from the Lexington Herald-Leader:



While thousands flocked to the Kentucky Horse Park this weekend for the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, the park was getting less admiring attention from a different quarter.

One of the leaders of the Creation Museum in Petersburg — which supports a young-earth philosophy that decrees men lived alongside dinosaurs — has taken issue with a display at the International Museum of the Horse on the evolution of horses.

Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, wrote a blog post published Saturday titled "Kentucky Horses Will Lead You Astray," which challenges the validity of a permanent display.

Ham contends the idea of horse evolution is false, and he particularly disputes the line of prehistoric horses that scientists link to the modern horse. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/04/28/2168147/creation-museum-head-doubts-horse.html#storylink=cpy

The Tinder-Box Society
Tuesday, May 1, 2012


The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 13,338 Tuesday, its highest since December, 2007. The S&P 500 added 16 points. Wall Street will remember May 1 as a great day.

But most of these gains are going to the richest 10 percent of Americans who own 90 percent of the shares traded on Wall Street. And the lion’s share of the gains are going to the wealthiest 1 percent.

Shares are up because corporate profits are up, and profits are up largely because companies have figured out how to do more with less.

.....(snip).....

Austerity economics in Europe is fanning the flames, as public budgets are slashed on the false crucible of fiscal responsibility. In the United States, an anemic recovery and plunging home prices are taking a toll: a large portion of the public believes the game is rigged, and no longer trusts that the major institutions of society – big business, Wall Street, or government – are on their side. In Europe and America, 30 to 50 percent of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://robertreich.org/post/22204212722

This is from POCLAD (Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy). It contains links to source material about the history of corporate 'personhood' and the transfer of rights from people to corporations, including court cases, studies articles etc. In other words, all the essential information we're not getting from schools or the corporate media. Here's the link to the page with the link to all of the resource materials:

http://www.poclad.org/DemocracyInsurgencyCurriculum/


DEMOCRACY INSURGENCY CURRICULUM


Real change, led by We the People, is needed in our nation and world. A bottom-up democracy insurgency calling and working for genuine self-governance has begun. It's represented in the US by multi-state responses to attacks on workers, the Occupy Wall Street movement and Move to Amend; and internationally by the massive "Arab Spring" demonstrations throughout the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.

The Declaration of Independence in 1776 was the first major collective statement in the colonies outlining oppression and asserting self-determination. The Populists followed the same course in their Omaha Platform of 1892.

The problem isn't a few corporate "bad apples" or in general this or that corporate abuse. The fundamental problem is never-intended constitutional powers and rights corporations have acquired permitting them to usurp us, We the People, from governing ourselves.

POCLAD invites you to join together with others where you are in study/action groups to study, learn and act. We've prepared this Democracy Insurgency Curriculum to assist those who want to embark on this quest.

If Rupert Murdoch believed his appearance at the Leveson judicial inquiry last week would quell the ever louder outcry over his and his company's conduct, he was wrong. By far the most damning judgement of this report is reserved for the 81-year-old chairman and chief executive of News Corporation.

By concluding that he is unfit to run a major international company (the majority verdict of the five Labour MPs and the Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders, but not – interestingly – of its four voting Conservative members) the Culture Committee has dramatically increased the pressure on the tycoon.

He already faces a shareholder revolt at News Corp's next annual meeting in October, where there is a motion to unseat him.

The US Department for Justice may also take into account the committee's findings when considering whether News Corp directors permitted or wilfully ignored a newsroom culture that bribed police and public officials in the UK – potentially a criminal offence punishable by a fine or five years in jail under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/martin-hickman-if-murdoch-thought-the-worst-was-over-he-was-wrong-7704399.html

.....(snip).....

Walter Benjamin argued that capitalism is not only a formation “conditioned by religion,” but is an “essentially religious phenomenon,” albeit one that no longer seeks to connect humans with the mysterious forces of life. Capitalism, as Benjamin observed, called on human societies to embark on a ceaseless and futile quest for money and goods. This quest, he warned, perpetuates a culture dominated by guilt, a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing. It enslaves nearly all its adherents through wages, subservience to the commodity culture and debt peonage. The suffering visited on Native Americans, once Western expansion was complete, was soon endured by others, in Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The final chapter of this sad experiment in human history will see us sacrificed as those on the outer reaches of empire were sacrificed. There is a kind of justice to this. We profited as a nation from this demented vision, we remained passive and silent when we should have denounced the crimes committed in our name, and now that the game is up we all go down together.


The entire article is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/welcome_to_the_asylum_20120430/

Hundreds of workers at Joliet's Caterpillar facility went on strike Tuesday morning after they turned down a proposed contract offering no pay raise and more expensive health benefits.

The union workers told NBC Chicago the contract offer was so unfair they'd rather be picketing outside the plant's main entrance. They reported for work at 11 p.m. Monday then walked off the job at 12:01 a.m.

Union leaders said 94 percent of the approximately 780 machinist union workers voted to strike after the contract offer was voted down Sunday.

The deal was six years with no pay increases, and workers would be required to pay twice as much for health care. The workers say it's unfair, especially given Caterpillar's $1.5 billion first-quarter profit. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Workers-Strike-at-Joliet-Caterpillar-Plant-149630455.html#ixzz1te5Y988e

A lone dolphin has spent the past several days residing in a California coastal bay after several reports suggest it was "bullied" by a pod of fellow dolphins that were blocking its return to the open sea.

"He was scared, he was intimidated, he was bullied," Peter Wallerstein of the Marine Animal Rescue told the Los Angeles Times.

At first, wildlife officials tried encouraging "Bolsa Chica Bob" to return to sea. But when the dolphin, who is nicknamed after the section of wetlands he has been taking shelter in, tried returning to the ocean he was met by two other dolphins who blocked his path.

"There could be tension among the dolphin pod, and dolphins can be very aggressive, even among themselves," Wallerstein said. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/bullied-dolphin-hiding-pushy-pod-officials-165111005.html

A top Vatican representative and Roman Catholic Archbishop is reaching out to form a coalition with other religions and has called on them to join the Vatican in a worldwide holy war against same-sex marriage, claiming that proliferation of equality “is not a good thing for society,” and will lead to “confusion.”

“I wonder if we shouldn’t ask for and look for more support among other Christian confessions and indeed, persons of other faiths,” Archbishop Antonio Mennini, who represents Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican in Great Britain, said in an address to Catholic bishops from England and Wales.

“It seems to me that, concerning the institution of marriage, and indeed the sanctity of human life, we have much in common with the position of the Jewish community, the Chief Rabbi and many of the more significant representatives of Islam,” Mennini added.

Mennini, 64, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to Great Britain 2010, and also served the Pope in Russia, Uzbekistan, and Bulgaria. He speaks Italian, English, French, Spanish, German, Bulgarian, and Russian. (The image above shows Archbishop Mennini with Valdimir Putin in 2003.) .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/vatican-declares-gay-marriage-holy-war-forms-worldwide-religions-coalition/politics/2012/04/30/38744

NEW YORK — The section of highway where an accident sent seven members of a Bronx family flying over a guardrail and plummeting to their deaths has narrow lanes, steep hills, tight turns, inadequate guardrails and no breakdown lane, an auto safety group said Monday.

The Bronx River Parkway "lacks modern transportation engineering features," said Robert Sinclair, spokesman for the American Automobile Association's New York City affiliate. He said it was conceived in 1907 and opened in 1925 as "the first limited access multilane highway in the U.S."

Three sections of the parkway in the Bronx, including one at or near the accident site, are on the state Transportation Department's 5 Percent List, a federally mandated report of locations "exhibiting the most severe highway safety needs."

The driver, Maria Gonzalez, clipped a highway divider and damaged a tire Sunday afternoon before her SUV plunged off a highway and six stories down into a ravine on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, killing three generations of a family, including three children, police said. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20120429/US.Highway.Plunge.NYC/?cid=hero_media

from Moyers & Company:


Marty Kaplan on Big Money’s Effect on Big Media
April 27, 2012

Big money and big media have coupled to create a ‘Disney World’ of democracy in which TV shows, televised debates, even news coverage is being dumbed down, just as the volume is being turned up. The result is a public certainly more entertained, but less informed and personally involved than they should be, says Marty Kaplan, director of USC’s Norman Lear Center and an entertainment industry veteran. Bill Moyers talks with Kaplan about how taking news out of the journalism box and placing it in the entertainment box is hurting democracy and allowing special interest groups to manipulate the system.

“It’s all about combat. If every political issue is combat between two polarized sides, then you get great television because people are throwing food at each other,” Kaplan tells Moyers. “And you have an audience that hasn’t a clue at the end of the story, which is why you’ll hear, ‘Well, we’ll have to leave it there.’”

“The problem is that there’s not that much information out there if you’re an ordinary citizen. You can ferret it out, but it ought not be like that in a democracy,” Kaplan says. “Education and journalism were supposed to, according to our founders, inform our public and make democracy work.”