March 24, 2014

Army punished soldiers who asked for PTSD help

Civilian advocates who work with wounded soldiers when they are being discharged are targeted by the Army
March 24, 2014 5:00AM ET
by Dave Philipps

After three combat tours, Sgt. Dennis Tackett was kicked out of the Army for punching a man in the face while drunk. It didn’t matter that he had been diagnosed with PTSD (by the Army) and had tried to get help (from the Army) for the drinking it led to. It didn’t matter that he was in the late stages of a medical discharge that would get him out soon anyway — with benefits. What mattered to the commanding general at Fort Carson, Colo., who spoke to him that day in November 2012 was that he had tried to fight the discharge with the help of a pair of civilian watchdogs, Georg-Andreas Pogany and Robert Alvarez.

“If you had not gotten involved with those advocates, it would have gone differently,” Tackett remembers the commander, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, telling him. Anderson is now commander of Fort Bragg, N.C.

A recording obtained by Al Jazeera America suggests Tackett and soldiers like him were retaliated against because of an increasingly rancorous relationship between commanders at Fort Carson and the civilian advocates.

more

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/24/exclusive-recordingshowsthatarmypunishedsoldierswhoaskedforhelp.html

March 24, 2014

How The Koch Brothers Are Hacking Science

FRANK ACKERMAN – MARCH 24, 2014, 6:01 AM EDT3483
Rhode Island has recently learned that its renewable energy standards could be ruinously expensive. But they’re in good company: more than a dozen states have “learned” the same thing, from reports from the same economists at the Beacon Hill Institute (BHI).

Housed at Boston’s Suffolk University, BHI turns out study after study for right-wing, anti-government groups. Funding for BHI’s relentless efforts has come from Charles and David Koch (leading tea party funders) and others on the same wavelength. For the Rhode Island study, BHI teamed up with the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, a member of the Koch’s State Policy Network.

While BHI’s name and location place it close to the Massachusetts state government, it is philosophically a different beacon on a different hill. Last year BHI requested a grant from the Searle Freedom Trust, aimed at undermining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state effort that Massachusetts participates in. The grant application said, “Success will take the form of media recognition … and legislative activity that will pare back or repeal RGGI.” Suffolk vice-president Greg Gatlin said that BHI had not gone through the university’s required grant approval process, and “the University would not have authorized this grant proposal as written.” As it turned out, the proposal was not funded.

BHI has worked closely with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded network of ultra-conservative legislators and policy analysts, which drafts and advocates laws that will push state policies to the right. After gaining notoriety for supporting “stand your ground” gun laws, ALEC has now decided to downplay social issues and refocus on its core economic mission: attacking Obamacare, progressive taxation, and environmental protection.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/how-the-koch-brothers-are-hacking-science

March 24, 2014

Taxpayers fund creationism in the classroom

By STEPHANIE SIMON | 3/24/14 5:01 AM EDT
Taxpayers in 14 states will bankroll nearly $1 billion this year in tuition for private schools, including hundreds of religious schools that teach Earth is less than 10,000 years old, Adam and Eve strolled the garden with dinosaurs, and much of modern biology, geology and cosmology is a web of lies.

Now a major push to expand these voucher programs is under way from Alaska to New York, a development that seems certain to sharply increase the investment.

Public debate about science education tends to center on bills like one in Missouri, which would allow public school parents to pull their kids from science class whenever the topic of evolution comes up. But the more striking shift in public policy has flown largely under the radar, as a well-funded political campaign has pushed to open the spigot for tax dollars to flow to private schools. Among them are Bible-based schools that train students to reject and rebut the cornerstones of modern science.

Decades of litigation have established that public schools cannot teach creationism or intelligent design. But private schools receiving public subsidies can — and do. A POLITICO review of hundreds of pages of course outlines, textbooks and school websites found that many of these faith-based schools go beyond teaching the biblical story of the six days of creation as literal fact. Their course materials nurture disdain of the secular world, distrust of momentous discoveries and hostility toward mainstream scientists. They often distort basic facts about the scientific method — teaching, for instance, that theories such as evolution are by definition highly speculative because they haven’t been elevated to the status of “scientific law.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/education-creationism-104934.html

March 24, 2014

Wal-Mart makes official its reliance on food-stamp recipients for profits

By Steve Goldstein

Wal-Mart Stores WMT +0.12% filed its 10-K late on Friday after the market closed, and the world’s largest retailer added some new language to the list of factors that could hurt the company.


There are oodles of things Wal-Mart is fearful of, from Fed interest-rate policy to climate change, but here’s the specific language on benefits: “changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans (and) changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans.” (Yes, Wal-Mart’s lawyers got the name of the program wrong — it’s the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.)

The latter language could reflect both the change in the food-stamp program as well as the ongoing debate over whether Congress should renew extended jobless benefits that lapsed at the end of December.

This isn’t the first time Wal-Mart has commented on the business impact of the food-stamp program. On Jan. 31, Wal-Mart said the reduction in food-stamp benefits by as much 5.5% in November hurt its profits last quarter and were the reason the company’s comparable-store sales were negative (-0.4%) rather than flat at its Walmart stores.

more

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/behindthestorefront/2014/03/24/wal-mart-makes-official-its-reliance-on-food-stamp-recipients-for-profits/

March 24, 2014

Why Arizona is courting Mexicans, downplaying immigration laws (hint: $$$)

By Katherine Corcoran, Associated Press / March 22, 2014

Mention Arizona and many Mexicans grimace.

It's still widely viewed here as the most anti-Mexico state in the U.S., even if the tough anti-migrant law behind that perception has been largely voided. But Arizona's leaders are logging lots of miles to put a new face on their home state.

Official delegations have come across the border several times in the last year looking to drum up more trade and tourism in what is already a big business relationship — but one they say could be much bigger. They're talking binational everything: companies with headquarters in Phoenix and factories in Mexico, wine tours that visit both sides of the border, even the first Super Bowl with Mexican sponsorship when Phoenix hosts the mega-sports event next year.

"We're just like you are," said Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin, who voted for Arizona's controversial law. He was speaking to a binational cocktail party in Mexico City this week, saying Mexicans and Arizonans want the same future for their children: "We'll be here a lot more frequently, and we're here to continue to make friends."

"Friends" was the furthest term from mind in 2010, when the Arizona legislature made it a state crime to fail to get or carry immigration registration papers — a provision that was later thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices upheld the law's provision that police, while investigating other crimes, are required to question people's immigration status if they're believed to be in the country illegally.

more

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0322/Why-Arizona-is-courting-Mexicans-downplaying-immigration-laws

March 24, 2014

In Greece, uproar over plan to dispose of Syrian chemical weapons in the Mediterranean

ATHENS, Greece — From priests and environmentalists to trawlers and tour operators, thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Crete Sunday to protest a United Nations program designed to destroy Syrian chemical weapons in the Mediterranean, turning one of the most popular holiday hot spots in Europe into a potential graveyard of drifting, highly toxic agents.

Staged in Arkadi, a small village tucked in the highlands of Crete and reknown for a bloody local revolt against Ottoman occupiers 150 years ago, the protest marks the latest show of local resistance to the international operation, which demonstrators deem the deadliest threat yet to the environment and their livelihood. Crete police and organizers contacted by phone, put the number of demonstrators at over 10,000, making the protest the biggest yet in Europe against the United States-led decommission plan.

“We will not let this happen,” said Yannis Haronitis, an activist and protest organizer. “They want to destroy these weapons — well, let them turn Syria’s back yard into a toxic waste dump, not ours.”

Under an agreement brokered by the United States and Russia, all of Syria’s chemical arsenal must be decommissioned and destroyed by June 30 — a goal that is becoming increasingly unlikely amid missed deadlines and foot-dragging by Damascus.

more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/03/23/in-greece-uproar-over-plan-to-dispose-of-syrian-chemical-weapons-in-the-mediterranean/

March 24, 2014

Stephen Hawking Tells Explorers to 'Boldly Go' Beyond Earth

NEW YORK — Ambitious plans to carry humans far beyond Earth were at the forefront of the Explorers Club Annual Dinner here Saturday night, as astronauts, entrepreneurs and physicist Stephen Hawking celebrated the wonder — and necessity — of space exploration.

"Not to leave planet Earth would be like castaways on a desert island not trying to escape," Stephen Hawking said in his keynote address via telecast.

"Sending humans to other planets … will shape the future of the human race in ways we don't yet understand, and may determine whether we have any future at all," Hawking told the audience at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

"We have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said. He hailed the current era of spaceflight as the most exciting since the Apollo era — and fittingly, the gala honored today's pioneers in the field.

more

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/stephen-hawking-tells-explorers-boldly-go-beyond-earth-n56021

March 24, 2014

UK- 1,500 people line up to try and get one of 40 jobs

One and a half thousand job seekers queued for three hours or more in a desperate attempt to nab one of just 40 positions at supermarket giants Aldi.

The hopeful men and women joined the queue at 10am on Friday despite the interviews not starting until 1pm, forcing staff to start 20 minutes early.

Each candidate was given a mini-interview with management teams from branches of the supermarket before handing in their CV and contact details.

A teenager, who did not want to be named and joined the 1,500-person queue at noon at the Bridgnorth store in Shropshire, said: “I knew it started at 1pm so I wanted to get here early, but I didn’t expect there to be that many people."

more

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/aldi-1500-people-queue-three-3275527

March 24, 2014

Big Climate Report: Warming Is Big Risk For People

If you think of climate change as a hazard for some far-off polar bears years from now, you're mistaken. That's the message from top climate scientists gathering in Japan this week to assess the impact of global warming.

In fact, they will say, the dangers of a warming Earth are immediate and very human.

"The polar bear is us," says Patricia Romero Lankao of the federally financed National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., referring to the first species to be listed as threatened by global warming due to melting sea ice.

She will be among the more than 60 scientists in Japan to finish writing a massive and authoritative report on the impacts of global warming. With representatives from about 100 governments at this week's meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they'll wrap up a summary that tells world leaders how bad the problem is.

The key message from leaked drafts and interviews with the authors and other scientists: The big risks and overall effects of global warming are far more immediate and local than scientists once thought. It's not just about melting ice, threatened animals and plants. It's about the human problems of hunger, disease, drought, flooding, refugees and war, becoming worse.

more

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=293549929

March 24, 2014

13 of 14 warmest years on record occurred in 21st century – UN

13 of the 14 warmest years on record occurred this century, according to the UN.

Publishing its annual climate report, the UN's World Meteorological Organisation said that last year continued a long-term warming trend, with the hottest year ever in Australia and floods, droughts and extreme weather elsewhere around the world.

Michel Jarraud, the WMO's secretary-general, also said there had been no 'pause' in global warming, as has been alleged by climate change sceptics. “There is no standstill in global warming,” Jarraud said.

2001-2010 was the warmest decade on record, the WMO noted, and added that the last three decades had been warmer than the previous one.

The WMO reiterated its earlier finding that 2013 was the sixth warmest on record, with temperatures 0.5C above the long-term average (1961-1990). The southern hemisphere was particularly warm, its report said, with Argentina experiencing its second warmest year on record and New Zealand its third warmest.

more

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/24/warmest-years-record-un-global-warming