The predator drone – an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) – is one of the relatively new lethal weapons used by the United States for targeted killings of suspected terrorists, particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia.

And since it is unmanned and remotely controlled, the drone does not risk the lives of U.S. soldiers.

But the weapon has increasingly come under fire because of the collateral damage in the spillover killings of innocent civilians, including women and children.

On Monday, a report jointly published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) has warned of an even more deadly weapon: killer robots.

Described as fully autonomous, these weapons will have the capability to select and fire on targets without human intervention in future wars.

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When Work is Not Salvation

What if the most enduring October scoop got waylaid, buried by campaign Rom-foolery and Obametrics, the tenacious Great Recession, bluster over Libya, or baseball playoffs? Two weeks ago Pew Research pinpointed an historic threshold: for the first time only 48% of Americans deemed themselves Protestant. Yes, the dominant majority since Puritan days has shrunk to minority status, alongside (one trusts) its perennial double: the White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant ruling class.  

With the Protestant hegemony fading, let us project a similar demise for the simplistic, planet-threatening credo known as the “Protestant Ethic.” That triumphant code consecrates hard work, prosperity and control over nature, complacently measuring progress by net profit and GNP numbers. Here's a conviction that unifies our two parties in love with the status quo, along with reactionaries and fundamentalists everywhere. For all proclaim the Divinity of Hard Work, that Hard Work Conquers All, even that Work is Salvation, as both sign and vehicle of “exceptionalism” and personal deliverance. 

For the hard right, does not the magic of hard work resolve crime, poverty, racial inequality, family shortcomings, economic stagnation and phantom enemies far and wide? The solution to all hard ...

When asked by a skeptical friend why you buy organic, do you find yourself tongue-tied? Was it obesity? Or thyroid problems? Why should you buy organic? There are numerous reasons to skip the mainstream supermarket food and shop at an organic grocer, but just one of those reasons revolves around the effects of pesticides.

Unfortunately, pesticides attack your body on several fronts. Keep this list handy the next time you find yourself wondering if you should buy a carton of conventional strawberries rather than organic to potentially save a few pennies. Remember that all of the following conditions will cost you much more than money; the effects of pesticides will cost you your health.

Here are 7 nasty and crazy effects of pesticides.

Effects of Pesticides – Cancer

The dreaded diagnosis of cancer has been linked in over 260 studies worldwide to agrochemicals. Worse, scientists have linked pesticides with several types of cancers, including that of the breast, prostate, brain, bone, thyroid, colon, liver, lung, and more. Some researchers from USC found that “those who lived within 500 meters of places where methyl bromide, captan and eight other organochlorine pesticides had been applied, they found, were more likely to have developed prostate cancer.”

But even indirect exposure, such as through parental use, has been found to affect children in a terrible way. A study published in Environmental Health Perspectives has linked parental use of pesticides with an increased risk of brain cancer in children. “Parental exposures may act before the child’s conception, during gestation, or after birth to increase the risk of ...

As Election Day looms, voters across the country are deciding which of the two candidates will get their vote. The political views of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have been evaluated and dissected by hundreds of websites and countless political pundits. We’ve seen the two candidates debate on TV and approve countless commercial messages. We’ve heard their talking points and read their plans. However, we wanted to know how they got so smart.

To read more please visit DegreeJungle.com

With his July Rolling Stone article, Bill McKibben attracted enormous attention for his proposal to step up the fight against the fossil-fuels industry in the struggle to forestall global warming. To identify a clear opponent and mobilize power against it is, of course, a strategy of polarization. McKibben has been getting some thoughtful pushback, and I’d like to respond to one of the objections I’ve heard: that polarizing in this way distorts the truth, since carbon pollution is driven by millions of consumer choices. We’re all responsible for the fix we’re in, some critics say, so it’s wrong to mobilize against the 1 percent.

I’d like to challenge this objection on three grounds: it misreads power, privileges one way of seeking truth, and snuggles into a middle-class comfort zone.

When it comes to energy ...

Unlike the flattening or even declining rates of HIV infection among nearly all other communities, the epidemic among gay men globally is rapidly expanding.

But according to new research, the reason for this fast expansion is biological, not behavioral, thus countering some of the core priorities of traditional AIDS funding.

“The trajectory of HIV epidemics among MSM” – men who have sex with men – “is expanding virtually everywhere we look, in low-, middle- and high-income countries, and across all regions,” Chris Beyrer, a professor of international health, told a panel discussion here on Thursday.

“Much of this comes down to a fundamental biological reality: it’s not about gender but about the gut.”

Beyrer, who contributed to a recent groundbreaking special issue of The Lancet, the British medical journal, on HIV in MSM, says that researchers have found that the HIV virus is far more efficiently transmitted through the gut, hence leading to a far higher transmission probability in anal sex, for either a man or a woman – around 18 times more likely than through vaginal transmission.

Further, because gay men can switch sexual roles in a way that is impossible among heterosexual couples – acting as both the acquisition and transmission partner – the efficiency of transmission among MSM networks appears to be far higher than previously understood.

In a hypothetical MSM group in which men did not alternate their sexual roles, Beyrer reports that HIV incidence could be reduced by up to 55 percent.

“The network-level effects are really trumping the individual level,” he says. “So, people who have modest individual-level risks but who are having sex in ...

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, rightwing nuts, and looming climate change, all threaten millions. But anxiety, even nightmare projections, do not mean Armageddon is upon us, nor that pundits suddenly discover 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 neither extinction nor end of times – nor reformation destructive capitalism. Want good news? Harvard professor Steven Pinker argues our belligerent species has cut 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 suffered 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.  

Centers hold on

No doubt, systemic cracks abound, thanks to myopic leadership blunders, not just across state and national politics but corporate's best and brightest, sports top dogs, and ...

Many conservatives who stylize themselves as defenders of small government lean precariously on Reagan-era platitudes when pressed to justify their affections. Though Reagan’s alluringly demagogic 1981 decree that “government is not the solution to our problems [but rather], government is the problem” is easy to chew, its arbitrary application has led to a number of misconceptions about the role, size, and scope of “government.”

Time and again conservatives characterize those of us on the left as “large government loyalists,” as “tax and spend liberals” who “support the growth of an inefficient and parasitic public sector.” Unfortunately, the tales that conservatives use to vituperate those of on the left are as shallow as they are tall.

Let’s take a few minutes to debunk three common conservative critiques lodged against supposed “big government” sympathizers.

Myth #1: President Obama has created a “spending inferno.”

Did not Harvard Business School teach you anything, Mitt? In FY 2009—the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 18 percent from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Then, in FY 2010—the first budget overseen by President Obama—federal government outlays fell by nearly 2 percent. In FY 2011 spending rose 4.3 percent to $3.60 trillion and in FY 2012 spending is scheduled to rise 0.7 percent to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent budgetary estimates.  Finally in FY 2013 — the final budget of President Obama’s term — spending is ...

Are we ready for a new economy?

And a new politics?

First, some definitions. I think we can define the new economy as one where the overriding purpose of economic life is to sustain and to strengthen People, Place, and Planet, and is no longer to grow Profit, Product (as in gross domestic), and Power.

And a new politics? No surprises here. A new politics in America is one that replaces today’s creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy with true popular sovereignty.

Well, then, let’s explore how we can begin the process of transformation to a new economy and a new politics. This afternoon, I want to offer 10 steps we can take now that would start us on our journey. Time is short, so here they are.

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About 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are seeking compensation for service-related injuries — more than double the 21 percent of veterans who filed such claims after the first Gulf War, according to an AP investigation. And new veterans are claiming an average of eight or nine ailments, and in the last year, the average has jumped from 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are receiving compensation for fewer than four injuries on average.

Officials tell the AP that the number of disability claims is increasing because of better treatment for battlefield wounds and more outreach from the Department of Veterans Affairs. And doctors are seeing different types of ailments, including traumatic ...

Former Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith takes a rare look at modern-day investment banking.  His description of the profit-first culture should prompt investigation into bank practices and serious questioning by clients – from individuals to pension funds to universities – as to their advisors’ ethics and priorities.

Smith’s Wednesday’s New York Times op-ed, written as he left his employer of 12 years, describes the firm’s environment as “as toxic and destructive as he’s ever seen it”.  It rewards dumping unprofitable Goldman-owned investments and getting clients to trade what brings in the most profit for the bank.  It often ignores interests of clients, referred to by managing directors as “Muppets”.  “The decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long term survival,” he writes.  If character is destiny, banks’ path ahead will be littered with obstacles more deadly than exploded swaps.

Banks relentless search for profits has racked up immense “collateral damage”.  Investment banks have injured individuals and institutions of every stripe.  Institutions include the country Greece whose books Goldman cooked; Jefferson County, Alabama, and many European cities devastated by risky derivatives; colleges like the University of Virginia and Harvard who have held cut-rate sales on private equity; and pension funds and others who sued for fraudulent trades.  Hurt individuals include veterans overcharged by JP Morgan Chase, Occupy Wall Street protestors unfairly arrested after JP Morgan’s huge donation to local police; millions abused in foreclosure and mortgage scams; and hundreds of millions globally impoverished by the crisis.  Bank profits and bonuses hit all time highs, even after inflicting this widespread harm.

Of course, the ...

I’ll admit it: Listening to Barack Obama, I am ready to enlist in his campaign against the feed-the-rich Republicans ... until I recall that I once responded in the same way to Bill Clinton’s faux populism. And then I get angry because betrayal by the “good guys” for whom I have ended up voting has become the norm.

Yes, betrayal, because if Obama meant what he said in Tuesday’s State of the Union address about holding the financial industry responsible for its scams, why did he appoint the old Clinton crowd that had legalized those scams to the top economic posts in his administration? Why did he hire Timothy Geithner, who has turned the Treasury Department into a concierge service for Wall Street tycoons? 

Why hasn’t he pushed for a restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, which Clinton’s deregulation reversed? Does the president really believe that the Dodd-Frank slap-on-the-wrist sellout represents “new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like this never happens again”? Can he name one single too-big-to-fail banking monstrosity that has been reduced in size on his watch instead of encouraged to grow ever larger by Treasury and Fed bailouts and interest-free money?

When Obama declared Tuesday evening “no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving ...

Last month, economists at Harvard and Columbia released the largest-ever study of teachers’ “value-added” ratings—a controversial mathematical technique that measures a teacher’s effectiveness by looking at the change in his students’ standardized test scores from one year to the next, while controlling for student demographic traits poverty and race.

Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff analyzed the test scores and family tax returns of 2.5 million Americans over a twenty-year period, from 1989 to 2009. The team concluded that students who have teachers with high value-added ratings are more likely to attend college and earn higher incomes, and are less likely to become pregnant teens.

In a rare instance of edu-wonk consensus, both friends and skeptics of standardized tests are praising the study as reliable and groundbreaking. Indeed, these ...

Newt Gingrich, who recently admitted that his own childhood was comfortable, seems to have a problem with youth — poor youth, that is. Back in 1994, the Gingrich master plan to shrink the welfare rolls was to ship the children of the poor off to orphanages. He told a Harvard audience not so long ago that child labor laws are "truly stupid," and schools should fire janitors and replace them with poor children.

Later, he modified this to "What if they became assistant janitors and their jobs were to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?"

Gingrich insists that his tots-to-janitors plan answers his latest national crisis: Poor kids have no habit of work "unless it's illegal." Thus, the former speaker of the house updates Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who said, "Give me the child until he is seven. Afterward anyone can have him." Let the infant hand receive the lifelong impress of the janitor's mop.

The rationales of those attacking child labor laws haven't changed much down the decades. A glance at "The Town Labourer, 1760-1832: the New Civilization" by J.L. and Barbara Hammond about the histories of the town and country laborers in Britain, provides vivid samples from the early phases of the industrial era.

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Early last month, a group of students staged a walkout in Harvard’s popular introductory economics course, Economics 10, taught by my colleague Greg Mankiw. Their complaint: the course propagates conservative ideology in the guise of economic science and helps perpetuate social inequality.

The students were part of a growing chorus of protest against modern economics as it is taught in the world’s leading academic institutions. Economics has always had its critics, of course, but the financial crisis and its aftermath have given them fresh ammunition, seeming to validate long-standing charges against the profession’s unrealistic assumptions, reification of markets, and disregard for social concerns.

Mankiw, for his part, found the protesting students “poorly informed.” Economics does not have an ideology, he retorted. Quoting John Maynard Keynes, he pointed out that economics is a method that helps people to think straight and reach the correct answers, with no foreordained policy conclusions.

Indeed, though you may be excused for skepticism if you have not immersed yourself in years of advanced study in economics, coursework in a typical economics doctoral program produces a bewildering variety of policy prescriptions depending on the specific context. Some of the frameworks economists use to analyze the world favor free markets, while others don’t. In fact, much economic research is devoted to understanding how government intervention can improve economic performance. And non-economic motives and socially cooperative behavior are increasingly part of what economists study.

As the late great international economist Carlos Diaz-Alejandro once put it, “by now any bright graduate student, by choosing his assumptions….carefully, can produce a consistent model yielding just about any policy recommendation he favored at the start.” And that was in the 1970’s! An apprentice ...

In the early days of Occupy Boston, Ford, a 30-year-old bookstore owner from the white, blue-collar town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Alex Ingram, a 22-year-old African-American from Georgia who served in the Air Force as a linguist, would stay up late into the night in Occupy Boston’s library. Enveloped by Rousseau and Chomsky, they’d ponder big ideas about how to change the system. But tonight they’re grappling with a different set of issues: How do we deal with Henry, who’s drunk and pissed off again and recently threatened another Occupier with a hammer? What do we say to the furious young woman who’s on a manhunt for the guy who promised her forty bucks for sex and then ran off? And what the hell are we going to do about Phil?

Eviction, of course, is on everyone’s mind. Meetings are held every day to plot emergency evacuation plans. Occupy Boston’s lawyer was able to secure a restraining order that has helped prevent Mayor Thomas Menino from staging a Bloomberg-style raid. On December 1, a Suffolk Superior Court judge upheld that injunction, but it remains full of loopholes. If the camp is found to be in violation of fire and health codes, the city will have legal authority to clear camp. Fire inspectors frequent the site, documenting scores of violations with digital cameras, and Occupiers know this evidence won’t help them in court.

Menino has tolerated the encampment because, unlike some other Occupy sites, Boston hasn’t had any serious violent incidents or deadly overdoses. John, Alex and the Safety Committee ...