It Did Not Need To Happen: Greece, Yemen, The Earth's Climate...Next? Bets?

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Air date: 
Fri, 07/10/2015 - 12:00am
Interviews with James Henry on Greece and Matthieu Aikins on Yemen
What follows is some raw, unedited news clips from a number of sources as well as my own notes on the issue.All the material you missed in the hustle to make room for our guests:

Watching the Greek nation implode, the Greek people suffering hideously, lives destroyed.  We cannot understand the rising tide of blame when this was caused by the IMF, banks and private creditors.  It could have been solved at the get-go...Now, the world not only stands by and does nothing, but contributes to the disaster .
 
&@%$%
 
1, Why Would 46 Senators Support Burning Trees for Electricity When It Contributes More to Climate Change Than Coal?   Chopping down trees and feeding them to power plants for electricity is a genuinely awful idea. It hurts biodiversity, belches toxic chemicals and contributes more to climate change than coal—all while masquerading as a source of clean “renewable” energy.   Unfortunately, none of this stopped 46 senators from publicly endorsing the idea last week. Led by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the group wrote a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy demanding that the agencies accept something that is clearly, demonstrably false: that biomass power is carbon neutral. While the letter was chock full of anti-science Senators like David Vitter (R-LA), others like Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) fancy themselves climate leaders and should know better.
The science is clear. Sending whole trees through the smokestacks of power plants is a terrible way to generate electricity. Even using rosy accounting assumptions, it could take at least 50 years to work-off the carbon debt and break even with coal,
 
 
2, The House passed a bill Thursday designed to improve the health of national forests by scaling back the environmental reviews that go into some timbering projects and discouraging lawsuits that delay projects.
The goal is to speed up timber harvests and underbrush removal that the U.S. Forest Service deems necessary to improve the health of national forests, which are taking a hit from drought, density and infestation. Altogether, up to 40 percent of the entire national forest system is in need of treatment to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire and disease.
The bill meets the Obama administration partway when it comes to treating some wildfires like other federal disasters when it comes to tapping federal funds, but doesn't go as far as the administration wanted and subsequently generated White House opposition.


4,  Fresh from Reuters: "Tens of thousands Hondurans poured onto the streets of the capital Tegucigalpa on Friday to demand the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernandez in the biggest demonstration yet against the country's leader over allegations of corruption. An estimated 60,000 demonstrators, many of them holding torches, took part in the... protest that converged on the presidential palace, the sixth Friday evening march in a row."
 
    In addition, some of the recently released Hillary Clinton emails further implicate the U.S. government in the 2009 Honduras coup. See from Dan Beeton of CEPR: "Newly Released Clinton Emails Reveal State Department’s Celebration Over Honduras’ Flawed Elections Following Military Coup" and from The Intercept: "During Honduras Crisis, Clinton Suggested Back Channel with Lobbyist Lanny Davis." The Intercept notes: "During that period, Davis was working as a consultant to a group of Honduran businessmen who had supported the coup. In an email chain discussing a meeting between Davis and State Department officials, Clinton [then Secretary of State] asked, 'Can he help me talk with Micheletti [interim president installed after the coup]?' Davis rose to prominence as an adviser to the Clintons during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and has since served as a high-powered 'crisis communications' adviser to a variety of people and organizations..."
 
And the Bad News you didn’t want to hear and probably did not in fact, hear.  Try reading it; not so sudden and harsh::
5,  To facilitate passage of TPP, U.S. upgrades Malaysia in annual human trafficking report - sources | 08 July 2015 | The United States is upgrading Malaysia from the lowest tier on its list of worst human trafficking centers, U.S. sources said on Wednesday, a move that could smooth the way for an ambitious U.S.-led free-trade deal with the Southeast Asian nation and 11 other countries. The upgrade to so-called "Tier 2 Watch List" status removes a potential barrier to President Barack Obama's signature global trade corporate takeover deal. A provision in a related trade bill passed by Congress last month barred from fast-tracked trade deals Malaysia and other countries that earn the worst U.S. human trafficking ranking in the eyes of the U.S. State Department.
 
President Obama Accepts Slavery in Order to Win TPP Trade Deal | 09 July 2015 | So that U.S. President Barack Obama can end a roadblock and win the agreement of other nations for his proposed Trans Pacific Partnership, he has decided to remove one of the nations, Malaysia, from the U.S. State Department's official list of countries that allow slavery. Malaysia, which recently found over a hundred graves of discarded slaves, has been on the U.S. State Department's "Tier 3" list of slave nations...but, unlike those other countries, Obama wants Malaysia to be included in his Trans Pacific Partnership; so, he has decided to remove Malaysia from that official list.
 

Here it is, live from Yemen's kiling fields, a whole province designated a free-fire zone by Saudi Arabia...America's proxy terror in the region:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/videos/watch-a-dispatch-from-the-scene-of-saudi-arabias-war-crimes-in-yemen-20150707

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