Obama Names More US Monuments

Last Friday, President Obama designated three more national monuments to the chagrin of conservative opponents who see this process to preserve America's last wild places as a cynical way to lock up exploitable natural resources. The designations bring the Current Occupant's count to 19, the most of any president, but behind Carter, Clinton and Roosevelt in total area of lands protected from development by law. The Basin and Range National Monument protects 704,000 acres of undeveloped desert wilderness in Nevada, the largest designation he has made. The Monument surrounds a monumental sculpture entitled City made of earth and stone set within the context of the surrounding desert landscape. The sculpture erected on private land and supported by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, joins ancient pictographs inscribed in stone by native peoples. The desert is an important migration route for mule deer and pronghorn, as well as habitat for the sage grouse. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) was instrumental in getting the designation signed.  The need for preservation of landscape is apparent as the nation's national parks grapple with the influx of more visitors wanting to enjoy the benefits of communing with nature. What they are finding instead are traffic jams and lines that they could have experienced without leaving their cities.

"City" by Michael Heizer

Berryessa-Snow Mountain in Northern California was also designated. It streches 100 miles long and rises from near sea level to 7000 ft. The mountain is a biodiversity hotspot and also provides numerous recreational opportunities. The monument began its journey to federal protection as a 7,000 acre donation to the University of California-Davis by the Homestake Mining Company. A partnership of university people, the state Fish & Wildlife department, landowners and the BLM formed the Blue-Ridge-Berryessa Natural Area Partnership and soon acquired 60,000 more acres. the idea of protecting a corridor of land from the edge of San Francisco to the Pacific Northwest forests took hold as the Berryessa-Snow Mountain National Conservation Area. Repugnant opposition in Congress killed that idea, so the national monument route had to be taken to protect this important wild land corridor of the inner California Coast Range.

Congressional backlash against the President's use of the Antiquities Act authority continues. Last week the House approved an admendment to the Interior Department's spending bill that would block the use of federal money to implement the desination of national monuments in 17 counties across the west. GOP leaders pulled the bill the following day, so the fate of the small-minded effort block designations remains undecided.

3rd Mass Cloral Bleaching

Figures released to the Guardian by NOAA show that about 12% of the world's coral reefs have suffered bleaching in the last year. Perhaps as much as 12,000 sq km of coral may be lost forever. Bleaching occurs when coral polyps eject their symbiotic algae partners due to increased ocean temperatures. Corals can only tolerate a narrow range of temperatures. If water temperatures warm by just 1℃ for more than week the fatal ejection of photosynthesizing algae begins. The algae color the white calciferous coral skeletons. Global bleaching events have been recorded twice before in 1998 and 2010. The 1998 event wrought major devastation when a massive El Niño set a chain of events that killed between 16-19% of the world's coral reefs. Before these events bleaching of coral reefs has not occurred in thousands of years. The events represent a major change in the environmental conditions of Earth's tropical oceans. During the 1998 bleaching event Australia's Great Barrier Reef recorded the highest sea temperatures ever*.

Currently, "the Blob", a mass of warmer ocean water is meandering across the northern Pacific, returning to reef areas only now recovering from the last destruction. This mass of hot water is thought to be generated by global warming. Research into bleaching shows that while corals can recover from mild bleaching in a decade or more of regrowth, an extreme event kills coral reefs, and they are replaced by other organisms such as seaweed and algae. Such degradation occured in the Seychelles after the 1998 event. Global temperature has increased only 0.8℃. As the global temperature increases even more corals already stressed by higher water temperatures will recover more slowly if at all, increasing the percentage of dead coral reefs.

*I. McCalman, The Reef 2013, p.270

UNESCO Will Examine Plight of Monarch Butterflies

As Dow Chemical is set to introduce another habitat killing herbicide, UNESCO, which overseas the World Heritage site program said it will begin investigating the viability of Monarch butterflies that spend each winter in Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. For the first time UNESCO asked the United States and Canada to inform the world body on their actions to protect Monarchs. NRDC delivered 50,000 petitions to the World Heritage Committee asking that it take action to protect the butterflies. A 90% decline in butterfly numbers has taken place in the last 20 years due primarily to the abuse of the herbicide glyphosate that kills milkweed, the only plant on which Monarchs lay their eggs. The decline in butterfly numbers should put the Monarch world heritage site on the "in danger" list, but first the Committee must go through a process that includes responses from the two countries to which the butterfly migrates. Conservationists know that the US is not doing enough to prevent the oversuse of herbicides in agriculture, meanwhile the international process grinds slowly forward.

'Toontime: Global Warming is No Joke

credit: Adam Zygus, Buffalo News

It is hardly be surprising that the Union of Concerned Scientists have collected a number of internal industry documents that show the fossil fuel industry has worked to mislead the public about the reality of climate change. As early as 1981, according to a former Exxon employee, the company began factoring climate change into decisions about new fossil fuel extractions. A full report can be view here.  James Hansen, a leading NASA climate scientist, testified before Congress that science had confirmed industrial activity was causing global warming.  He was publicly vilified for his testimony, and his agency restricted his role in the debate in response to the fossil fuel industry's ire.  In 1995 an internal memo by a Mobil scientist warned that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change and that the relevant science "is well-established and cannot be denied".  That unequivocal conclusion did not stop the industry's leading trade group, American Petroleum Institute, from formulating a public relations campaign intended to sow doubt about the certainties of climate change in Congress and among Americans.  A 1998 strategy memo said that "victory will be achieved when average citizens recognize uncertainties in climate change science", and that recognition "becomes part of conventional wisdom".  The industry also supports the infamous right-wing legislation mill known as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)  This organization has been key to influencing politicians, providing misinformation about climate change, and generating legislation to roll back alternative energy programs.  Exxon-Mobil funded leading climate change denier Dr. Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon who worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and was involved in a research project entitled, "Understanding Solar Variability and Climate Change:  Signals from Temperature Records of the United States"  Dr. Soon sought to confirm and emphasize a noted correlation between solar radiation variances and temperature change in comparison to atmospheric CO₂ levels.  Because of the industries active and well-funded campaign of disinformation, similar to the one conducted by the tobacco industry to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer, action on reducing the amount of fossil fuel burning has been seriously delayed and curtailed.  There is still no comprehensive US policy to address the existential threat of climate change.  This chart shows the devastating results:

Creature Feature: Free At Last!

Watch as this exploitable natural resource jumps for joy after compassionate humans freed her from certain, slow drowning.  This young female humpback in the Sea of Cortez got entangled in fishing net that weighed her down to the point of exhaustion.  Twenty-one million people viewed this video. What do they think about sentient beings now?

California Sea Lions Next Target

sea lions at Astoria, OR; credit: L.Topinka

Federal agents have already started killing cormorants on Sand Island in a misguided effort to save endangered salmon, the highly prized prey of humans. {25.06.15} It will not be long before they turn their attention again to California sea lions that have returned to the northwest coast in greater numbers than before. US Person wrote about sea lions preying on salmon at the base of Bonneville Dam. A federal court allowed a limited translocation and euthanasia of the protected pinniped to take place {07.04.07;24.04.08} So far 85 sea lions have been killed and another 15 sent to captivity. Due to legal protection under the Marine Mammal Act, the west coast sea lion population has increased dramatically to about 300,000, and because food sources elsewhere are depleted they are congregating at the first barrier across the Columbia River where hunting salmon is easy. Humans are scratching their heads when it comes to conflicts between protected species. They do not have to think to deeply to know that the erratic population spikes between prey and predator are symptomatic of a degraded ecosystem that is out of balance because of man's interference.

Scientists say the collapse of the Southern California sardine fishery and a large area of warm ocean water, nicknamed "the Blob", has driven more sea lions than the habitual males north in search of food. They found it in the Columbia. This year biologists counted 2400 male sea lions at Astoria near the river's mouth, 1,000 more than last year. A smelt boom kept them fed through February and they lingered for the spring Chinook run. One investigation by a NOAA fisheries biologists suggests that sea lions eat as many as 25% of the salmon migrating up the Columbia to the Bonnneville barrier. Other scientists say they eat one in 25 salmon. Either way the evidence is circumstantial and there are plenty of reasons for declining salmon numbers beside hungry sea lions. Salmon must swim through polluted water in brownfields. Invasive fish species like bass and walleye feed on juvenile salmon and human predation is intense; native tribes have a recognized stake in salmon harvesting for human consumption.

There lies the rub. The US government spends $500 million a year to increase salmon spawning. Fishermen--commercial, sport and native-- are complaining constantly about the competition from sea lions. Conservationists say more killing is not the answer. It is much harder and more costly to restore a riverine system than kill a few sea lions or comorants. So far native tribes have resorted to only hazing offending sea lions, but they want more authority to kill "problem" sea lions say spokespersons standing amid the roar of the biggest salmon killer of all: Bonneville Dam. Fundamentally, this is a philosophical debate: either wildlife as sentient beings have a moral right to existence or they are only a resource to be exploited by man.

Greece Votes for Democracy!

Update:  Greek banks will be closed for another two days because the ECB has refused to extend any more lines of credit beyond the bare minimum to keep them from failing, about 89€bn, but not enough to satisfy nervous depositors.  The struggle between European capitalists and Greek socialists is become more defined, now that the Greek people have convincingly backed their elected representatives.  Capitalists in Europe lead by the Germans are pressing the Greek government to come up with a financial repayment plan that according to them re-establishes Greek credibility.  Translated, that means more austerity measures that drastically cut public outlays.  The elected socialists lead by Alexis Tsipras want restructuring of the Greek debt to make it more affordable to repay.  That translates into an eventual "haircut"--a reduction in the expected interest rate--for Greek bond owners.  So far that is out of bounds for the troika--the country's  international creditors and the German central bank.

Germany's hardline towards Greece may not be going over with its major euro partner, France.  Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande met in Paris to discuss the latest crisis besetting the unified currency.  Both said they respected the result of the Sunday referendum.  For his part Prime Minister Tsipras removed his combative finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, and replaced him with an Oxford educated economist Euclid Tsakalotos.  Tsakalotos told Sinn Feinn supporters in March that the Greek bailouts were "more about northern banks than southern peoples".  He also quoted FDR's famous line about fearing fear when the President took on Wall Street and its oligopolists in the midst of the Greatest Depression.  According to Tsakalotos Greece has already made the biggest fiscal shift per capita of any nation since the 2008 Panic. Still greedy capitalists want still more corporatists reforms labeled "austerity" that would only serve to shrink the Greek economy further.  Greece has lost a quarter of its GDP and one-third of its people face severe poverty.  A solution must transcend ideological differences and be based on compromises demanded by Greece's rapidly deteriorating economy and geopolitical realities.  Greece's forced exit from the euro zone would creat havoc in financial markets, force a rebirth of the drachma, and perhaps force it into the waiting arms of the Putin.  Nobody, including the Greeks, likes a bully.

{05.07.15}Forget the corporate party line about Greece--how a profligate public sector sector drove Greece into the poor house--the truth is not going to be told by a media owned by corporate plutocrats.  The truth is the banksters were more than willing to shovel debt onto Greece's balance sheet and get well paid for doing so.  The plutocrats shoved Greece over the cliff of fiscal stability so they could feast on the remains of the state.  What happened to Greece is not unlike what happens to a popular restaurant or the corner bakery when it is taken over by the Mafia, only a larger scale.

Greece got hammered by the Great Financial Panic of 2008 brought to you by the scam artists on Wall Street packaging mortgage backed securities that were essentially worthless.  These criminals were aided and abetted by the rating agencies, S&P, Fitch, Moody's who gave top ratings to junk.  Everybody was making money and the poison spread world-wide because "the system" is global.  Greece's insolvent domestic banks got more $30bn from the Greek taxpayers to bailout the hardcore corporatists now demanding their rents (interest) from Greece.

The banksters in turn forced the government to guarantee their debts and substitute taxpayers for private investors who made a bee-line to the exits.  To emphasize who was in control the international financial cartel forced the Greek prime minister to resign when he refused to drink the cool-aide of a second massive bailout.  He was replaced by one of their own, the Vice-President of the ECB (European Central Bank)  They also upped the "vig" in 2009 by devaluing Greek bonds which made the yield on Greek debt even more expensive, which in turn made more difficult for the government to refinance existing bonds.  When the yield on Greek bonds hit 50%, parliament was forced to agree to the second, even larger bailout. Just when you think you are out, they force you back in!

Banksters had their best year ever stripping Greece of her assets in 2011 because the debt deals required the government to sell assets as a condition of the loans.  Think of Mafia boss Hyman Roth carving up Cuba's action among his cronies.  The plutocrats call it "austerity" giving their unpatriotic dismembering a cloak of moral rectitude. Pensions have been cut in half and sales taxes, the most regressive, have risen more than 20%. All of this to pay the bloodsuckers their money.

Here's the bottom line on this post:  the plutocrats never counted on a democratic socialist government coming to power that would lead the people in just saying no to the crooks in the final crunch. Greeks are finished voting in   as of now, and they are rejecting the latest glass of cool-aide by 61% with 80% of the vote counted. Greeks may suffer more turmoil and deprivation in the months to come, but they will do it with their dignity and their democracy in tact.