Threads for Export

Earthquake Hits Near VIrginia Nuclear Power Site

The epicenter of the earthquake, measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale, was approximately 10 miles from two nuclear power reactors at North Anna in central Virginia. According to statement by a representative of Dominion Power the reactors were designed to withstand a 5.9 to 6.1 quake. The event comes just months after the disaster that befell the Fukushima nuclear site in Japan, which was also earthquake-related. The Japanese and German governments have since made moves to abandon nuclear power as unsafe.

Humans Causing Half Of Arctic Ice Melt

About half the recent record loss of Arctic sea ice can be blamed on global warming caused by human activity, according to a new study by scientists from the nation's leading climate research center. The peer-reviewed study, funded by the National Science Foundation is the first to attribute a specific proportion of the ice melt to greenhouse gases and particulates from pollution.

Germany Abandons Nuclear Power

Responding to public pressure in the aftermath of the tsunami-induced radioactive contamination in Japan, the German government has begun decommissioning nuclear power plants. The last of its nuclear facilities will go off-line in 2022. This move follows unprecedented electoral gains by the Green Party last month.

American Global Warming Governance Embarrassingly Bad

"Think about our own country — historically, the biggest source of carbon emissions. Last summer, the Senate refused to even take a vote on the tepid, moderate, tame climate bill that was before it," says McKibben. "Last week, the House voted 248 to 174 to pass a resolution saying global warming wasn’t real."

Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter

While American workers are struggling through an economic depression, the corporations and the wealthy people who own their shares are getting richer and richer.

Supreme Court Takes Cases on Rights of Corporations

The U.S. justices have agreed to decide whether corporations have privacy rights for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act....The privacy case, Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T Inc., No. 09-1279, will consider whether a provision of the Freedom of Information Act concerning "personal privacy" applies to corporations. It follows a decision in January in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in which the court ruled that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to spend money in candidate elections. Obama appointee Elena Kagan has recused herself from the case.

Google Teams With Verizon To Undermine Net Neutrality

According to this New York Times report, the agreement between Verizon and Google could overthrow the policy known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored over another. In its place, consumers could soon see a new, tiered system, which, like cable television, imposes higher costs for premium levels of service.

Health Care Reform Victimized By Greed

Despite the Obama administration's appeal for a government run alternative to corporate healthcare insurance, the lobbyists have descended on the house and senate, pushing the legislation in directions that the insurance and drug companies will like more than the poor and uninsured.

Health Care Insurance Industry Whistleblower Speaks

Wendell Potter, who worked for twenty years in the health insurance industry,speaks about how the large insurance companies are standing in the way of health care reform.

AntiWar404

Since the start of the World Wide Web thousands of anti-war and pro-peace projects have already come and gone. Now GetPeaceful presents a first-ever collection of its kind documenting the traces of anti-war movements that have disappeared. Contemporary search engines have a tendency to make dead websites disappear quietly. AntiWar404 counteracts some of the resulting amnesia, offering a concise record of the peace movement forgotten by Google.

No War With Iran Protests

Several thousand people participated in a march from Times Square to Union Square in New York City on August 2nd. Protesters called for the US and Israel to stop their threats of war against Iran. Chants along the route also called for troops to be brought home from Iraq.

CBS Conceals Ignorant McCain Comments

In a move that telegraphs the editorial ambitions of CBS News, Katie Couric's interview with McCain regarding the 'surge' in Iraq was sanitized to conceal McCain's embarrassing misunderstanding of the sequence of events in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. Taken together with Joe Lieberman's correction of McCain's repeated claims that Iran trains al Qaeda militants, the omitted error in the Couric interview paints a picture of a candidate who doesn't really know much about what's going on in the Middle East.

Fifty Permanent Bases Sought In Iraq

While the New York Times reports that the United States ambassador to Iraq has dismissed any suggestion that the Bush administration is maneuvering to set up permanent military bases in Iraq, the British paper The Independent reports otherwise.

Probe of Media Generals Sought

The secret, unacknowledged coordination between the Pentagon and the purportedly independent spokesmen, as reported by the New York Times, has been smothered with silence by the news chiefs and on-air hosts at CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, and CBS. The media has failed to come to terms with the way it was manipulated. Media organizations are supposed to be skeptical of authority, and evenhanded in their approach to public policy issues. This story illustrates how badly they fail in these functions.

Obama Won Texas Despite Spin To The Contrary

Since the Texas primary and caucus, misinformation about the results has been prevalent in mass media news and commentary. Although the official results were strangely slow in appearing after the Texas caucus, it became clear within the first week that Obama actually won more delegates. Despite this, cable news programs have continued to spread the lie that Clinton won Texas.

Halliburton Avoids Taxes Via Cayman Islands Shell Corporation

Kellogg Brown and Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

On Walmart Board Clinton A Company Woman

In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

Iraq Refugees Not Our Problem

As Whitehouse propaganda and uncritical corporate news organs chirp about the great progress in Iraq, it goes almost unmentioned that 2007 was the deadliest year of the war for American troops, and millions of Iraqi civilians continue to pay an enormous price for the hubris of Bush administration policies.

Obama Opposed War While Clinton Supported It

The record from October 2002 shows that there were major differences between the two presidential contenders, with Senator Clinton supporting the Bush push for war and its exaggerated claims about alleged Iraqi military prowess while Obama was opposing a U.S. invasion of that oil-rich country and openly challenging exaggerated claims of an Iraqi threat.

Climate Action This Decade Or Else

Unless the international community agrees to cut carbon emissions by half over the next generation, climate change is likely to cause large-scale human and economic setbacks and irreversible ecological catastrophes, according to a new United Nations report.