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Month: December 2016

Polar Warming Out Of Control As Trump Dumps NASA Earth Science & Attacks EPA

Posted in Act Out!, Creative Commons, and Journalism

Operation IceBridge, a NASA survey of polar ice, is underway, and to say the results are alarming would be an understatement.

On Friday, the IceBridge scientists announced the discovery of a 70-mile long, 300 foot wide rift in the Larsen C ice shelf, located in the Western peninsula of the Antarctic. Other portions of the Larsen ice sheet collapsed in 1995 and 2002, and climate scientists have been speculating for years that this third portion’s days are numbered as well. NASA reported in a recent press release that once the rift cuts through the ice shelf completely, it will produce an iceberg roughly the size of Delaware.

Elsewhere in the Antarctic, Ohio State University climate scientists reported last month that part of the West Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing from the inside out. And while rifts normally appear at the edges of the ice sheets, this internal rift is a strange and therefore highly unsettling new development.

Ian Howat, associate professor of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University, reported, “This implies that something weakened the center of the ice shelf, with the most likely explanation being a crevasse melted out at the bedrock level by a warming ocean.”

Recount 2016: Controversy & Media Attacks Follow Jill Stein’s Demand For Electoral Integrity

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

Dr. Jill Stein has been attacked in the mainstream media, threatened with legal action, and even created a divide within her own political party due to her attempts to audit the results of the presidential election.

“I think Jill Stein’s doing the right thing,” said Mark Crispin Miller, a self-described “election integrity activist,” in an interview with MintPress News. “I think it’s extremely difficult to argue for any kind of cynical or self-serving motive in this.”

Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University, has spent much of the last decade studying the results of U.S. elections. In the lead up to Election Day, he told MintPress that electronic voting machines in the United States are dangerously vulnerable to hacking and fraud. Now, he says he hopes recounts will encourage more voters to support election reform.

“Beyond their immediate political effects between now and the next election, what the recounts will do is make clear at long last that we must radically reform our abysmal voting system so that this kind of thing never happens again,” Miller said.

Private Corporate Armies Oppress From Colombia To Standing Rock (Black Tower Radio Interview)

Posted in Audio, Journalism, and MintPress News

During decades of civil war, U.S. and multinational companies used the right-wing paramilitaries of Colombia as their private armies. Though mining companies were major culprits, other corporate criminals include Coca-Cola and Chiquita. Only the peace process, which was tentatively finalized last week, might reduce the ability of foreign companies to oppress the indigenous people and Afro-Colombians.

Of course, the same corporate power is on display in North Dakota, where Energy Transfer Partners is using both the police and private security to brutalize the Native American water protectors and their allies. The recent decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to reject an important permit needed to complete construction is a setback for the Dakota Access Pipeline, but the struggle is far from over.

#NoDAPL: Both Dakota Access Pipeline Builder & Water Protectors Refuse To Back Down

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and Lee Camp

On Sunday, the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit to allow Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the Dakota Access Pipeline’s builder, to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota, a key step necessary for completing the pipeline through Sioux sacred lands. The Army also promised to begin a new environmental impact investigation and consider alternate routes for the pipeline.

Undeterred by the Army’s press release, ETP and their partners in fossil fuel crimes, Sunoco Logistics Partners, shot back with a fiery statement of their own on Sunday night, promising to complete the pipeline along the current path. “ETP and SXL are fully committed to ensuring that this vital project is brought to completion and fully expect to complete construction of the pipeline without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe. Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way,” the corporate stooges wrote.

Massive Corporations From Chiquita To Coca-Cola Used Personal Armies To Uproot, Terrorize Colombians

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

On Thursday, Colombia’s Congress ratified a new peace accord that could end decades of civil war and weaken the ability of foreign corporations to turn a profit on unrest in the South American country.

Since the 1960s, communist rebel forces have fought right-wing paramilitary groups and their government allies in Colombia’s ongoing civil war. While the paramilitary groups ostensibly formed in opposition to communist groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, their targets were more often the civilian and indigenous population.

The Colombian government reported in November that more than half a century of armed conflict has left 7,011,027 people displaced, 267,000 murdered, and 46,000 “disappeared.”

Throughout the decades of conflict, massive international businesses have been eager to take advantage of the paramilitary groups’ skills to suit their own interests and move into land formerly occupied by displaced people. Some of the numerous foreign corporations accused of serious human rights abuses in Colombia include fruit companies Dole, Del Monte, and Chiquita, agribusiness giant Cargill, and other representatives of the fossil fuel industry like Texaco (formerly Texas Petroleum Company) and Exxon Mobil.

#NoDAPL Isn’t Over Yet: Energy Transfer Partners Vows To Build Dakota Access Pipeline

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

Native American opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline and their allies celebrated after the Army Corps of Engineers denied a key permit to the pipeline builder on Sunday.

Citing concerns raised by the leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux nation that the pipeline would endanger tribal sovereignty and limit access to fresh water in the event of a spill, the Army Corps of Engineers denied Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline builder, a permit to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota.

Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics Partners, one of several corporate partners in the pipeline’s construction, rejected the Army’s decision in a sharply critical press release published on Business Wire on Sunday night.

“This is nothing new from this Administration, since over the last four months the Administration has demonstrated by its action and inaction that it intended to delay a decision in this matter until President Obama is out of office,” the statement read.