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In California’s storied Central Valley, for decades one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, an estimated 250,000 acres of prime farm land are lying fallow or dying. The parched area bears all the signs of a prolonged drought, but the acute water shortage confronting farmers and growers is largely manmade, the result of the Interior Department’s rigorous enforcement of the ESA.
Responding to a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups, the Bush administration, in December 2008, agreed to divert more than 150 billion gallons of water this year from the fertile Central Valley to the San Joaquin Delta in an effort to protect the endangered Delta smelt. With the federal government withholding water from farmers, it didn’t take long for economic devastation to grip the Central Valley. Unemployment in the areas ranges from 20 percent to a staggering 40 percent in some agricultural communities. The Central Valley’s agricultural output is expected to decline by between $1 billion and $3 billion this year compared with 2008.
Environmentalists have persuaded the Department of the Interior to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. These dams not only provide clean, green energy to the Klamath community, they sustain area ranches and farms with continual access to water. An environmentalist’s dream, right?
But the fish! We must always put fish ahead of people!
It seems that once upon a time, salmon would migrate upstream the Klamath River to spawn, a process that has become interrupted by the dams. For several decades, ranching and farming families have relied upon the steady stream of not only water, but also renewable energy provided by the dams. Destroying the dams would destroy these people’s livelihoods.
Grace Bennett, the board chair for the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, says:“With the dams gone, it will impact our area … because there won’t be enough water in our river. It will not be a matter of when you irrigate, or how much you irrigate; it’ll be a matter of can you irrigate? Can you do these things? And if we don’t have the dams in, to give the water for the fish that return, and we’re taking that water from our farmers and ranchers, we won’t have any farmers and ranchers.”What is the government’s obsession with prioritizing fish over people? This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing in California. TheDelta Smelt has destroyed much of the farming community in central California, because the ugly bugger ended up on the endangered species list and politicians decided to cut off the water from the San Joaquin Valley to the farmlands in order to ‘save’ it.
Now the salmon need saving too. Except maybe they don’t. It’s hard to tell, with all the twisted ‘evidence’ going into the decision-making process over the removal of the dams. Professor Paul Houser was a science advisor to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation before he was fired for alleging “that the Obama administration intentionally falsified scientific fact in a proposal for dam removal in the Klamath River.”
VIDEO: Police hunt two OWS demonstrators suspected of dumping fecal matter outside JP Morgan Chase
There are many types and traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive.[SUP][13][/SUP] Anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism.[SUP][2][/SUP] Strains of anarchism have been divided into the categories of social and individualist anarchism or similar dual classifications.[SUP][14][/SUP][SUP][15][/SUP] Anarchism is often considered to be a radical left-wing ideology,[SUP][16][/SUP][SUP][17][/SUP] and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflect anti-statist interpretations of communism, collectivism, syndicalismor participatory economics. However, anarchism has always included an individualist strain supporting a market economy and private property, or morally unrestrained egoism.[SUP][18][/SUP][SUP][19][/SUP][SUP][20][/SUP] Some individualist anarchists are alsosocialists or communists[SUP][21][/SUP][SUP][22][/SUP] while some anarcho-communists are also individualists.[SUP][23][/SUP][SUP][24][/SUP]
Collectivist anarchism
Main article: Collectivist anarchism
Collectivist anarchism, also referred to as "revolutionary socialism" or a form of such,[SUP][181][/SUP][SUP][182][/SUP] is a revolutionary form of anarchism, commonly associated with Mikhail Bakunin and Johann Most.[SUP][183][/SUP][SUP][184][/SUP] Collectivist anarchists oppose all private ownership of the means of production, instead advocating that ownership be collectivised. This was to be achieved through violent revolution, first starting with a small cohesive group through acts of violence, or "propaganda by the deed", which would inspire the workers as a whole to revolt and forcibly collectivise the means of production.[SUP][183][/SUP]
However, collectivization was not to be extended to the distribution of income, as workers would be paid according to time worked, rather than receiving goods being distributed "according to need" as in anarcho-communism. This position was criticised by anarchist communists as effectively "uphold[ing] the wages system".[SUP][185][/SUP] Collectivist anarchism arose contemporaneously with Marxism but opposed the Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat, despite the stated Marxist goal of a collectivist stateless society.[SUP][186][/SUP] Anarchist, communist and collectivist ideas are not mutually exclusive; although the collectivist anarchists advocated compensation for labour, some held out the possibility of a post-revolutionary transition to a communist system of distribution according to need.[SUP][187][/SUP]
[h=2]One of the leaders of the Occupy Cleveland movement, Brandon Baxter, is one of those arrested for today's terrorist plot to bomb a bridge in Cleveland. Occupier Brandon Baxter appears to have gotten the guidance he sought.[/h]OCCUPIED — Occupy Cleveland organizer Brandon Baxter gets some shade in the Occupy Cleveland tent in downtown Cleveland on March 21, 2012. Baxter, one of the few remaining members of Occupy Cleveland’s physical presence downtown, said the group has seen a sharp decline in numbers since last October because of increasing disorganization. “We need guidance,” he said.Another of today's suspects is Anthony Hayne, named previously in a report on Occupy Cleveland. “I just want to be very clear: we are not occupying Lakewood,” said Anthony Hayne, who is organizing the information session. Hayne, a Lakewood resident since 2001, said there will be about six or seven members of Occupy Cleveland, which stems from the Occupy Wall Street movement, at the table Saturday.
Barack Obama embraced the Occupy Movement when he saw his poll numbers sliding. Now, with so called Occupiers calling themselves anarchists and hurling Molotov Cocktails, that's still apparently not far enough for some. CBS has the names and official complaint here. The plot is now directly linked to the Occupy movement. A Doug Wright, found here on Facebook, also appears to have been involved.
Josh, although you probably aren't going to see this now, you are way funnier when you are arguing with Tez...
[h=2]Any news parody show worth its salt would make hay out of President Barack Obama spiking the football over the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.[/h]And "Saturday Night Live" dutifully wrote a skit on the presidential's boastful actions intended to open the program. Only the show ended up spiking the skit, according to The Daily Caller which got a leak of the planned script for the sketch.
The bit had Fred Armisen's Obama extolling the glories of Killing Osama bin Laden day and telling American citizens the best way to celebrate both the day and his "gusty call" to order the strike.
What did the NBC show replace the Obama sketch with, you ask? Another bit trashing "Fox and Friends" for being dumb, biased and racist.
The move certainly raises plenty of questions. Why was the sketch scrapped? Did NBC or the show itself feel any pressure to swap the sketch out for something that wouldn't offend President Barack Obama? Did some cast members raise objections or refuse to do the skit?
Many former "SNL" performers have discussed the creative process behind the show. And it's routine for sketches to be trimmed or eliminated for a host of reasons before show time. But this particular sketch was extremely time sensitive and political in nature, two elements that matter to a satirical program like "SNL."
"SNL's" Sarah Palin parodies help define the Alaskan governor to the nation. And the show clearly doesn't want to use its humor to damage the current White House occupant in an election year. That becomes more clear every Saturday night.