Clearly the Syrians are going through unimaginable hells with the merciless oppression of their leadership. According to Nadin Abbott:

The Syrian unrest started in March 2011, on the heels of the successful Arab Spring In Tunis and Egypt. As Syrians took to the streets to demand that President Bashar Al Assad step down, the regime quickly clamped down. The Syrian government used armed personnel and snipers against peaceful demonstrators. Many people were kidnapped and taken by the security forces, after which they were tortured and in many cases killed.

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On July 31, the Free Syrian Army was formed. Its reported objective was to protect fleeing soldiers, and chiefly civilians, from the regime. This force is made up of former soldiers of the regime, as well as civilian volunteers. This followed the pattern that we saw in Libya, although the FSA has not officially asked for foreign help.

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Occupy Sacramento lawyers announced Friday afternoon they were "not surprised" UC Davis students arrested in the infamous "pepper spraying incident" in November were not charged by the Yolo County District Attorney - and they emphasized that it's time the police officers at UC Davis are prosecuted.

District Attorney Jeff Reisig announced today that there was "insufficient information" contained within the police reports submitted by the UC Davis Police Department to justify the filing of criminal charges against those individuals arrested during the November 18, 2011, confrontation with UC Davis Police during the “Occupy UC Davis” protest.

"Based on this determination the District Attorney will not be filing charges against the protesters," according to Reisig. "The District Attorney’s examination into the pepper spraying of the protesters is ongoing."

Jeff Kravitz, one of the many pro bono/volunteer lawyers working with Occupy Sacramento, said today's announcement by the Yolo County District Attorney follows a pattern of county DAs refusing to prosecute after arrests by police at Occupy events, including those in Sacramento.

"I am not surprised at all," said Kravitz. "These are peaceful, nonviolent demonstrators. In Sacramento, we have veterans, workers and students defending the First Amendment and being arrested. None of them should be prosecuted."

A broad coalition of commercial and recreational salmon fishing groups, conservation organizations and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe today filed an appeal with the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to fully reinstate a federal water management plan intended to protect threatened Chinook salmon and steelhead throughout the Central Valley.

The "biological opinion," issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service, functions as a water management plan governing huge water diversions in the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary as well as dams on most major Central Valley rivers, according to a news release from the groups and Tribe.

"Although a district court upheld most of the biological opinion as scientifically justified, it found that parts of the plan contained some technical problems and sent it back for further review and analysis. The court left the biological opinion in force while federal water managers and wildlife agencies make the necessary fixes," the groups stated.

You would think that a simple bill requiring the labeling of Frankenfish would pass easily through the California Legislature.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, since Assemblymembers apparently beholden to the bioegineering and biotechnology industry on January 19 voted against a bill, AB 88, that would have required that all genetically engineered (GE) fish sold in California contain clear and prominent labeling.

The legislation, authored by Assemblymember Jared Huffman (D-6), failed in the Assembly Appropriations Committee by a vote of 9-7. Assemblymembers Harkey, Calderon, Hall, Nielson, Norby, Solorio, Wagner, Campos and Donnelly voted no on the bill, while Fuentes, Bradford, Chesbro, Gatto, Hill, Ammiano and Mitchell voted yes.

Assemblymember Blumenfield, who voted for the bill last May, was out of the room during the vote.

"It's shameful that nine members of the Assembly Appropriations Committee chose to keep consumers in the dark as to whether salmon sold in California is genetically engineered or not, should GE Salmon be approved by the FDA," said Marie Logan of Food and Water Watch. "We will continue to fight for labeling of all genetically engineered foods and continue to urge the FDA to not approve GE salmon, so that this potentially risky product never reaches grocery store shelves. Food & Water Watch will continue working to support national legislation that would stop the approval of GE salmon by the FDA."

Animating our DNA

In the TED lecture below Drew Berry speaking in Sydney, Australia, shows off animations of molecular life.

The animations he shows are of DNA, chromosomes and the proteins that work with them.

In his State of the State Address on January 18, Governor Jerry Brown emphasized his commitment to fast-tracking the construction of the peripheral canal under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), a Nineteenth Century "solution" to Twenty-First Century problems.

Brown said that water is a “huge issue we must tackle” – and then greenwashed the BDCP process by claiming it will somehow “restore” the Delta ecosystem and create “new habitat for spawning fish and other wildlife.”

Brown proclaimed, "Last week, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar - met here in Sacramento with those in my administration who are working to complete the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.

Together we agreed that by this summer we should have the basic elements of the project we need to build. This is something my father worked on and then I worked on—decades ago. We know more now and are committed to the dual goals of restoring the Delta ecosystem and ensuring a reliable water supply.

Tonight on the NewsHour I watched Dennis Ross (former administration Mideast adviser) with a straight-face assert that we very well may be “sliding into war with Iran” -- actually, being FORCED into such a scenario -- because of Iran’s threat of nuclear enrichment.

Only let’s bottom-line it. “Iran’s NON-EXISTENT bomb” is the non-justification justification for a strike against Iran that would set off a deadly conflagration of God knows what intended and unintended U.S. and Israel imperialistic profits-over-who-gives-a-shit-how-many-dead-or-maimed-or-displaced-people consequences!

Non-existent weapon of mass destruction? Has a familiar ring to it, nes pa?

How ballsy the USWarMachine has gotten. They don’t even have “pretend” weapons of mass destruction any more as casus belli. The unproven “twinkle” of nuclear intention in Iran’s eye is now enough to go to war. A war that will be launched by or doggedly provoked by one country with over 5,000 warheads and/or another with over 200. But no one in corporate media ever brings up that international double standard.

Marjorie Cohn in "Pressure Israel, Not Iran":

The video above discusses the Senate version of the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In the Senate the bill is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). SOPA has gotten more attention than PIPA because it was moving faster in the legislative process. But PIPA is just as dangerous, and now it is moving faster.

PIPA would give the government new powers to block Americans' access websites that corporations don't like. The bill lets corporations and the US government censor entire websites and cut sites off from advertising, payments and donations.

This legislation will stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

Sacramento for Democracy (http://sacramentofordemocracy.org) will join thousands of websites across the world in an internet blackout on Wed. January 18, 2012 as we oppose the current internet censorship legislation in congress known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). We do this to raise awareness of this huge threat to an open internet.

You can learn more about this issue by clicking here.

Click here to send an email to your congressmembers and urge them to vote NO on SOPA (House members) and PIPA (Senate members). You can also call and fax them by clicking here.

An article in the Silicon Valley Mercury New on January 14, written by AP reporter Jason Dearen, does a good job of describing the challenge that California's fish and game wardens face in enforcing the so-called "marine protected areas" created under Arnold Schwarzenegger's privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.

"California's 1,100-mile coastline has 50 Marine Protected Areas that cover about 354 square miles of ocean—or about 15 percent of the coast covering diverse sea environments from southern sloughs to waters near the Farallon Islands," according to Dearen (http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_19743552). "Yet the California Department of Fish and Game has fewer wardens per capita than any other coastal state, creating a challenge for California in how best to police the vast areas."

Ed Begley Jr., a renowned actor and environmental advocate, will narrate Restore the Delta's groundbreaking documentary film Over Troubled Waters.

"The story of the Delta as told by Delta locals is a must-see for all Californians," said Mr. Begley, working with Media Creations, a regional production company.

"We need to know why this area is worthy of protection. It is a hidden treasure, and with enough water it is a place where fisheries and sustainable agriculture can thrive together once again," said Begley.

Begley's role in the film was announced as the Brown and Obama administrations are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal. Delta advocates oppose the peripheral canal's construction because it would likely result in the extinction of imperiled Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and Sacramento splittail populations.