Today we celebrate the 39th anniversary of Earth Day. On April 22, 1970 more Americans (over 20 million) came out in public support for this cause than had ever done before in support of the environment. President Nixon, against his personal and party political convictions, but under immense public pressure, approved the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (Click Here to view a video message from the new EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson). This was also the year that domestic oil production peaked in the United States. 3 years later, we were in the grips of OPEC and Americans were to become increasingly concerned about things like pollution & global warming, over-population, world hunger and poverty. At least for a few years until we forgot...

The EPA went on to pass several environmental laws & regulations over the next few years, and by the late seventies many of us were beginning to believe that we had won back control of our planet from the Corporations who mindlessly created these calamities. But then, we got foolish and elected a failed Hollywood Cowboy actor to the White House. The same man, who as president, pushed us solidly in the economic direction that is giving us fits now. President Reagan began by dismantling the Solar Energy collectors on the roof of the White House that President Jimmy Carter had installed. Then he went about relaxing corporate regulation on just about anything he could get his misguided hands on. Not only on the environment in general, but on the auto industry as well. So that by 1988, on average, automobiles in America were actually now getting less MPG than they were 10 years earlier after the EPA began regulating automobile mileage standards through it's pollution control regulatory mechanisms. Consequently, mileage did not substantially improve for another 10 years. Only now, when it seems so Deja-Vu-like, we are once again opening our eyes to the even greater damage the insatiable corporate lust for profit has brought to our Earth. And also like a nightmare returned, we are now at or very close to global peak-oil production. At least half of the world's population is too young to remember the gas lines of the early-mid seventies, and the fear that gripped us from feeling impotent against the huge forces of nature that appeared to be going out of control.

Of course the ultimate blame goes squarely on us, the citizenry, for not only believing the rhetoric that our corporate-lobbied politicians tell us, but for becoming so incensed with measuring our freedom by the yardsticks of consumerism and materialism. Ripping our planet and it's peoples apart through selfish imperial military domination over the world's dwindling resources, displacing whole populations and causing a chain reaction of ecological consequences we cannot even accurately predict or imagine. Well, we better wake up!

Last night on Frontline, they aired what could very well be the most important and thought-provoking program they have aired on the state of our environment since they aired the segment "HEAT" last year. It's entitled: "Poisoned Waters". It looks at the state of our global water supply from the perspective of the current condition of the Chesapeake Bay, over 25 years after the passage of the Clean Water Act.

You can view it by clicking here:

This is a must-see for anyone who is concerned about the future of our freshwater supplies and the health of our planet. A state of health that will determine our own future survival...

Read more »

Last week Amnesty International revealed that on March 22 the United States delivered more than 300 containers of munitions to Israel.

This weapons delivery occurred despite the fact that Amnesty International reports that the United States is reviewing Israel's misuse of U.S. weapons during "Operation Cast Lead" in violation of the Arms Export Control Act.

Excerpt: 2 April 2009

Some of the white phosphorus artillery shells that Israeli forces fired into densely populated residential areas in Gaza last January, killing and injuring scores of Palestinian civilians, were from US-made stockpiles – as clearly indicated by the marking (M825 A1). Other white phosphorus artillery shells were also US-made, as were the overwhelming majority of the other munitions used by Israeli forces to commit grave violations of international law in the recent three-week conflict in Gaza.

To read the full story Click Here

The US Campaign To End The Occupation has written a fact-sheet about Israel's misuse of U.S. weapons in Gaza. To view and/or download the PDF Click Here

President Barack Obama may be more "white" than the racists of our nation wanted to believe, before and even after last November. And I'm not trying to bash our new president, who has been in the "White" House for less than three months. Though I personally voted for Ralph Nader, I was still relieved, very relieved actually, that he won over the other sides's candidate. Like his "grassroots" supporters, I am in awe of his "presidential stature" and the hope he still talks of bringing to us. But each day more information comes out that point to his not only having a "good ole boy" (and maybe secret) agenda, but he may actually be more like George Bush than even his presidential Republican rival, John McCain...

Posted today on AlterNet a story by Jeremy Scahill, April 2, 2009.

Excerpt:

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama's advisers said he "can't rule out [and] won't rule out" using mercenary forces, like Blackwater. Now, it appears that the Obama administration has decided on its hired guns of choice: Triple Canopy, a Chicago company now based in Virginia.

Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Revised and Updated] by Jeremy Scahill

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers by Thomas E. Ricks

April 1, 2009 - DemocracyNOW

Excerpt:

Tens of thousands of protesters from around the world are gathering in London to demonstrate against the G20 talks and call for economic justice and environmental accountability. Several large demonstrations directed at the failed banking and financial sectors are expected today, April 1st, which some protest organizers are calling “Financial Fools Day.”

Watch it below

...is good for the political gander?

The Wall Street Journal reports that while taxpayers have been frothing over executive bonuses at AIG and others, Congress has been doing the same thing.

Capitol Hill bonuses in 2008 were among the highest in years, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks payroll data. The average House aide earned 17% more in the fourth quarter of the year, when the bonuses were paid, than in previous quarters, according to the data. That was the highest jump in the eight years LegiStorm has compiled payroll information.

You have to wonder if they would ever clean up anybody's act, including their own, if the public didn't demand it? Really, it seems like even when we do, they still have to be reminded, day in and day out...

Read the details here.

Seymour Hersh: Secret US Forces Carried Out Assassinations in a Dozen Countries, Including in Latin America.

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh created a stir earlier this month when he said the Bush administration ran an “executive assassination ring” that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney. “Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving,” Hersh said.

He is interviewed here.