How Mushrooms Turn Agricultural Biowaste Into Packaging, Furniture And More

Link: We already know that plastics are choking up our oceans and they are evenpoisoning our food, but are there any viable alternatives? From discarded eggshells to bananas, we’re not short of potential feedstocks for bioplastics. But one company is taking the idea a step further — instead ofcreating bioplastics from plants, it wants to replace plastics outright with a mushroom-based material that it grows.

A New Civil Rights Movement Frees Our Communities from Corporate Control

Link: To protect small and family farms from industrial factory farming, over a decade ago a handful of Pennsylvania townships stood up to some of the country’s largest agribusiness corporations. Recognizing that the state and federal government, rather than protecting them from factory farms, were in fact forcing them into communities, the townships took the unprecedented step of banning corporate farming within their borders.

Krauthammer: Obamacare A Tool To Intentionally Destroy Wealth And Create Democratic Voters

Link: Krauthammer and Napolitano continued to play out how this works in theory, which is that this “wealth” would be moved around through the health care system via subsidies to those making too making too much to be on Medicaid, but are earning just little enough to qualify for those subsidies. It was a theory Stoddard questioned, but Krauthammer stuck to it, arguing this was something for which the White House had failed to see the political consequences.

Militarization and War Games in the Pacific: America to Destroy Paradise Island

Link: Pagan Island, an idyllic Pacific Island in the Marianas, home to thousands of species of flora and fauna, some of them unique, and enjoying a perfect ecological balance, is facing Armageddon: in March of this year the US military announced its intention to use the Island as a live-fire training range. In plain English, they plan to blast it to pieces.

First Leaked TPP Chapter Evokes Memories of SOPA

Link: The Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement aimed at deepening economic ties between the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and eight other countries in the region, has been largely shrouded in secrecy. Today, however, whistleblower outfit Wikileaks leaked a copy of the agreement’s “most controversial chapter” which has prompted immediate criticism of its SOPA-like provisions that have Internet freedom-limiting potential.

The Little Light That Helped One Man Raise Over $1.5 Million

Link: Meet Luci—she’s a compact, waterproof, very cool-looking solar-powered lantern on a big mission to provide affordable and portable light to those who play or live “off the grid.” From recreational campers, to those in the aftermath of a natural disaster, to the Samburu tribe in a remote part of Africa, the makers of the Luci say, “Let there be light!” The CEO and co-founder of MPowerD Jacques-Philippe Piverger believes his little light will help change the world.

SC Police Department Gets UN Blue Armored Vehicle that is Land Mine & IED Resistant

Link: On Veterans Day, Columbia, South Carolina became the latest of about 500 communities nationwide to add a military grade armored vehicle to its police force.  The para-military vehicle with a “U.N. blue” custom paint job seats nine people, has an armable turret, and costs $658,000.  The vehicle made its way to the department for free through the Department of Defense’s 1033 excess property program.  The tank is bullet proof, features a land mine resistant frame, and a mount rack suited for a 50 caliber machine gun.

Meet the Punk Rocker Who Can Liberate Your FBI File

Link: Ryan Shapiro has just wrapped up a talk at Boston’s Suffolk University Law School, and as usual he’s surrounded by a gaggle of admirers. The crowd­, consisting of law students, academics, and activist types, is here for a panel discussion on theAnimal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a 2006 law targeting activists whose protest actions lead to a “loss of profits” for industry. Shapiro, a 37-year-old Ph.D. studentat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, contributed a slideshow of newspaper headlines, posters, and government documents from as far back as the 1800s depicting animal advocates as a threat to national security. Now audience members want to know more about his dissertation and the archives he’s using. But many have a personal request: Would Shapiro help them discover what’s in their FBI files?

TSA’s Got 94 Signs To ID Terrorists, But They’re Unproven By Science

Link: Science! Forget subjective screening, which too often slides into racial and ethnic profiling; instead, evaluate travelers entering an airport using a rigorous set of objective measurements that could spot deception. This was the admirable principle behind the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program known as Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT), which has been operating at airports around the country since 2007 at a total cost of $900 million—or about $200 million a year.