On December 30, 2011, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that the state’s one-hundred-year-old ban on corporate political contributions should remain in full force and effect, notwithstanding the January 21, 2010 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC. (As readers may recall, Citizens United was the controversial decision holding that corporate campaign contributions are protected as political speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.)
Supporters of the Citizens United ruling think that the Montana justices simply don’t know how to read the law. On the other hand, those who want to overturn Citizens United—and thus to reverse its corrosive impact, which allows corporate money to be spent on partisan politics—have applauded the Montana high court’s action. They believe that Montana’s high court got it right.
No one knows for certain, though, which side will ultimately prevail.
Montana’s Claimed Exception To Citizens United
EXTRACT
Most likely, it will take a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and thankfully, efforts to introduce just such an amendment are proceeding. But the amendment process is very difficult, and while public polling shows clear and overwhelming public disapproval of the role of corporate money in politics, this issue is not of the sort that moves large numbers of people to take actions, and that is what is needed. Rather, I expect public apathy to allow corporations and their money to dominate politics under Citizen United in 2012, and in the foreseeable future. It is a mess, but a mess that favors Republicans, and a powerful minority of Americans. Thus, the ugly situation with respect to elections and corporate money is going to get much worse before it gets better.
15 Things More Important Than Newt's Sex Life on the Moon
1. A war on Iran could kill us all. President Obama said in the State of the Union: “America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is s till possible . . . if Iran changes course.” So, unless Iran, which the Secretary of Defense says is not developing a nuclear weapon, ceases developing a nuclear weapon, we're going to war. Sound familiar? Ever seen this movie before? Actually, we've seen it in every single war ever fought by any nation. The best defense against the lies of the Department of Defense is good preparation. Read this book: http://WarIsALie.org
2. Occupation of DC under threat. The Park Service plans to try to remove all tents from both DC occupations (Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square) at noon on Monday, January 30th. Be there. Be nonviolent. Be determined. Be relentless.
Rise like Lions after slumber: In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew: Which in sleep had fallen on you Ye are many — they are few
3. California could solve healthcare. California has until Tuesday and is two senators away from enacting single-payer healthcare. This is far more significant that anything that has been done at the national level for healthcare. This solves the problem in one state and creates a model for the other 49. You can help: http://warisacrime.org/node/60764
Click on Image to Enlarge
4. Corporate personhood is on the defensive. The Montana Supreme Court has refused to comply with Citizens United. Citie s and states are taking action. Stronger bills are being introduced in Congress all the time. The latest is HJRes 100. Rallies were just held in over 100 towns and cities. Join this movement: http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5236
5. They're raising military spending and calling it “cuts.” The supposed cuts in all the headlines are cuts to dream budgets, leaving actual increases. Small but real cuts would result from following the law after the Super Committee's failure (remember them?). But bills in both houses would block all actual cuts to the military, and President Obama agrees with that agenda. This will mean severe cuts to education, transportation, and — as Obama indicated in his State of the Union speech — to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. http://warisacrime.org/node/60747
Click on Image to Enlarge
6. New classic book on peace just out. An amazing new book that you will treasure has just been published. It is first-person stories of war and peace and activism from all over the world, from victims, refugees, journalists, lawyers, and participants in numerous wars. Every story is personal and moving. There is not a drop of corporate media disinterestedness in the book. You may know some of the authors and now you'll know them better. It's 600 pages but you'll be sorry when you reach the end. http://www.amazon.com/Why-Peace-Marc-Guttman/dp/0984980202
7. Guess who says the anthrax attacks were pinned on the wrong guy (again)? The Department of Justice. Anybody else, and Obama would have charged them with “espionage”. http://warisacrime.org/node/60765
8. We're re-occupying the Philippines, by jingo! On the plus side, we have not yet been told that this will benefit “our little brown brothers” (whether they like it or not). http://warisacrime.org/node/60746
9. Prevent Fukushima in Vermont. A Fukushima-style nuclear power plant in Vermont legally must shut down, but in reality is up and running. We can close it. http://warisacrime.org/node/60745
11. Torture lawyer John Yoo badly loses debate. Professor Yoo agreed to debate a sane person, with predictable but still satisfying result: http://warisacrime.org/node/60738
14. Occupy Spring! The National Occupation of Washington DC starts on March 30, 2012. http://nowdc.org
Click on Image to Enlarge
15. No Immunity for Mortgage Fraudsters! The Obama Administration has been working on a mortgage fraud settlement that itself amounts to fraud, but attorneys general in several states are pushing back. Obama's speeches stress fairness and equality, but a settlement granting immunity to big banks is not fair. Robosigning and other fraudulent practices are ongoing. The White House is offering the banks a plea bargain in the middle of a crime spree. Attorneys general in Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, California, and other states are pushing in the right direction. Tell leading state attorneys general not to settle for less than an adequate settlement. http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5322
While the US is distracted at home by warmongering politicians competing for the Republican nomination and Israeli-neocon warmongering for launching a new war against Iran, a crisis may be metastasizing in cancer that is Afghanistan.
Below is a report in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn that describes the logistics bottleneck in the port of Karachi caused by Pakistan's closure of the Nato's crucial southern supply route.
There are three logistics routes to sending supplies into Afghanistan: one by air and two by land. Air is too expensive and of limited carrying capacity. The least costly route is the long vulnerable highway net thru Pakistan — this is the southern route (top map) that has been shut down as described below. The northern route (lower map) is much longer going from either the Baltic or the Black Seas and is dependent on the good will of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. According to the AP, The northern route at $104 million per month in total cost is at least six times as expensive as the southern route.
The AP report contained no information on the cost per ton, but that factor is likely to be much higher that six-to-one, because prior to the closure (as of last June), about 50% of Nato's total supply requirement was was flowing through the southern route, with the other 50% being divided between the norther route and the air route.]
Thousands of Nato trucks in Pakistan backlog
Dawn [Pk], 26 Jan 2012
KARACHI: Two months into Pakistan’s blockade on Nato supplies crossing into Afghanistan, thousands of trucks are crowding the port in Karachi where drivers, fed up with waiting, are starting to desert.
I just got back from a great trip to Burlington, VT, where I touched base with Amy Kirschner of the Vermont Sustainable Exchange. She and cocreator Kyra Pinchiera have been working on creating an inquiry process to assist people in making ideas happen.
Many of us have grand visions of the future, but to be able to tranform those into a “minimum viable product” – something tangible and actionable – can be a bit of an art.
She showed me her sketches for taking idea to action, and i made them into a little graphic. Enjoy!
Phi Beta Iota: Where this disappoints is in turning to art in the early stage when the marketplace does not “get it.” Some kind of mass educational shock appears called for–Shock Education. Revolutions start with violent shocks–no one has achieved a non-violent shock that leads to a non-violent revolution Of, By, and For We the People, that we know of.
From a perspective of elementary epistemology, the difference between practice of religion and practice of science is really quite simple: in religion, one changes one's observations about reality to fit one's conception or model of reality ; in science, one changes one's model of reality to fit one's observations about reality. At the heart of this distinction are the notions of incontrovertible truth on the one hand and conditional (or convertible) truth on the other. Each has its place in the human affairs, and differences in place implies acceptance of one does not necessarily mean rejection of the other.
Of course the real world is more complex than this simple distinction implies and the different notions of truth coexist and overlap. Indeed, notions of Truth revealed though religious study, for example, have in fact changed over the long term, often in unwilling response to the progress of science. The causes of thunderstorms in antiquity were in realm of religion and explained as acts of gods; today those causes can be explained by advancements in scientific knowledge. The Catholic church successfully suppressed the views of Galileo in the short term, but in the long term adapted its religious dogma to them, ditto for the ideas of Darwin. In contrast, the practice of science views “facts” in the context of a conception of truth, be it convenient or inconvenient, that is by definition conditional or controvertible in the short term and always subject to refutation. All scientific theories are conditional hypotheses about reality, and as the historian of science Thomas Kuhn has shown, these hypotheses may be accepted as truth during the normal practice of fleshing out scientific knowledge, but they are nevertheless alway subject to refutation. In fact, to be a valid hypothesis, a scientific theory must be stated in a form that can be falsified by logic or experiment or both — and while its truth may be accepted by the scientist, he recognizes that his/her acceptance is always conditional and subject to change. Indeed, many of the greatest experiments in science are those that falsify generally-accepted theories of reality, like Galileo's observations of Jupiter's moons or the Michelson-Morley experiment. The other necessary condition for the practice of science, namely that its efforts must be transparent and subject to replication by other scientists, flows naturally from the notion of conditional truth — hiding data, suppressing competing views, and political or hidden agendas have no place in the scientific ideal.
Now, I urge you read the attached letter by 16 scientist/engineers, and ask yourself if the theory and practice of the incontrovertible “truth” of global warming is evolving along a religious or scientific vector of knowledge creation? Are its practitioners treating it as as a theory — an hypothesis — subject to falsification or as a dogmatic truth that should not be questioned?*
——————–
* Of course, you can dismiss this letter. After all, it appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by the arch climate denier (itself a revealing epithet) Rupert Murdoch. On the other hand, if you are more openminded and want to determine for yourself if the anti-scientific behaviours alluded to in this letter are atypical isolated examples, I recommend you start by reading A.W. Montford's “The Hockey Stick Illusion,” which goes to the core of the question of whether or not it is an incontrovertible truth that the temperature increases since 1850 are unprecedented. But there is more — a lot more — readers interested in learning about alternative scientific hypotheses might explain the dynamics of climate change since 1850 can start their journey by reading Professor Akasofu's paper on the subject [here].
There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize' the world's economy.
Wall Street Journal [ op-ed], 27 January 2012
Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed below:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.
Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV. It is a simple technique using very basic drug. The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. So, there is no concern of side effects or about their long term effects.
This drug doesn’t require a patent, so anyone can employ it widely and cheaply compared to the costly cancer drugs produced by major pharmaceutical companies.
FBI wants an app to detect global and domestic threats
ThinkDigit, 27 January 2012
The FBI is in talks with developers to create an app that will notify them of suspicious behavior, combining information from Facebook, Twitter and Google Maps. The FBI has been monitoring user content on a lot of these sites for a while, and have lucked out in the past, catching many criminals who’ve unthinkingly revealed incriminating information.
“Social media has become a primary source of intelligence because it has become the premier first response to key events and the primal alert to possible developing situations.”
The app will work as an early-warning system, allowing the FBI be alerted of any threats or crimes, with location information displayed on maps. The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC), had put out a market research request for a “Social Media Application,” last week, specifying the features required:
Collect open source information from across the web on domestic and global terror data
Automated search and scrape capability of social networks
Allow for users to create specific keyword searches.
Display levels of threats on maps, with colour coding, etc.
Google Maps 3D and Yahoo Maps the “preferred” mapping options.
Plot a wide range of domestic and global terror data.
Translate tweets into English
The FBI said the “Information posted to social media websites is publicly accessible and voluntarily generated. Thus the opportunity not to provide information exists prior to the informational post by the user.” Further assuaging privacy concerns, the bureau added that policy was in place to edit out any content that was not relevant of specific categories being researched for investigations. Sites it intends to monitor include YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Itstrending.com.
