today, he explained, “people believe that everything that comes from Nature is good,” marking a large change in perception, as previously, “we always learnt that Nature could be pitiless.” Humanity, Brabeck stated, “is now in the position of being able to provide some balance to Nature, but in spite of this we have something approaching a shibboleth that everything that comes from Nature is good.” He then referenced the “organic movement” as an example of this thinking, premising that “organic is best.” But rest assured, he corrected, “organic is not best.” In 15 years of GMO food consumption in the United States, “not one single case of illness has occurred.” In spite of this, he noted, “we’re all so uneasy about it in Europe, that something might happen to us.” This view, according to Brabeck, is “hypocrisy more than anything else.” 

James Hansen: The One Thing We Should Be Doing to Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change

April 24, 2013  |  This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org [3].

 

It’s hard to imagine anyone who has done more to further our understanding of the impacts of climate change than Dr. James Hansen. After 46 years working a scientist and climatogolist for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Hansen wasn’t content to simply catalog the dangers facing humanity and our planet — he has been ringing the alarm bell. “On a blistering June day in 1988 he was called before a Congressional committee and testified that human-induced global warming had begun,” the New York Times wrote [4] in a recent story about Hansen. “Speaking to reporters afterward in his flat Midwestern accent, he uttered a sentence that would appear in news reports across the land: ‘It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.’” 

Over the next several decades as scientific evidence poured in about the threats from climate change, and as governments — including the U.S. — failed to take any meaningful action, Hansen stepped out of the lab and into the media spotlight. He has participated in climate change protests, including being arrested several times, and has been outspoken about urging the Obama administration to kill the Keystone XL pipeline proposal. He warned that building the pipeline would mean “game over” for the climate.