Today's Stories

October 16-19, 2009

Saul Landau
Autumn of the Patriarch

October 15, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
Our Cheap Politicians

Brian M. Downing
Rethinking the Afghan Insurgency

Ramzy Baroud
Abbas and the Goldstone Report: Our Shame is Complete

Danny Weil
A Neo-Liberal Arts Education: Diploma Mills and Debt Peonage

M. Idrees Ahmad
Return to Peshawar: a Journey Home

Margaret Kimberley
Michelle's Family Tree

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cuban Five: Which Side Are You On?

Harvey Wasserman
Nuking the Climate Bill

Nirmal Ghosh
A Tale of Two Protocols: How Montreal Could Save Us From the Mire of Kyoto

Charles R. Larson
Sarah Palin Bears It All

Website of the Day
Tortured Law

October 14, 2009

Michael Neumann
Fearsome Words? a Suppressed Talk on the Israel/Palestine Conflict

M. Reza Pirbhai
Fighting the Taliban: What, Exactly, is Being Fought in Afghanistan?

Gareth Porter
Hawks Play Up the Taliban's Ties to Al Qaeda

Paul Craig Roberts
War Criminals Are Becoming Arbiters of the Law

John Strausbaugh Fortress Moon

Ralph Nader
The CBO's Flawed Report on Medical Malpractice

Dean Baker
Won't You Please Come to Chicago to Greet the Bankers?

Charles Modiano
White Silence: Where Does Brett Favre Stand on Rush Limbaugh?

Nadia Hijab
Abandoning "Women and Children"

Walter Brasch
An Extension of Her Motherhood: Sherry Carpenter, Journalist and Animal Care Provider

Website of the Day
Nader: Obama Has a "Concessionary Personality"

October 13, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Putting the Spine Back in the Commonwealth

Shamus Cooke
What Obama Isn't Telling American Workers

John Ross
War on Mexican Women

Brendan Cooney
Ask Awal Khan About Obama's Prize

Frida Berrigan
Operation Enduring Detentions: Losing the Moral High Ground

Yves Engler
Is Canada More Pro-Israel Than the US?

David Macaray
Why the Government Fears Unions

Dave Lindorff
Democrats: Selling Out, But Still Getting Screwed

Mark Weisbrot
Occupying Afghanistan is Making Things Worse

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
History Repeats Itself

Binoy Kampmark
That Dirty Colonial War

Website of the Day
The Health Insurance Industry's Latest Doublecross

October 12, 2009

Pam Martens
Secret Deal Between Wall Street and Washington Shines a Harsh Light on Federal Housing Agency

Mike Whitney
A Dollar Rout or More Bernanke Trickery?

Martha Rosenberg
Yale Lab Tech Causes Two Problems for Animal Researchers

Jessica Arents
The Price of Peace: Our Arrest at the White House

Eamonn McCann
Massacre in Ireland, Massacre in Iraq

Bill Hatch
Dairy Industry Goes Down the Tubes

Sen. Russell Feingold
Time for a Timetable in Afghanistan

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Siren Song of World Praise

Gideon Levy
Obama's Betrayed Mission in the Middle East

Iyad Burnat
Why Does Obama Get a Prize and Bush Got Shoes?

Alan Cabal
Why Obama Deserves the Nobel

Dan Bacher
The Astroturf Method

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help

October 9-11, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
War and Peace

James Bovard
Eight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan

Kathleen and Bill Christison
New Crisis Developing in Palestine

Andy Worthington
Congressional Depravity on Gitmo

Marc Levy
Talking Dirty to the Kids

Tariq Ali
Ahmed Rashid's War

Mike Whitney
The Securitization Boondoggle

Paul Craig Roberts
Warmonger Wins Peace Prize

Alan Nasser
Cockeyed Economics

Jack Z. Bratich
The Twitterest Pill: Policing Dissent in the Information Age

Steve Breyman
Time for a War Tax

David Michael Green
A Hapless Presidency

Dave Lindorff
The WTF Prize

Paul Buchheit
Fear of the Rich

Jim Goodman
Feedlots and E. Coli

Missy Beattie
Theater of the Absurd

Michael Leonardi
Ships of Poison

Nadia Hijab
The Plight of the Right of Return

Mel Packer
The Crackdown on Pittsburgh

David Macaray
The Raiding Game

James T. Phillips
Getting Burned

Charles R. Larson
One Man's Walk Through Hell

Michael Donnelly
Behind the Capitalist Curtain

David Yearsley
The Biggest Blot on Mel Gibson's Rap Sheet

Lorenzo Wolff
Rap That Threatens ... and Endures

Poets' Basement
Heyen, Ames and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Jobs Conference

October 8, 2009

Saul Landau
A Late September Morning With Fidel

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Dark Omens for the US in Afghanistan

Linn Washington, Jr.
Pot and Perversion: Judicial Antics Expose Drug War Insanity

Marshall Auerback
Neo-Classical Economics Misses What Matters

Dave Lindorff
A Nation of Snoops

David Rosen
Bankrupt Morality: the Staying Power of Republican Sinners

Chris Darimont / Misty MacDuffee
The Bear Essentials: New Thinking Needed to Save BC's Salmon and Grizzlies

John V. Walsh
Remembering Hinton's Fanshen

Stewart Lawrence
The Edwards / Hunter Affair Reconsidered

Charles R. Larson
Conservatives in the Sandbox

Website of the Day
Et Tu, Code Pink?

October 7, 2009

Brendan Cooney
Are Republicans Breaking US Law in Honduras?

Paul Craig Roberts
Dead Labor: Marx and Lenin Reconsidered

Dean Baker
Bernanke's Recovery: Unemployment Up, Wages Down (But the Banks Have Been Saved ... Sort Of)

Jonathan Cook
A Third Intifada?

John Stanton
HTS: Congress Rewards Failure, Puts Personnel in Harms Way

Joanne Mariner
Tortured Language

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Cherry Blossoms

Stephen Lendman
The Gaza War's Effect on Women

Sen. Russell Feingold
Time to Draw Down in Afghanistan

Mary Lynn Cramer
Doublespeak on Health Care

Website of the Day
How to Bag a Wolf by Aerial Assault

October 6, 2009

Mike Whitney
Dollar Hysteria: Is the Sky Really Falling?

Gareth Porter
The Iranian Rift in the IAEA: Leaked Paper Based on Disputed Intel

Jonathan Cook
How Israel Buried the UN's War Crime Probe

Boris Kagarlitsky
My Hour as Talking Head in Moscow

Iain Boal
The New Crisis at Pacifica

Ron Jacobs
Why Are We in Afghanistan?

John Ross
Wave of Anarchist Bombings Strikes Mexico

Michael Dickinson
Panic in Istanbul: Smoke, Mayhem and the World Bank

Stephen Fleischman
Beware the Predator

Ira Glunts
The Audacity of Nope

Missy Beattie
Outside Looking In

Website of the Day
Round Up the Usual Suspects

October 5, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Titans Use Aliases to Foreclose on Families While Partnering with a Federal Agency

Mike Whitney
Dead Man Walking: Welcome to the US Economy

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Feds Imprison the Innocent

Harry Browne
Ireland Says, "Yes, Please"

Sara Mann
My Little Town: Nothin' But the Dead and Dyin'

Omar Barghouti
Dissolve the Palestinian Authority

Shamus Cooke
A Jobless Recovery?

Brenda Norrell
A Dirty New Low for Peabody Coal

Fred Gardner
Situation NORML: Reconciling Medical Pot Use and Legalization

Binoy Kampmark Copenhagen Blues: McChrystal and the Afghan Trap

Website of the Day
In Goldman Sachs We Trust?

October 2-4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Geezer Renditions

Saul Landau
News From Raul Castro

Diana Johnstone
After the German Elections: Is Socialism Really Dead in Europe?

Greg Moses
Cramming for the Downside

William Blum
The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Another Cold War Myth

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Nuclear Program: Where's the Proof?

Russell Mokhiber
Welcome Back, Michael Moore

John Ross
Chomsky in Mexico

Ellen Brown
IMF Catapults From Shunned Agency to Global Central Bank

David Ker Thomson
Cop Shocks

David Macaray
The Audacity of Toyota

Gary Engler
Unions in a Rut

Robert Fantina
Meet the New Boss (Same as the Old Boss)

Lisa Stolarski / Naomi Archer
Pittsburgh: Still a (Coal) Company Town

Anthony Papa
Here is Your Chance to Help End the Failed War on Drugs

Joe Allen
The Good Wife: Bad View of a Corrupt System

Harry Browne
Tarantino Scalps His Audience

Ron Jacobs
Collective Fiction

Charles R. Larson
Cultural Warriors: Austrialian Aboriginal Art Triennial

David Yearsley
Hanns Eisler's Great National Anthem for East Germany is Available: Make It America's

Poets' Basement
Taylor, Gardner and Landau

Website of the Weekend
Wrongful Convictions of Youth

Weekend Edition
October 16-19, 2009

A Prudent Standard

A Way of Knowing

By WES JACKSON

One of the first lessons a scientist learns is that 100 percent agreement on scientific matters is rare. And a consensus can be reversed. But that reversal won’t come from talk radio or TV pundits. It will come from those who publish under the stringent demands of scientific journals.

It is scientists’ right to disagree with the consensus in their field. I could even argue that it sometimes is their obligation. There are a small number of medical researchers who do not believe the HIV virus is the cause of AIDS. One is on the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. I have a friend who knows him and who thinks his argument plausible. If he wants to overturn the dominant idea with data, power to him.

However, I don’t yet want a blood transfusion from someone who authorities tell me is carrying the HIV virus. I’ll stick with the overwhelming consensus of most scientists.

Which brings me to my most important message. I’m a geneticist, not a climatologist, and have no training in that discipline. But, because I hold to a scientific way of knowing, I accept the view of 99 percent of the men and women who publish in refereed journals on climate. What have they concluded? That humans burning fossil fuels — coal, oil, natural gas — are the major source of the carbon dioxide increase in the earth’s atmosphere. This is causing the planet to heat up, and for our health, and the planet’s, we must cut our fossil fuel consumption to 20 percent of what it is now long before century’s end.

Unfortunately, for purported balance, the media give disproportionate time to the 1 percent who are not convinced. But there are 2,000 scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences, and among them the consensus is overwhelming.

I used to ask my students if they believed that Earth went around the sun or if the sun went around Earth. Of course, they all believed the former. I would then ask them why they believed that and if they ever stopped to check it out for themselves. They hadn’t. Few people have in our time.

How do I know the pancreas secretes insulin, that it isn’t the liver or the spleen or my femurs? How do I know that grinding plates of the earth cause earthquakes? That fire feeds on oxygen? These are only a few of countless conclusions we mostly accept because others devoted to a scientific way of knowing, in their particular fields, tell us it is so.

I have studied some of the arguments of the few climatologists who oppose their colleagues. I hope they are correct: Before me on my bulletin board as I type this are pictures of my grandchildren.

The question finally becomes, what is prudent? If 99 percent of climate scientists turn out to be wrong, what has been lost? If we act on the consensus and reduce fossil fuel consumption and turn out to be wrong, what is lost? But if the consensus is right and we refuse to respond, climate change is likely to present the greatest challenge to public health in the history of our species.

Wes Jackson is president of the Land Institute, Salina, Kan., and author of books including “Altars of Unhewn Stone: Science and the Earth.” His comment here is for the institute’s Prairie Writers Circle.

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