World Prout Assembly

US youth unemployment soars

Overall, 2009 credit card debt in the US increased by 18 percent, with consumers in many of the hardest-hit states piling up more than a 30 percent increase in revolving debt during the year. These states include Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Dramatically contributing to the debt of young adults is the increasing burden of education costs. From 1982 to 2007, college tuition and fees increased by over 400 percent, even as financial aid shifted from grant-based aid to loans. The 2008-09 academic year showed a 25 percent increase in student loan disbursements, according to the US Education Department, pushing it up to $75 billion.

Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than 'our most pessimistic models': researcher

Sea ice in Canada's fragile Arctic is melting faster than anyone expected, the lead investigator in Canada's largest climate-change study yet said Friday -- raising the possibility that the Arctic could, in a worst-case scenario, be ice-free in about three years.
University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, said the rapid decay of thick Arctic Sea ice highlights the rapid pace of climate change in the North and foreshadows what will come in the South.

Incentives to Going 'Off Grid' Bring Power to the People

At stake in the future of micro-power generation are not just carbon emissions -- campaigners also argue that localized green energy will have other benefits. "Renewables are decentralized by nature, largely benign and can work effectively at small as well as large scale. Small scale power technologies are about the economics of mass manufacturing and deployment - rather than economies of scale," Leonie Greene of the Renewable Energy Association told CNN. "That also means a change in ownership patterns. Potentially everyone can become an investor. These smaller technologies are also important globally -- the implications for the global south, which often lacks grid infrastructure, are extremely positive." - Matt Ford

The Crisis Is Not Over

The U.S. dollar survives as reserve currency because there is no apparent substitute. The euro has its own problems. Moreover, the euro is the currency of a non-existent political entity. National sovereignty continues despite the existence of a common currency on the continent (but not in Great Britain). If the dollar is abandoned, then the result is likely to be bilateral settlements in countries' own currencies, as Brazil and China now are doing. Alternatively, John Maynard Keynes' bancor scheme could be implemented, as it does not require a reserve currency country. Keynes' plan is designed to maintain a country's trade balance. Only a reserve currency country can get its trade and budget deficits so out of balance as the U.S. has done. The prospect of U.S. default and/or inflation and decline in the dollar's exchange value is a threat to the reserve system. - Paul Craig Roberts

Israeli mind-scanner may take over US airports

The device, which functions by blending high computer technology and behavioral psychology, is essentially designed to "get inside the evildoers head" without the subject's knowledge and prevent him or her from placing the lives of fellow travelers in jeopardy.

Who Will Feed Our Children?

Children were particularly at risk, as nearly 200,000 more households with children slipped into the food insecure category since 2007. Unemployment, low wage jobs, declines in food pantry supplies and cuts in state and local food programs, all produced negative outcomes for children. As the economic downturn moves from crisis to permanent reality, a frightening question emerges. Who will feed our children? - Billy Wharton

The Lie of Law: Courts Bow to State's Raw Power

Again, remember the context of this ruling. It deals with the Leader's power over foreign citizens in lands that the Leader's armies are occupying. The judicial "reasoning" expressed by Judge Brown could apply, without the slightest alteration, to the Nazi regime's various programs of mass killing and "indefinite detention" of "enemy" foreigners in occupied lands. - Chris Floyd

China's credit tightening exacerbates global financial instability

The collapse of China's speculative asset bubbles would trigger financial instability at home and could lead to the slowing or even reversal of Beijing's purchases of US Treasury bonds and other dollar investments. The result would be a fresh round of financial crises in the US, which is dependent on the inflow of money, particularly from Asia. For all the talk of China representing a new "model" of capitalism, its financial instability could well be the catalyst for a deeper global economic crisis.

Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare

A more responsible farming system involves closed, inland ponds that use their wastewater for agricultural irrigation instead of allowing it to pollute oceans or other waterways. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program, when a farm has good disease management protocols, it does not need to use so many antibiotics or other chemicals. - Jill Richardson

Love is most free and at the same time most bound

In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time. Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest... Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. for love is most free and at the same time most bound.

Rabindranath Tagore

Troops fire on starving crowds in Haiti

"The U.S. response to the earthquake should be considered an embarrassment. Our operation received virtually no support from any branch of the US government, including the State Department. As we ran out of various supplies we had no means to acquire more.... Later, as we were leaving Haiti, we were appalled to see warehouse-size quantities of unused medicines, food and other supplies at the airport, surrounded by hundreds of US and international soldiers standing around aimlessly."

India's Agriculture Minister Fiddles, While The Country Faces The Heat On Food Prices

I have throughout maintained that the food prices are on an upswing because the Ministry for Food and Agriculture wants the prices to rise. There is no other reason why the prices should go up. At the same time, if it was not for the compulsions of the coalition politics, I am sure any strong government would have removed the Food and Agriculture minister by now. - Devinder Sharma

Another Intrusion Called Cargill Changes Food Market

Overall the price situation worsened because of leaving both farmers and consumers to the mercy of traders and middlemen. And, thus, Yudhvir Singh is for urgent Government intervention to instill confidence among the farmers through policy changes vis-à-vis trading of food grains. - Abid Shah

On The State Of The Union

Why President Obama did not tell tens of millions of Americans Wednesday evening about how to break the logjam, the gridlock on health insurance, energy, jobs, financial reform and other measures, that they dislike, is a question only he can answer. "Certainly Senate Rule 22 itself should be changed, so that there is ultimately a simple majority for a cloture limiting debate vote," according to Geoghegan. - Ralph Nader

A Year Of Lalgarh

The movement in Lalgarh still continues, and is expected to gain greater heights as the Indian state goes into an all out war against the people in the entire adivasi-populated region of India. The state might consider Lalgarh to be the laboratory for such an operation, but it might finally prove to be the mortuary of the same. Terrible oppression, daily firings and indiscriminate arrests of people have not been able to subdue Lalgarh. The people of jangalmahal have stood up, and they will not bow down again. - Partho Sarathi Ray

India For Selective Assassination Of Its Own Citizens?

Recent statements from Indian leaders and police officers gives away the new strategy on the war on Naxalism. To make the movement "headless" by carrying out selective assassination of its leaders with the help of Israeli operatives

Karnataka's Hindu Right Targets Churches in response to Attacks on Indians in Australia

The accused were purportedly trying to pull down the cross, which is a few metres from the church. But some custodians of the church saw them and raised an alarm, forcing the culprits to flee. But it is not a religious issue. It is a racial issue. It is an immigration issue. It is also an issue of helpless frustration in Australans at lack of employment and other social ills. - Garda

India Shining: Passages To And From My Country

I no longer do, though. I fear this new India, where I should have great difficulty fitting in. My father was given to pronouncing the dictum of "simple living, high thinking," a piece of advice at which, growing up, I invariably scoffed, thinking it just a ploy of my father's to avoid getting me whatever gewgaw it was I had my childish heart set on at the time. Knowing my father, it may still have been that, but it must be a sign of approaching old age that this philosophy is now beginning to make sense. I am unable to find my way among the towering glass-fronted malls rampant across the metropolitan skyscapes, the enormous SUVs straddling roads so narrow people flatten themselves against the walls of houses and stand above open sewers to let the monsters roll by, the billboards shrieking determinedly of the desirability of a completely unsustainable way of life. - Pubali Ray Chaudhuri

How they pulled their farm back from the brink

"Trying to measure the success of water harvesting only with increased water level is not fair. The vegetation improves, so does the soil moisture." Shree Padre reports on an arecanut farming family's success.

The War Against Nature Resumes

All industries strive not only towards monopoly but also towards monoculture: domination of the natural or cultural landscape. This is what George Orwell meant when he remarked that "the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle". Industry, if left unchecked, tolerates no deviance. It seeks to shrink both the range of human experience and the wonders of the natural world until they fit into the container it has made for them. We could lose badgers and - except for those of us who spend summer evenings watching them as they shuffle out of their setts - suffer few tangible losses. But the urge to destroy them springs from the same pathological instinct for power which would deprive us of almost everything. - George Monbiot

Ominous April: Siliguri

The civil society in North Bengal - be it in the hills or valley - too has a lot of soul searching to do. Prejudices and stereotypes are pernicious constructs of close minds. The opium of the mass entertainment is befuddling our cultural sensibilities. We have become woefully shorn of both interest and respect for the life and letters of our own next-door neighbor. Meanwhile, contests on TV are converting us into sms citizens of a country whose borders are outlined in outlandish sets, located in nowhereland. A spirit of curiosity and openness in local cross-cultural initiatives can dispel the insecurity around cultural identities. Otherwise, the manufactured culture peddled by the irresponsible and imbecile mass media will continue to shrink the space for real debates of our times, and our place. Fight we must. And fight together. Against two monstrous common enemies - poverty and environmental degradation. - Rajib Sarkar.

Vision for Sustainability, Resiliency by Post Carbon Institute

The issue of sustainable agriculture, both urban and rural, was an overall emergent issue of the weekend, with talismanic Wes Jackson, founder and director of The Land Institute, providing an urgent view into a survival system that has been taken for granted. "In the long run, soil is more important than oil," Jackson said, citing research that carbon concentrations in US have been halved since settlement, from 6 percent to 3 percent, because of poor conservation and industrial practices. Grave consequences for climate-change influenced mass migrations were forecast by Brian Schwartz, a Johns Hopkins professor in public health. "Moving populations (because of climate change) will be very bad for society, the environment and health in every aspect."

The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti

According to Marguerite Laurent ('Ezili Dantò') of the Haitian Lawyers' Leadership Network, under the guise of emergency relief work, the US, France and Canada are engaged in a balkanization of the island for future mineral control. She reports rumors that Canada wants the North of Haiti where Canadian mining interests are already present. The US wants Port-au-Prince and the island of La Gonaive just offshore - an area identified in Aristide's development book as having vast oil resources, and which is bitterly contested by France. She further states that China, with UN veto power over the de facto UN-occupied country, may have something to say against such a US-France-Canada carve up of the vast wealth of the nation. - William Engdahl

The Foundations of the U.S. Economy have been Destroyed

The vast majority of the talking heads on television are still speaking of the current economic collapse as if it is a temporary "recession" that will soon be over. So far, the vast majority of the American people seem to believe this as well, although for many Americans there is a very deep gnawing in the pit of their stomachs that is telling them that there is something very, very wrong this time around. The truth is that the foundations of the U.S. economy have been destroyed by an orgy of government, corporate and individual debt that has gone on for decades. It was the greatest party in the history of the world, but now the party is over.

Remember the illegal destruction of Iraq?

They continue to thrive unabated even as Iraq tries to rebuild itself from the devastation they unleashed. As toothless as the British investigation appears to be, at least there's some public reckoning, compelled answers from their leaders, and an attempt to determine the precise nature of their crimes. And the Dutch have formally declared the war in which they were involved to be a crime. By contrast, we treat it all as a pointless relic of the irrelevant and distant past, all because the people who did it have banded together to decree that the worst possible crime is not what they did, but instead, would be if the rest of us examined what they did and insisted on meaningful accountability. - Glenn Greenwald

Humility

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

Rabindranath Tagore

The People's State of the Union

Change has not come fast enough, primarily, because there is not a groundswell of support for a social agenda that would respond to the needs of the people of the United States. Tens of thousands of people are needed to galvanize leaders into action against policies purveying great immorality are missing in action. In the past, this nation has proven that people of great decency and great strength will rise up and take on immorality. It is time for those people to rise up and struggle with power again. Understandably, unemployment at a level far higher than what the government is reporting has been burdening families and tearing apart communities. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 15.4 million Americans were unemployed in November, the "real" jobless rate is likely closer to over 26 million. The current rate reported by the government does not include part-time workers seeking full-time work, discouraged job seekers, and person furloughed from full-time to part-time status." - Kevin Goztola

JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs: Why the Market Was Down 7 Days in a Row

But the President hasn't knuckled under yet. In his State of the Union address on January 27, he did not dwell long on the issue of bank reform, but he held to his position. He said: "We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. The House has already passed financial reform with many of these changes. And the lobbyists are already trying to kill it. Well, we cannot let them win this fight. And if the bill that ends up on my desk does not meet the test of real reform, I will send it back." What this "real reform" would look like was left to conjecture, but Bob Chapman fills in some blanks and suggests what might be needed for an effective overhaul: "The attempt will be to bring the financial system back to brass tacks. . . . That would include little or no MBS and CDOs, the regulation of derivatives and hedge funds and the end of massive market manipulation, both by Treasury, Fed and Wall Street players. Congress has to end the 'President's Working Group on Financial Markets,' or at least limit its use to real emergencies. . . . The Glass-Steagall Act should be reintroduced into the system and lobbying and campaign contributions should end. . . . No more politics in lending and banks should be limited to a lending ratio of 10 to 1. . . . It is bad enough they have the leverage that they have. State banks such as North Dakota's are a better idea." On January 28, the predictable reaction of "the market" was to fall for the seventh straight day. The battle of the Titans was on. - Ellen Brown

The Kidnapping of Haiti

With US troops in control of their country, the outlook for the people of Haiti is bleak. The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured "formal approval" from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to "secure" roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in a US naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training. The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now a US military base and relief flights have been rerouted to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated.. Six days passed before the US air force dropped bottled water to people suffering dehydration. - John Pilger

Review: Down to the Wire - Confronting Climate Collapse

Sustainability will need to be built on something deeper than the application of more technology and smarter economics. They may only compound our tribulations. He considers that the effort to secure a decent human future will need awareness of the connections that bind us to each other, to all life, and to all life to come. What is given must be passed on. Every culture that approaches sustainability grasps the truth that nothing can be held or possessed. Substantial sections of the book explore such ideas thoughtfully and in highly readable prose. Philosophy, ethics, and to some extent religion underlie the diagnoses and prescriptions proposed.

Chhattisgarh: Lost battle

The people of Chhattisgarh appear to have lost the battle against industrialisation without rules. Even those who held out longest against the acquisition of their lands, forests and rivers are giving up the fight. Dilnaz Boga travels through the villages of Raigarh district, where thousands are being displaced

Bourgeois Ping-Pong Politics & the Mulattos of the Mind

The U.S. bloodletting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq is not limited to merely those areas of the world; just as the denial of the right of return by the Palestinian people to their homes and lands in Palestine is by no means limited to them. Remember the U.S. government victims of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans! Remember it well, for then you will grasp what the Obama / G W Bush / Bill Clinton corporate / military gang-- is really about the business of doing at this very moment in Haiti! Remember the U.S. corporate contract murderers of the Blackwater corporation. Remember that as the infrastructure for jobs, housing, schools and libraries, etc., crumbles in the U.S., and as billions upon endless billions of dollars are spent on perpetual wars abroad which actually serve to foster so-called "terrorism" and protect no one, the avaricious filthy rich get even richer. Wake up people! Remember your own humanity and who you are! Remember that we are not merely moving towards a U.S. corporate police state; we are already in it--as the unconstitutional (Obama-Biden-Rham Emanuel supported) so called 'Patriot Act' and the amoral and illegal U.S. international kidnapping outrage known as "Rendition," clearly demonstrate. Again I implore you: Wake up people! Remember your own humanity and who you are! Remember that it is we the people who hold the key to the liberation of ourselves and others, not the politicians of this deceitful, capitalist, corporate plutocracy! Onward then sisters and brothers. Onward!..... Larry Pinkney