budbromley

A deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Energy told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that U.S. electricity prices will soar up to 80% under new EPA coal regulations…and on top of that …the Obama administration will be doling out an $8 billion loan guarantee, another $6 billion in Clean Coal Sequestration (CCS) investments and another $3.4 billion from the stimulus bill to develop CCS technology which is required in those EPA regulations but which does not yet exist and in any event will have no measurable effect on either climate or pollution.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/energy-official-electricity-prices-to-soar-80-percent-thanks-to-epa-coal-regulations/article/2543871 

And Obama told you that energy prices would “skyrocket.”

“The science of human sustenance is inherently a social science. Neither physics nor chemistry nor even biology is adequate to understand how it has been possible for one species to reshape both its own future and the destiny of an entire planet. This is the science of the Anthropocene. The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history, and most likely the future. Humans are niche creators. We transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than from any environmental limits.” ~ Erle C. Ellis is an associate professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a visiting associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is-not-the-problem.html?_r=1&

A potential miracle cure is immediately ahead, but the ethical and moral obstacles are enormous because literacy in science and logic is so poor, and the need for reformation in government is so great.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-the-miracle-cure–scientists-turn-human-skin-into-stem-cells-9117102.html

“We cannot approach any real inquiry into truth, with any assumption or belief what so ever. We must be willing to see things as they are, rather as we hope, wish, or expect them to be.” ~ Buddha

You might be interested in the articles at these three links. There is a huge amount of misinformation out there on GMO’s and pesticides. This first article is the UK government’s very large, long term study on pesticides, mortality and cancer. The results of this study were stunning and unexpected.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr958.pdf                                

Then there is this from a US government handbook on pesticdes on the NIH website.                   http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cpdb/pdfs/handbook.pesticide.toxicology.pdf

This third article discusses the precautionary principle as applied to GMO crops. http://goklany.org/library/Goklany%20BLR.pdf

Here on the Big Island of Hawaii, the local government voted recently to ban outright all new GMO foods from being grown here.  There were no discussions with scientists or even knowledgeable farmers.  Each Hawaiian island is a separate county.  Towns, villages, etc are not organized parts of government.  Local county officials in Kauai and Hawaii acted in haste and presumably with cautious intent, but without listening to opposing positions.  

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) mourns the passing of Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi, a liberal university professor and author of over 40 books who was a courageous advocate for freedom and reform in the Arab and Muslim world. Over the years MEMRI has translated from Arabic and published many articles by Dr. Al-Nabulsi, as can be seen in the list below. His last article, on the subject of solving the crisis of terrorism, was published in the Saudi daily Al-Watan in October 2013.
October 18, 2013: “The Way Out Of The Severe Terrorism Crisis”

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7807.htm

October 18, 2013: “The Way Out Of The Severe Terrorism Crisis”

In an article title “The Way Out Of The Severe Terrorism Crisis” published in the Saudi government daily Al-Watan, Jordanian liberal intellectual and author Shaker Al-Nabulsi discussed the ongoing support for terrorism by, inter alia, fatwas encouraging it, and called to establish a terrorism court for dealing with it. He wrote:

“Who is it who permitted some of them [i.e. preachers] to mount political pulpits and dispatch feverish fatwas, which are [later] fired from the mouths of bloodthirsty people from among the idle, the homeless, the ignorant, and those [who think they hold] admission tickets to paradise? [I am talking about those] who abandoned classroom, plow, factory machine, and employment office so that they could buy counterfeit admission tickets to heaven like the indulgences that the medieval Church sold to the same sort of ignorant dupes who have no faith in life.

“Undoubtedly, [a number of factors] – the Arab political void, the fragile Arab politics, the political parties’ failure, the vacuum in the Arab political discourse, the collapse and decline of most Arab political institutions, the Arab street’s lack of awareness, the absence of an active public opinion that can create change, the disrespect for the Arab mind (if there is such a thing) and the failure to use it, and the way in which impulse takes precedence over thought in the Arab world – all of these have made it possible for a few individuals to mount political pulpits in the Arab world, from east to west, in order to lead Arab political activity that is in essence a call for bloodshed and more bloodshed.

“This is clear proof that as a nation, we have become politically bankrupt. We have inherited this political bankruptcy and we bequeath it to our sons… We need an international political bank to rescue us from this bankruptcy…

“Most of the Arab regimes are incapable of restraining [these preachers] and cannot stop their activity – because some of this activity is aimed at benefiting those very regimes and strengthening their influence. The Arab political parties cannot join forces because of the extreme partisanship that predominates among them. There is no Arab street – only [Arabs who are] hungry, ignorant and exhausted, and who have lost all faith in the Arab political forces. So these ‘pulpit-mounters’ provide them with the only thing they want and [the only thing] that can alleviate their resentment and the oppression, hunger, neglect and plundering to which they are subjected by some of the regimes…

“The intellectual and political elites in the Arab world cannot stand against these [fatwa-issuers] for fear of the power they wield – for some of them maintain armed militias with blood on their hands that can behead any intellectual or politician who opposes them. The best proof of this might be the assassination of Lebanese [communist] thinkers Hussein Mroue and Mahdi ‘Amil, and Egyptian thinker Farag Foda, as well as the [1995] assassination [attempt] against [Egyptian writer and philosopher] Naguib Mahfouz, the abduction of Egyptian journalist Reda Hilal, and other incidents. [Therefore,] most of the Arab voices opposing and attacking [these fatwa-issuers] reside in the West, far from the violence that they use against their opponents.

“So what should be done? One solution is for a vanguard of brave Arab intellectuals to draw up a progressive international communiqué, in 21st-century language, spirit, and logic. [They then must] submit it to the U.N. and ask the Security Council to discuss it and pass a resolution tasking the U.N. with establishing a Terrorism Court to prosecute anyone who calls for, engages in, or issues a fatwa encouraging or calling for terrorism – now that terrorism has become a global international problem that does not only concern the Arabs.

“Some will say, as usual, that [such a solution] internationalizes the Arab affairs and that Arab problems must be solved within the Arab homeland by Arabs. But no Arab problem has ever been solved within the Arab world… The Arab [debate] platforms will fill with preachers and pundits condemning colonialism, its forces and its history… and the satellite TV channels will fill with analysis, politicians, journalists, authors and artists who will prattle on and on about political issues. The Arab world will be in an uproar. So be it! When has the Arab world ever failed to calm down after an uproar?”

By STEPHEN F. HAYES and THOMAS JOSCELYN

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/real-scandal_774787.html?nopager=1

The NSA gathered data from every American’s electronic communications — but it did not do it alone. Like other law enforcement agencies seeking private information, it needs a warrant, and the NSA’s handmaiden in this undertaking is a secretive panel of judges chosen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Not only is it a problem that this panel conducts its affairs in secret, but it is beholden to no one.

This secret panel, known as the FISA court (after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), has so far renewed the NSA snooping warrant 36 times!

This is unconstitutional and a direct assault on the Fourth Amendment, taking away Americans’ “right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Moreover, a secret court without the powers of investigation means that when questions are asked, the NSA’s response is treated as Gospel. It’s the equivalent of a trial with only defense counsel present — no prosecutor and certainly no jury.

But there is a much bigger point in all of this. There are strong suspicions that the FISA court has reinterpreted the Fourth Amendment to allow it to grant these warrants.

In doing so, it twists and manipulates the vision of the Founding Fathers.

If the Fourth Amendment was altered in such a way, it means that American citizens no longer have a right to privacy. And without privacy, there can be no freedom.

Allowing the wholesale invasion of privacy and the storing of our electronic records when we, as citizens, have done nothing wrong, is a breach of our most sacred right “to be secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

MB Slack
Managing Editor, The Sovereign Investor

President Obama contended in his State of the Union that “the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.” But, the president’s certainty comes at a time when even proponents of human-caused warming are struggling to account for the almost-total absence of global warming over the past 16 years. NASA and NOAA reported in a joint press conference that the average global temperature for 2013 was only about 0.6 degree C above the average for the 20th century.

This is confirmed by the scientists in the following study. They point out that over the past fifteen years (1998-2012) the observed temperature trend [as compared to computer models] over this period is not significantly different from zero, suggesting “a temporary ‘hiatus’ in global warming,” further citing the studies of Easterling and Wehner (2009) and Fyfe et al. (2011) Fyfe, J.C., Gillett, N.P. and Zwiers, F.W. 2013. Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years. Nature Climate Change 3: 767-769.

“In the eternal war between earth’s plants and the herbivorous insects that feed upon them, the ongoing increase in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration is proving to be a powerful secret weapon, which is helping the planet’s vegetation to sustain the impressive worldwide greening of the earth that continues apace, growing ever stronger year by year.” http://nipccreport.org/articles/2014/jan/28jan2014a1.html

German wind energy giant Prokon filed for insolvency on Wednesday, leaving tens of thousands of investors worried about their money. The company advertised itself as a safe bet offering eight percent returns.
http://www.thelocal.de/20140123/german-green-energy-giant-prokon-insolvent