ODNI report on ‘Russian hacking’ met with widespread disbelief, ridicule

Future Generations Need to Know Our Nuclear Waste Is Deadly. How Can We Tell Them? | The Nation

The Nation

Uploaded on Jan 3, 2017

Nuclear waste can be harmful for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. How can people today even imagine what society will be like over those types of time periods? And more importantly, how can we make sure that future generations don’t forget nuclear waste’s dangers, and start digging around in the waste sites we are setting aside today?

In “Containment,” a film that airs today on PBS’s Independent Lens, scientists and thinkers show just how hard it is to plan for an unknown future. In this clip, get a look inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, a site that just began accepting nuclear waste this month for the first time in three years.

See:
Future Generations Need to Know Our Nuclear Waste Is Deadly. How Can We Tell Them? | The Nation

 uclear waste can be harmful for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. How can people today even imagine what society will be like over those types of time periods? And more importantly, how can we make sure that future generations don’t forget nuclear waste’s dangers, and start digging around in the waste sites we are setting aside today?

In Containment, a film that airs today on PBS’s Independent Lens, scientists and thinkers show just how hard it is to plan for an unknown future. In this clip, get a look inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, a site that just began accepting nuclear waste this month for the first time in three years.

…(read more).

nuclear

This Monday, Join Protests Across the Country to Block Trump’s Climate-Denying Cabinet Picks | The Nation

Youth in the UN Climate Change talks in Marrakech respond to the election of Donald Trump as US President. (Creative Commons/John Englart)

What’s Going On?

President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks continue to horrify, as we approach the confirmation hearings for the “billionaires, generals, and ideologues” that he wants to appoint. This group threatens to roll back hard-won civil rights, make healthcare harder to access, and destroy the few regulations we have policing Wall Street. And thanks to Trump’s appointment of climate change-deniers to prominent posts related to the environment, they threaten to destroy our planet.

Join the Day Against Denial

Take Action Now!

Any nominee who denies the dangers of climate change and the need to end our reliance on fossil fuels must be stopped. There are quite a few of them. Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson was the CEO of Exxon, a company that funded climate-change denial for years after their own research pointed to the veracity of human-caused global warming. Environmental Protection Agency nominee Scott Pruitt built a career suing the very agency he is set to head. Secretary of Energy pick Former Texas Governor Rick Perry once advocated for the total elimination of the Department of Energy and sat on the board of the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline.

What can I do?

This Monday, January 9th, join the Day Against Denial. To show that we won’t stand for a climate-denying cabinet, people across the country will gather at their senators’ offices to demand that they reject Trump’s reckless picks.

…(read more).

Lies Hurt. Facts Matter. And So Does Resistance

Erika Spanger-Siegfried, senior analyst, Climate & Energy Program | December 12, 2016, 2:59 pm EST

Any observer of truth will tell you that 2016 is a lie-soaked lost cause. Will 2017 see a pro-truth resistance? We’d better see to it.

We, the people, can be forgiven for some angst over the free-falling role of truth in our democracy.

We all took civics in school. We know democracy depends on reason and truth. So when your president-elect peddles conspiracy theories and continues to promote lies just weeks before his inauguration, you break a sweat. When he taps a climate denier to be the head of the agency tasked with solving climate change, you try not to panic. And when he taps the CEO of the world’s largest oil company to be our nation’s leading diplomat amidst the global climate crisis, you try not to break things.

But the truth, for all the abuse it’s taking, isn’t going anywhere soon.

Not only does reality function on facts, but a broad pushback against disinformation and outright lies is starting to take shape, driven by people from across American life who value reason and truth too much to put up with the foolishness. The madness, really.

It gives me hope that we can resist this descent and turn it around.

But to do so we need to collectively stay on it, push facts to the fore, and drive fact-free politics back to the wild-eyed fringes.

…(read more).

Net Neutrality: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

LastWeekTonight

Published on Jun 1, 2014

Cable companies are trying to create an unequal playing field for internet speeds, but they’re doing it so boringly that most news outlets aren’t covering it.
John Oliver explains the controversy and lets viewers know how they can voice their displeasure to the FCC.

(www.fcc.gov/comments, for any interested parties)

Media

What Impact Will Trump Presidency Have on Freedom of Edward Snowden & Julian Assange?

Democracy Now!

Published on Jan 6, 2017

http://democracynow.org – In our extended conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald responds to claims NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations helped Russia, and examines what actions the Trump administration may take against him and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “Exactly the same playbook was used against [Daniel] Ellsberg that is now being used against Snowden, which is to say, ’Don’t listen to these disclosures. Don’t regard this person as a hero for exposing our corruption and lawbreaking. Focus instead on the fact that these are traitors working with our enemies,’” says Greenwald. “And just as it was completely false in the case of Ellsberg, so too is it completely false in the case of Snowden.”

From Keystone XL Pipeline to #DAPL: Jasilyn Charger, Water Protector from Cheyenne River Reservation

Democracy Now!

Published on Jan 6, 2017

http://democracynow.org – As Native American elders fighting the Dakota Access pipeline extinguish the Seven Council Fires at Standing Rock, we speak with Jasilyn Charger, a water protector from Cheyenne River Reservation, who has camped at Sacred Stone Resistance Camp since it launched in April. Jasilyn founded the International Indigenous Youth Council at Standing Rock. She was also part of the resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline before that.