Richard Walker: Russia Draws Line in Sands of Syria!

The pretense of Russian Special Forces and military advisers in Syria is a further sign Moscow is drawing a line in the sand in the Middle East to let Israel, the United States and others in the West know it will not permit the overthrow of another government there. Units of Russia's special forces, Spetsnaz, left Sevastopol on Dec. 4, 2011, on board the Black Sea fleet patrol ship Ladny, which linked up with the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and other vessels weeks later in the Mediterranean. On January 8, 2012, they sailed into the Syrian port of Tartus, where Russia . has a large naval facility. It was there that a US spy satellite reportedly caught Spetsnaz military advisers and weapons being unloaded into Syria. The Russian move should not have come as a surprise to Tel Aviv or Washington. Sooner or later, Russia was going to put its foot down after it became apparent Israel was close to dragging the US into a war with Iran and had Washington's for covert strategies to overthrow the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad. For some time, Israel and its backers on Capitol Hill have failed to recognize Russia has a strategic interest in the region and is never going to permit a reshaping of the map of the Middle East to suit Israel and the United States. There are big issues at stake that the hawks in Tel Aviv and Washington ignore at their peril. Beginning with Iran, Russia sees it as a major energy source and a doorway to the Caucasus and the Caspian Basin. The Iranians fear if that doorway were to be closed by the creation of a pro-Zionist regime in Iran, Russia and China's energy pathways would be in jeopardy. To reinforce that point, on January 12, Dmitry Rogozi, Russia's deputy prime minister, warned an attack on Iran would threaten Russia's national security. A similar view was expressed in the past by Vladimir Putin, who was recently elected for the third time as Russian president.    

Amanda Marcotte: Conservatives Increasingly Reject Science!b

Public education and even modern science are relatively new developments in human history. So it makes sense that it would have taken the populace a while to catch up to understanding that evolution did happen, and that angels probably aren't real. But recent polling data suggests that gradual acceptance of the facts may not be the trend when it comes to the theory of evolution. In the 30 years since Gallup started asking people whether they believe humans evolved, evolved under the guidance of God, or were created fully formed by God, the percentage of people adhering to the creationist view has actually gone up slightly over time, and now stands at 46 percent of the population. This is just the tip of the iceberg of a growing problem of public rejection of science. At the same time, there's been a steady rise in people who believe that humanity evolved without any supernatural guidance, and now stands at 15 percent. What this seeming conflict suggests is that the issue is getting more polarized, as people feel they either have to pick Team Evolution or Team Creationism. It turns out that education isn't enough to fight ignorance, not when it comes to heavily politicized issues like evolutionary theory. As Chris Mooney argues in his book "The Republican Brain", political identity generally trumps sober-minded assessment of the facts when it comes to convincing people of an argument or idea. The theory of evolution isn't being rejected on its merits by the people who don't buy it. It really can't be by someone who is honestly assessing the evidence. 

Prof. James F Tracy: The Technocratization of Public Education

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is directing $1.1 million to fit students in seven US public school districts with galvanic skin response bracelets. The devices are designed to measure students' receptivity to teachers lessons through biometric technology that reads and records skin conductance, a form of electro-dermal activity that grows higher during states such as boredom or relaxation. The funding is part of the Gates Foundations $49.5 million Measures of Effective Teachers project that is presently experimenting with teacher evaluation systems. As Melinda Gates put it on the PBS News Hour, What the Foundation feels our job is to do is to make sure we create a system where we can have an effective teacher in every single classroom across the United States. The effort of extraordinarily wealthy elites to further subvert educational practices through neuromarketing techniques, is the latest example in a long sequence of educational reforms, dating to the early 1900s. Indeed, the Gates Foundations fixation on stimulus-response measurement and data collection is a fitting chapter of this history. State sanctioned education in the United States has become a type of task-oriented training, quite apart from what education once involved, the cultivation of the human will and intellect. Children in most public schools today receive this type of conditioning, while the more affluent often send their offspring to private institutions or home school. What passes for education today, is to a significant degree the legacy of late-nineteenth-to-early-twentieth century German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt and the Rockefeller family's philanthropic project. A professor at University of Leipzig, Wundt was the originator of what he termed a new or experimental psychology of any of its potential philosophical concerns with the soul, will, or self-determination of the individual.   

Robert Becker: Apocalypse Now Engulfs Chicken Littles!r

Is the sky falling on this Beacon on the Hill, ending a century of Yankee dominance, crushing the greatest, most brashly exceptional nation known to mankind? Is this worldwide wonder of freedom and democracy, the intersection of divine history and human destiny, kaput, on its last legs, about to implode? Not quite, not yet, and that's no endorsement of the status quo: powers-that-be hold high trump cards. Every generation endures end-of-the world scenarios, and we still dread last century's, nuclear holocaust. Drama, let alone anxiety, commands our attention and heartstrings, Pandemics, portable nukes, fiery asteroids, religious mania, starvation, right-wing  nuts, and looming climate change, all threaten millions. But anxiety, even nightmare projections, do not mean Armageddon is upon us, nor that pundits suddenly clasp reliable crystal balls. Discretion is the better part of this valor. Global warming looms, likely to cut world population and food production, but that's not extinction or end of times, or displacing destructive capitalism. Want good news? Harvard professor Steven Pinker argues our belligerent species has cut our wartime-violence killing sprees. Are we not exiting Iraq, sort of? Life expectancies, even for the impoverished, grow annually, if you count enough people. Only 43 Americans endured capital punishment in 2011, half the 2000 totals, mostly in W's Texas. Okay, we  live in grim times, but take heart: we don't guillotine yet. And most of life's simple pleasures haven't been banned, yet. No doubt, systemic cracks abound, thanks to myopic leadership  blunders, not just across state and national politics but corporate's best and brightest, sports leagues, and fundamentalist denominations that turn Jesus into a racist warmonger. Pedophilia, misogyny and reaction still stalk the west's oldest organized church. But even wobbly, distrusted centers, like moons and planets, can wobble in place a good long time. 

Tom Engelhardt: The Cheney Effect in the Obama Administration

Back in September 2001, Dick Cheney was, according to Jane Mayer in "The Dark Side" being chauffeured around Washington "in an armored motorcade that varied its route to foil possible attackers." In the backseat of his car, just in case, adds Myer, "rested a duffel bag stocked with a gas mask and biochemical survival suit." And lest danger rear its head, "rarely did he travel without a medical doctor in tow." Ah, weren't those the days? How quiet, how boring his life must be now, his new ticker in place, hosting fundraisers for Mitt Romney in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, auctioning off lunches with himself for charity, and, for a little genuine excitement, slamming President Obama as an "unmitigated disaster." And yet, what if thousands of miles from Washington, years from his "taking off the gloves" heyday, promoting "enhanced interrogation techniques," and plunking for invasions in the Greater Middle East, his ghost still lives in the nation's capital, and not in some vague way somewhere in the Republican opposition, but deep in the beating heart of the Obama administration. It's the sort of thought that should take you aback, and yet Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author, most recently of "The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources, makes the case that the Cheney ticker is beating hard right now in President Obama's chest. Don't believe it? Then, take a deep dive into Obama's world. Is Barack Obama Morphing Into Dick Cheney? Four Ways the President Is Pursuing Cheney's Geopolitics of Global Energy!    

Ellen Brown: Wall Street's Protection Racket of Covert Derivatives!

When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal. Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks? Asked CNBC editor John Carney. Was he subtly hinting that he really was the guy in charge? The groveling of the Senators was so obvious that Jon Stewart did a spoof news clip on it, featured in a Huffington Post piece titled Jon Stewart Blasts Senates Coddling Of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and Matt Taibbi wrote an op-ed called Senators Grovel, Embarrass Themselves at Dimon Hearing. He said the whole thing was painful to watch. What is going on with this panel of senators? asked Stewart. They-re sucking up to Jamie Dimon like they're on JP Morgans payroll. The explanation in a news clip that followed was that JP Morgan Chase is the biggest campaign donor to many of the members of the Banking Committee. That is one obvious answer, but financial analysts Jim Willie and Rob Kirby think it may be something far larger, deeper, and more ominous. They contend that the $3 billion-plus losses in London hedging transactions that were the subject of the hearing can be traced, not to European sovereign debt, as alleged, but to the record-low interest rates maintained on US government bonds. The national debt is growing at $1.5 trillion per year. Ultra-low interest rates MUST be maintained to prevent the debt from overwhelming the government budget. Near-zero rates also need to be maintained, because even a moderate rise would cause multi-trillion dollar derivative losses for the banks, and would remove the banks chief income stream!  

Felicity Arbuthnot: Iraq War Crimes , Lies and Statistics

Recently a contradictory, but in important areas, remarkably sunny opinion poll on progress in Iraq, conducted in April, was released. It was, it has to be said, a divide and rule sort of survey as it split respondents in to Shia, Sunny, Kurdish. The Shia, obviously were largely supportive of Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki, from the Iranian backed Dawa Party. However, for those in the West wishing a phoenix to rise from Iraq's ashes, the illegal invasion, occupation, destruction, resultant mass graves of maybe one and a half million beings, the million orphans, the over four million displaced, the unimaginable, near industrial scale, often daily carnage, nearly a decade on incredibly, things are looking up: Around half the respondents thought Iraq was going in the right direction, and that Nuri al Maliki was OK at the steering wheel. Don't mention torture, secret prisons, hasty swathes of executions and a largely more than questionable judiciary. Near three quarter polled said it: Was more important to have a strong leader to keep Iraq stable, even if it meant giving up some freedoms. Arguably then, they would have done better with President Saddam Hussein. He even managed to keep the lights and water on for longer, the streets safe and grenade and car bomb free, with the exception of the occasional car bombs, allegedly courtesy of CIA-backed, former post-invasion, interim, allegedly British passport holding Prime Minister Iyad Allawis Iraq National Accords handiwork. Seemingly, if an election were held immediately, al Malikis Dawa Party would be a popular choice. An unasked question was whether that would be because of of the cited fraud, death threats, confiscation of the life-line ration cards until people voted the right way, as in previous free and fair, post-invasion elections.