So long, and thanks for all the fish:  There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.  Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating. And it's not just fish, but all seafood.  Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity.  But a greater use of protected areas could safeguard existing stocks.

On Tuesday NASA agreed to briefly interrupt International Space Station assembly missions for a final maintenance shuttle visit to the Hubble space telescope, targeted for May 2008.  Without servicing by a shuttle crew, the telescope is expected to last only another two or three years.

Ukraine said Thursday it planned to reprocess tons of highly toxic rocket fuel left over from Soviet times and convert it into environmentally safe fertilizer.

The possibility of a large asteroid colliding with Earth in 2029 is zero, Russia's top astronomer said Thursday. The near-earth asteroid Apophis, discovered in mid-2004, caused a brief period of alarm in December 2004, when scientists calculated that there was as much as a 1 in 37 probability of it colliding with the earth.

Don't tell Rick Santorum, but Romanian and U.S. scientists have found evidence modern humans and Neanderthals interbred as Homo sapiens spread across Europe 35,000 years ago.

A U.S. research team says it has invented a "reactive flash volatilization process" that converts soy oil and sugar into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The mixture called synthesis gas, or syngas, is used to make chemicals and fuels, including gasoline, and the new process works up to 100 times faster than current technology.

The Bush administration is seeking world permission to produce thousands of tons of a pesticide that an international treaty banned nearly two years ago, even though U.S. companies already have huge stockpiles of the chemical.  Methyl bromide has been used for decades by farmers to help grow plump, sweet strawberries, robust peppers and other crops, but it also depletes the Earth's protective ozone layer. The United States and other countries signed a 1987 treaty promising to end its use by 2005, but hey, you know how it goes with treaties and the US these days...

So many culprits, so little rope:  Two federal agencies are investigating whether the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and censor their research, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said Wesnesday.  He was informed that the inspectors general for the Commerce Department and NASA had begun "coordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into global warming.  In the words of the picante sauce commercial, "Somebody get a rope."


Ecological collapse is already happening. Your resentment of the word doesn't change the fact that it is occurring.

British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il

Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US.

linky goodness

Sounds like someone needs a healthy dose of imported democracy!

Could it be setting the stage for the Saddam verdict due to be announced on November 5th?
John Negroponte made an unannounced visit to Baghdad just 5 days after Stephen Hadley

Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office, Oops! not just any office. Congresspeople cry foul after they vote without reading the bill.

Interesting. Yesterday, Michael Chertoff received the prestigious Henry Petersen Award but Petersen's grandson, one of the  family members who would normally present the award,  declined to present. Wonkette has all. (H/T:Huffpost)

Ex-Judges: Detainee Law Unconstitutional.

Nick Turse surveys American Prison Planet and ask why is KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, building on U.S. soil detention centers for "an unexpected influx of immigrants or new programs that require additional detention space?"

see why we're looking good for November 7th.

A "Letter to the RNC from A Cut and Run conservative"

[R]epublican Party candidates have been the recipients of my vote, my work and my contributions ever since I became old enough to cast a ballot in 1964..[.]

What is happening is bizarre! Does it not trouble any of you that the president and his coterie imagine that they can take unto themselves the very powers and, under the cover of secrecy, employ the same inhumane tactics for which they so correctly condemned Saddam Hussein? Are you not bothered by the fact that the most vociferous supporters of the Iraq invasion, those armchair warriors who are prepared to fight until the last drop of somebody else's blood is spilled, have never heard a shot fired in anger or worn the uniform? [.]

Frank J. Brady
"Cut and Run Conservative"
1st Cavalary Division, 7th Infantry Division, and 18th Airborne Corps alumnus

The Google's Youtube $1.6 B, stumble that's out of focus

Well, "You can't vote for war and disown the results"

Attacks in West Darfur have killed at least 63 people, half of them children, as rebels on Friday accused Khartoum of remobilizing Arab militia after suffering two military defeats on the Sudan-Chad border.

"The government have begun mobilizing the Janjaweed widely, especially in West Darfur, because they want to clear the area and move north along the border and defeat us," said Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, a leader of the National Redemption Front (NRF).

Rebels from the NRF alliance said of the 63 dead, 33 were children. The
United Nations said 27 of those were under 12 and urged the government to protect civilians. - linkage

So much violent death...my heart rips each time I read of it.

We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit - Octavio Paz / Latino Político

A 15-year-old girl from South Georgia came to Atlanta Wednesday to sue the federal government, sounding, when she spoke-- as one might expect --like she's from South Georgia. She is from Reidsville, after all-- born and reared in the U.S.A.

But she looks, she says, like her Mexican ancestors; and her name reflects and honors her heritage-- Marie Justeen Mancha. And Justeen stood outside the Russell Federal Building on Wednesday with her U.S.-born mother and a lot of others, to say how, one morning in September, as she was getting ready for school, her life changed. Her faith in her government-- shaken.

Federal immigration agents, she said, raided her home, without a warrant. - linkage

Last year, more than 5,000 janitors in Houston decided to form a union, giving organized labor one of its biggest victories ever in the South.
But now the janitors are locked in a new struggle.

They have gone on strike because five Houston cleaning companies have rejected their proposal for a salary increase to $8.50 an hour, up from the current average of $5.25 an hour.

The union's pressure tactics have gone much further. The union, the Service Employees International Union, has sent strikers to picket office buildings in Chicago, Jersey City, Los Angeles and Sacramento, enlisting janitors in those cities to honor the picket lines and disrupting cleaning operations there.
The union has also pressured one of the largest real estate companies in Houston, Hines, distributing leaflets at its buildings in Berlin, London, Mexico City and Moscow.

To push one of the largest office tenants in the city, Chevron, to urge its cleaning companies to be more generous, the service employees union yesterday blocked cars from entering a Chevron gasoline station in London and distributed leaflets at Chevron headquarters in San Ramon, Calif.

If you are in an area where actions are taking place, bring the strikers something to eat or drink on the picket line, read their handouts and take requested actions, honk and wave, and DON'T cross picket lines.


If you want things to get better, be prepared to deal with change.