Arctic Thawing Could Cost $60 Trillion [Discovery]
Rapid warming of the Arctic could result in economic costs of $60 trillion – roughly the size of the entire world economy last year – according to a new analysis.
Writing in the journal Nature, Gail Whiteman of Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and Chris Hope and Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge, note that while Arctic climate change is acknowledged to carry negative environmental repercussions – particularly for sea ice-dependent life such as ringed seals and polar bears – the economic consequences have mostly been framed as positive.
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But Whiteman, Hope and Wadhams argue that the economic costs of a melting Arctic will greatly exceed any benefits, with much of the cost being “borne by developing countries, which will face extreme weather, poorer health and lower agricultural production as Arctic warming affects climate.”
Americans For Prosperity, Koch Owned Group, May Have Misled In Georgia Solar Energy Fight [Huffington Post]
Charles Koch on the Poor: Let Them Eat Economic Freedom [The Nation]
Of course, the Koch ad isn’t really directed toward the poor or the middle class. It’s geared to the corporate elite, lobbyists and legislators to help them better rationalize their crusade to kill minimum wage increases, voting rights, Obamacare, environmental protections and other nuisances. Shockingly, but not surprisingly, the GOP-controlled House voted Thursday to completely eliminate funding for food stamps from the Farm Bill. The right doesn’t just want to starve the beast, it wants to feel morally upright even if it starves hundreds of thousands of souls along the way.
Hunger Games USA [Paul Krugman, NY Times]
Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.
Rent-a-Paramilitaries Freak Out Wisconsin [Talking Points Memo]
There’s been a battle royale up in Wisconsin over an effort to establish a big iron mining operation near Lake Superior, to be owned and operated by a company called Gogebic Taconite. The Republican legislature approved the mine in March over environmentalists’ objections. Some protests have been staged since the operation got started. But people started to get freaked out over the weekend when the company brought in what the Wisconsin State Journal calls “masked security guards who are toting semi-automatic rifles and wearing camouflaged uniforms.”
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Indeed, as the site notes, “BPS has at its disposal the latest cache of specialized equipment for border security operations, not typically found in the private sector. As example, BPS owns heavily armored Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV’s), Tactical All Terrain Vehicles (T-ATV’s), FLIR (mobile thermal systems), mast equipment (eye in the sky), and many other state-of-the-art assets … The presence of BPS will prevent criminal organizations from posing a threat to your personnel or your mission.”
If your needs are different, Bulletproof can also provide “a QRF (quick reaction force) tactical unit to secure a manufacturing plant during a heated worker strike.”
Are You Living in a Fourth Amendment Exclusion Zone?
As you can see in the image below provided by the ACLU which highlights the 100 mile radius established by the ridiculous DHS policy, the 197 million individuals living on this outlandishly-extensive ‘border’ accounts for nearly 2/3 of the entire nation’s population. From Washington D.C. to the entire state of Florida (thanks to its coastal positioning), the massive ‘border’ suffocates most of the major cities within the US — and most likely your home.
Detroit’s Bankruptcy and America’s Future: Robots, Race, Globalization and the 1% [Juan Cole]
The big question is whether Detroit’s bankruptcy and likely further decline is a fluke or whether it tells us something about the dystopia that the United States is becoming. It seems to me that the city’s problems are the difficulties of the country as a whole, especially the issues of deindustrialization, robotification, structural unemployment, the rise of the 1% in gated communities, and the racial divide. The mayor has called on families living in the largely depopulated west of the city to come in toward the center, so that they can be taken care of. It struck me as post-apocalyptic. Sometimes the abandoned neighborhoods accidentally catch fire, and 30 buildings will abruptly go up in smoke.
The Global Hoodie [Souciant]
I can’t say whether Zimmerman acted out of that fear or that anger, how much of it was racism and how much was the pent-up rage that more and more middle class Americans are feeling. But I can say that whichever of those categories his killing of Martin fell into, it is a very American response, one that is reflective of the way the US, and other countries, also behave in their foreign policy.
Trayvon Martin is indistinguishable from the long list of innocent Muslim civilians killed by US drone attacks. Or the thousands of Palestinians who have been beaten or killed by Israeli soldiers, police, settlers, rocket fire and heavy ammunition. He may have just as well been an Iranian who is being slowly driven into poverty and even starvation by Western sanctions. Or any one of a wide range of Syrians who have been summarily executed because of their ethnicity, or who were in an area targeted by their President.
Richest 300 Persons on Earth Have More Money Than Poorest 3 Billion [Truth Out]
As we repeatedly focus on wealth inequality in the United States (i.e.; just four hundred persons in the US have as much in assets and income as the bottom 50% of Americans), a video points out the even more extreme global wealth disparity.
It’s continually becoming more obvious that the richest 0.01% of people are literally willing to kill the rest of us to continue amassing power and wealth.
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