Racketeering: The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (18 USC §§ 1961-1968) prohibits (1) acquiring, establishing, or operating an enterprise with illegally derived income, (2) acquiring or maintaining an interest in or control of an enterprise through illegal activity, and (3) using an enterprise to commit illegal acts (Extortion, Blackmail, Etc. , 31A Am Jur 2d).
As fearless nonviolent protestors occupy the corporate office of a life-threatening and violation-ridden mountaintop removal operation in the Coal River Valley, West Virginia this morning, hundreds of thousands of American citizens are jamming the social media networks today, calling on JP Morgan Chase to end their financing of arguably criminal mountaintop removal coal mining operations in Appalachia.
Al Gore may have called mountaintop removal “a crime and ought to be treated as a crime,” but God bless veteran activists Mike Roselle, Joseph Hamsher, and Tom Smyth and the footslogging Climate Ground Zero nonviolent campaigners who are willing to put their lives on the line to stop mountaintop removal mining.

Written by Kelley Robinson for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
This article was originally published by DesMoinesRegister.com, in response to an earlier editorial. It is republished here with permission from the author, and is part of a series of articles appearing on RH Reality Check, written by reproductive justice advocates responding to recent efforts by the anti-choice movement to use racial and ethnic myths to limit women’s rights and health.
As an African-American woman, I take exception to Tom Quiner’s Feb. 7 column on African-Americans and abortion. Quiner perpetuates many of the myths pro-life groups use to attack family planning and supports misconceptions about the lack of support among members of my community.

Co-written by Lyndsay Moseley, Associate Washington Representative for the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.
On Thursday, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will start using coal ash to melt the thick ice on the Platte River in Omaha, Nebraska, to prevent ice jams and severe flooding. From the article:
“The hope is that the dark ash will absorb the sun’s energy and help ‘rot’ the ice so it breaks up into smaller chunks and washes downstream, Berndt said.”
Coal ash contains heavy metals like lead, mercury, arsenic and more – all of which are linked to increased rates of cancer, learning disabilities and reproductive problems. The metals can be ingested through the dust or when dissolved in water.
This strikes us as a strange and dangerous move – one community is going to add coal ash to their water while many others are worried about how it will affect their water supplies.
For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority is working around the clock to get tons of coal ash out of the Emory and Clinch rivers to protect public health and the environment in Tennessee.

A NEW DAY ON DADT…. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen generated national attention two weeks ago when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he sees no reason to block gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military. He immediately faced pushback from far-right Republican senators, who publicly questioned his integrity.
Would Mullen face a similar reaction from U.S. troops, who were no doubt aware of his public stance on the issue? Apparently not.
Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was nearing the end of a 25-minute question and answer session with troops serving here when he raised a topic of his own: “No one’s asked me about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” he said.
As it turned out, none of the two dozen or so men or women who met with Mullen at Marine House in the Jordanian capital Tuesday had any questions on the 17-year-old policy that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military — or Mullen’s public advocacy of its repeal.
Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Darryl E. Robinson, who’s the operations coordinator for defense attache’s office at the U.S. Embassy here, explained why after the session. “The U.S. military was always at the forefront of social change,” he said. “We didn’t wait for laws to change.”

The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now.

In 1971, President Nixon declared “war on cancer.” In the forty years since, the U.S. has spent some $200 billion on research, but we’ve only cut the death rate by 5% (measured since 1950). Cancer still accounts for 13% of deaths worldwide. Still, there have been some recent developments that might show some promise:

1. This must be good news:
Scientists crack ‘entire genetic code’ of cancer

2. We’re discovering new methods of detection:
Microchip that can detect type and severity of cancer
Magnetic nanotags spot cancer in mice

Even Boulder Finds It Isn't Easy Going Green

"What we've found is that for the vast majority of people, it's exceedingly difficult to get them to do much of anything," says Kevin Doran, a senior research fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

President Barack Obama has set ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, in part by improving energy efficiency. Last year's stimulus bill set aside billions to weatherize buildings. The president has also called for a "cash for caulkers" rebate for Americans who weatherize their homes.

But Boulder has found that financial incentives and an intense publicity campaign aren't enough to spur most homeowners to action, even in a city so environmentally conscious that the college football stadium won't sell potato chips because the packaging isn't recyclable.

The head of the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur today issued a call for maximum restraint by all parties following the eruption of deadly violence which has displaced thousands in the troubled Sudanese region in recent days.

William Grassie has a fuzzy-headed far view on surviving catastrophe:

Imagine a major planetary catastrophe, … something in the order of the Mt. Toba supervolcano … some 73,000 years ago. … Humanity was reduced to some 1000-to-10,000 breeding pairs. … One of the thirty or so supervolcanos … is the Yellowstone Basin. … The United States disappears in the course of a few days. … The survivors would be reduced to subsistence farming, gathering, hunting, and fishing in areas around the earth’s equator. … Let’s say that humanity is again reduced to some 10,000 breeding pairs. …

What knowledge from today would be most valuable to these survivors as they tried to rebuild their lives and repopulate the earth? … You get to choose one book. …  Stockpiling food and weapons in the mountains of Idaho would be a silly and small-minded emergency plan. … Instead of focusing on the survival of my tribe, my family, or myself, we need to focus on the survival of civilization. ….  And the only way to do this with assurance is to distribute the most valuable and practical knowledge as widely as possible across the planet today in anticipation that unfortunate day. …

Originally published at TomDispatch.com

Hold Onto Your Underwear
This Is Not a National Emergency

Let me put American life in the Age of Terror into some kind of context, and then tell me you’re not ready to get on the nearest plane heading anywhere, even toward Yemen.