27 Aug - RSS SnapShot

From Opit's LinkFest! at My Opera

Blacklisted News

• While Swine Flu Vaccine Has Been Declared "Safe", ...
• SIBEL EDMONDS' DEPOSITION: VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT RE ...

  Long-gagged FBI whistleblower's full under-oath testimony from Ohio election case, details Congressional blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, more...

• State of Florida Sold Personal Information from Re ...

  Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet have agreed to pay the federal government $1.5 million to settle a complaint that the state violated motorists’ privacy.

• Geithner: Auditing the Fed Is a “Line That We Do ...
• Microsoft apologizes for race-swap photo incident

Project Censored

• WALTER CRONKITE: THE END OF AN ERA – JULY 17, 20 ...

  WALTER CRONKITE: THE END OF AN ERA – JULY 17, 2009 The end of an era is a term too often over-used. But it is a term that is properly used when discussing the passing of Walter Cronkite. It is truly the end of an era in journalism. No other journalist could do what Walter did. He could cal ...

• You Can Now Find Our Investigative Research at the ...

  You can now find all of the investigative research that we have done over the years at our new and exciting Media Freedom International Website Please check the website often for news and updates.

• Analysis of Project Censored: Are We a Left-Leanin ...

  By Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” –Frederick Douglass ...

• Infotainment Society: Junk Food News and New ...

  By Mickey Huff and Frances A. Capell We can do the innuendo We can dance and sing When it’s said and done We haven’t told you a thing We all know that crap is king Give us dirty laundry! Don Henley, Dirty Laundry, 1982 The late New York University media scholar Neil Postma ...

• A Black President Doesn’t Mean Racism is gone in ...

  By Peter Phillips Racial inequality remains in the US. People of color continue to experience high rates of poverty, significant unemployment, police profiling and repressive incarceration. School segregation is a continuing concern among race scholars as well. According to a new Civil Rights re ...

Scoop - NZ

• Photography Forum NZ, Photographers Online New Zea ...

  New Zealand's photographer forums, interact with photographers in NZ using our forum, membership free, register and login to post. » PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews

• H1N1 School Outbreaks in Southern US

  A total of 122 Camden County High School students visited the school nurse's office and several of those were sent home because they were displaying flu-like symptoms on Monday, she said.There are also two elementary schools - Mamie Lou Gross Elementary and St. Marys Elementary - that reported sendi ...

• Abdullah alleges rigging in Afghan poll

  The main rival to President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan's presidential election accused the government of widespread rigging on Saturday but said he would use legal means to seek redress and not urge his supporters onto the streets.Abdullah Abdullah, who once served Mr Karzai as foreign minister, sa ...

• China seizes the Green Energy Crown

  Suntech Power in Wuxi has just broken the world record for capturing photovoltaic solar energy, achieving a 15.6pc conversion rate with a commercial-grade module.Trina Solar is neck-and-neck with America's First Solar, the low-cost star that has already broken the cost barrier of $1 (61p) per watt w ...

• New Bubble Threatens Rebound

  The United States is beginning to report data showing strong economic growth. Analysts are upgrading their outlooks for the U.S. economy, which is expected to grow at an annualized pace of 3 to 4 percent. And even before the U.S. revival emerged in the third quarter, China's data pointed toward a qu ...

Independent ( London )

• US has 'scrapped plan for missile shield in easter ...

  Moving to avoid a rift with Moscow, Barack Obama has "all but abandoned" plans to locate parts of a controversial US missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, a leading Polish newspaper claimed yesterday.

• Israel hobbling West Bank economy, says Tony Blair

  Israel's delaying tactics over the launch of a new Palestinian mobile phone network could deal a substantial blow to the West Bank's economy, Tony Blair warned yesterday in his capacity as the international community's Middle East envoy.

• Mali's President scuppers women's rights law

  Muslim leaders in Mali were declaring victory yesterday after seeing off a new law that would have improved women's rights in the country.

• Dalai Lama's trip angers China

  The Dalai Lama is to risk angering China further by accepting a surprise invitation from the government of Taiwan to take part in a prayer meeting with survivors of this month's typhoon.

• Museum's 'moon rock' is mere wood

  The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by US astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.

CASMII - Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

• Iran's Khamenei says protest leaders not foreign-b ...

  Summary: TEHRAN — Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that he has no proof the leaders of the post-election violence in June were backed by foreign states, state television reported. source: AFP read more

• Iran softens its nuclear stance - for now

  Summary: A new report on Iran's controversial nuclear program will be released this week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), ahead of the September deadline set by the Barack Obama administration in anticipation of more multilateral sanctions on Iran. All indications are that after ...

• Iran gets support for ban on nuke plant attacks

  Summary: NAM Iran, whose nuclear facilities are under threat of possible Israeli military strikes, has enlisted the support of more than 100 nonaligned nations in its push for a ban on such attacks, according to documents shared with The Associated Press. The 118-nation Nonaligned Movement back ...

• Top Jundallah Figure Says US Ordered Attacks

  Summary: Zahedan bus bomb In a high profile press conference in the city of Zahedan, Iran, international media gathered to hear a statement from Abdolhamid Rigi, a high ranking member of the Balochi separatist movement Jundallah who is awaiting execution by the Iranian government for his role in ...

• Obama Bows to Israel Over Settlements, Iran

  Summary: In a deal scheduled to be finalized tomorrow during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to London, Israel will accept a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority. The deal came as a result of President Obama caving to virtually every demand made by Israel. sourc ...

The Daily Galaxy

• "The Daily Galaxy" TV Guide: Space, Science, & Sci ...

  Programs August 30 - September 5 Note: Program Times are CST (for EST, add one hour) SUNDAY AUG. 30, 2009 “Defying Gravity” (9 p.m. on ABC): Drawing closer to the orbit of Venus, some members of the Antares crew struggle...

• Coming of Age in the Holocene - A Galaxy Classic

  Many of us are blissfully unaware that almost the whole of human history -from the hunters and gatherers to the rise of towns and cities, the development of science and medicine -the whole of our great human pageant- has taken...

• Our Tech Future? A Machine That Can Sense What You ...

  A sound-powered cellphone might sound like donuts that help you lose weight, an anti-hangover alcohol or an ad for "Guaranteed returns, work from home, APPLY NOW" - but it might well be possible. A team of Texan scientists have published...

• Antarctica Yields Relics from the Creation of The ...

  Rocks can be many things: they were probably our earliest weapons, they've been ballast on our journeys of exploration, even modern-art pieces. But a pair recovered from Antarctica may be the grandest application yet - tombstones for an entire world....

• 2009: The Status of "Spaceship Earth"

  The understanding that life of this planet is composed of an interconnected system must be considered as one of the great discoveries of science, perhaps as profound as Darwin's discovery of natural selection. One of the leading experts on this...

Natural News

• The Mothers Act Disease Mongering Campaign - Part ...

  (NaturalNews) This is part four of an article series by Evelyn Pringle. Find previous parts here: Part One (http://www.naturalnews.com/026634_drugs_suicide_adhd.html), Part Two (http://www.naturalnews.com/026707_health_disease_depression.html) and Part Three (http://www.naturalnews.com/026742_depres ...

• Statins Cause Serious Structural Muscle Damage

  (NaturalNews) If there is a super star in Big Pharma's list of money making drugs, it may well be the group of medications known as statins. The New York Times reported last year that statins are, in fact, the biggest selling drugs in the world. Their names, like Lipitor and Crestor, are familiar fr ...

• Defend Against Disease with Broccoli Juice

  (NaturalNews) Broccoli is a member of the cauliflower family or a Brassica. It is a diverse super food that is delicious when steamed or can be finely chopped and sprinkled on food for added nutrition. Juicing is a great way to get the most out of this amazing food. By drinking broccoli juice daily, ...

• Setting the people up to die: A conspiracy of sile ...

  (NaturalNews) It's emblazoned across the front page of USA Today , just underneath a subhead declaring Michael Jackson was, indeed, killed by a drug overdose: "Flu could infect half of USA." The article goes on to describe the predicted number of deaths expected in the U.S. (30,000 - 90,000 American ...

• Baking Soda Found To Help People with Chronic Kidn ...

  (NaturalNews) Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a serious condition marked by the permanent loss of kidney function. When the kidneys are damaged, the organs can't remove wastes and extra water from the blood as well as they should and the result can be a host of serious and even deadly health consequ ...

• TheGallopingBeaver

• Rightwing violence and US healthcare

  An early morning line of thought... The issue of firearms, rightwing violence (at least the implication) and Obama's healthcare is all over the news and blogs these days. It subsequently dawned on me this morning that every potentially violent divisive period in American history has a common macro-t ...

• Vive la différence

  THE LA TIMES has an interesting article on human gender, following the brouhaha over concerns about the gender of the South African athlete, Caster Semenya. For years, sports authorities considered only the sex chromosomes: If they are XX, the athlete is female, XY and he is male. Technicians would ...

• Child detainee going home after four years in Gitm ...

  A child detained in Guantanamo Bay for seven years for allegedly throwing a hand grenade at US soldiers in Afghanistan when he was 14 years old is on his way home after a US Federal Court ruled the government was holding him illegally. His initial confession, obtained under duress, was thrown out ...

• The "Three C's" . . . .

  Once again, the group over at The Progressive Economics Forum has a great post. This one references the historical profiteering from US-inspired coups overseas. Why are we not overly surprised? A tidbit: It turns out that the stock of several companies rose sharply after secret meetings in whic ...

• The Guns of August

  First this dingbat , now the floodgates are open .One can only assume that since we are told Obama gets dozens of death threats daily, that this latest effort on the part of the wingnuts to intimidate their political opponenets by bringing assault rifles to demonstrations at appearances by the pre ...

Media Matters for America

• Karl's evidence that Kennedy's death hasn't "inspi ...

  ABC's Jonathan Karl claimed that if "last night's town hall meeting in Phoenix is any indication" of whether Sen. Ted Kennedy's death will "inspire newfound unity on health care reform," "the answer seems to be no." But the video Karl aired to support his claim was from an August 25 event that ...

• WSJ ignores administration's plan to clos ...

  Arguing that President Obama "needs a believable business plan" for the deficit, Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel falsely claimed that the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) "has been told to move the tax burden around, not to raise more money." In fact, in a ...

• Another McCaughey backtrack: How many mo ...

  Serial misinformer Betsy McCaughey again backtracked on a false claim she made about health care reform, now writing in The Wall Street Journal that White House adviser Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel believes reform must include "redefining" the Hippocratic Oath; in May, Media Matters for America noted M ...

• Hannity falsely claims health bill doesn't have " ...

  Purporting to quote from a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, Sean Hannity falsely claimed that the health care reform bill "does not contain any restrictions on non-citizens whether legally or illegally present" and that there is "proof that illegal immigrants could very well be cove ...

• Radio hosts use Kennedy's death to fearmonger on ...

  Conservative radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Tom Marr have used Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's death to attack health care reform, baselessly suggesting that if reform passes, elderly cancer patients -- like Kennedy was -- will be "denied" treatments or their treatments will be "rationed." Limbaugh cla ...

Global Research.ca

• World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few

  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.

• Colonialism reclaiming Africa?

  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.

• Prediction: More than 300 bank failures in America

  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.

• US stops issuing visas in Honduras

  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.

• Chavez threatens Colombia break

  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.

TPM Cafe

• Wife of Brandeis Pres Intervenes On Tenure for Pal ...

  This comes from Richard Silverstein out in Seattle and is pretty incredible. I know that Shulamit Reinharz, the Brandeis First Lady, has tried to squelch debate on the Middle East before but I thought she confined her neocon/McCarthyist efforts to... Sponsored Topics: Middle East - Brandeis Univ ...

• Palestinians and Israelis reclaiming a village's m ...

  I just got the latest mailing from the great Israeli organization Zochrot, about a tour they organized last Saturday to the ruins of the Palestinian village al-Damun. This report is written is such a vivid and humanistic way, it really... Sponsored Topics: Palestinian people - Middle East ...

• My Mom's Loving Relationship With Her Friend, Tedd ...

  One day when I was working at the Senate my parents came to Washington on one of their rare visits. I met them in the cafeteria. We had lunch. Then we headed to the Senate subway to ride it back... Sponsored Topics: Ted Kennedy - Washington - Senate - Australian Senate - United States

• Questions for Senator Grassley

  1. Senator, The Messenger of Fort Dodge, IA reports that a World War II veteran named Tom Eisenhower said at your Monday town meeting: The president of the United States, that's who you should be concerned about. Because he's... Sponsored Topics: World War II - United States - History - Twentiet ...

• Two Lions: When Ted Kennedy Privately Honored Yit ...

  It is a small part of his great legacy but it should not go unmentioned that Ted Kennedy was one of the few senators who rarely, if ever, yielded to the pressure to join the Israel-is-always-right caucus. The mindless jingoism... Sponsored Topics: Yitzhak Rabin - Israel - Middle East - Ted Kenne ...

TruthOut

• Files Prove Pentagon is Profiling Reporters

  Washington - Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters' coverage is being graded as "positive," "neutral" or "negative." read mo ...

• Promises, Promises: Early Katrina Praise for Obama

  Washington - As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to right the wrongs he said bogged down efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Seven months into the job, he's earning high praise from some unlikely places. Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., says Obama's team has br ...

• McCain Speaks With Angry Crowd at Arizona Town Hal ...

  Phoenix - Sen. John McCain met with an angry crowd at a town-hall meeting about health care reform Wednesday, sometimes having to fight to talk and telling one woman who wouldn't stop yelling that she had to leave. The Arizona senator hadn't yet opened up the meeting at McCain's central Pho ...

• Delay Further Muddies Confused Afghan Poll Picture

  Kabul - Afghan officials said on Thursday they had delayed releasing further results from the nation's disputed presidential poll, adding further confusion to a contest which appears headed for a second round. Votes from about 17 percent of 27,000 polling stations have been counted so far, ...

• Memos: CIA Pushed Limits on Sleep Deprivation

  Handcuffs hang inside the maximum-security Camp Delta, at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. (Photo: Mark Wilson / Getty) read more

The Heathlander

• The “British method”

  Following a political campaign by the BNP, a Muslim man was abducted from his home in Essex and threatened at knifepoint to stop organising weekly prayer sessions at the community centre. Asked to response, local BNP councillor Pat Richardson denied the BNP was behind the attack, explaining: “Fire ...

• ‘Israel’s Terror Inside’

  Latest mini-doc from Max Blumenthal, via lenin: As Noam Chomsky has observed, and as this video makes clear, ‘those who call themselves “supporters of Israel” are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction’. Posted in Israeli / Palestinian, Videos ...

• A culture of fear

  Pankaj Mishra dissects the ‘culture of fear’ being manufactured by a recent spate of books and articles warning of an impending ‘Eurabia’: ‘Ordinary Muslims in Europe, who suffer from the demoralisation caused by living as perennial objects of suspicion and contempt, are far from thinking ...

• Fighting the fash

  Anti-fascist activists successfully confronted the BNP’s ‘Red, White and Blue’ hatefest [.pdf] (see also this Channel 4 report) in Codnor yesterday: One of the favourite chants of the day was reportedly: “We are black, white, Asian and we’re Jew / And they’re many, many more of us than ...

• Silencing civil society

  Former Israeli military commander Efran Efrati recently testified to the BBC that Palestinian children are ‘routinely ill-treated’ by Israeli soldiers: “You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he’s really shaking… Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the ci ...

Water - AlterNet

• Mining's Destructive Legacy on Waterways

  Scientists are now beginning to see that mining's most lasting damage may be the massive amounts of debris dumped into valley streams.

• The CA Legislature Unveiled 5 New Water Bills -- A ...

  I would urge that California's water warriors hold their opinions until they actually read and digest these bills.

• Vitaminwater's Empty Calories Are at the Heart of ...

  Vitaminwater tells its customers to "hydrate responsibly." That means not drinking 125-calorie sugar rushes like ... Vitaminwater.

• Why Corporations, Emerging Powers and Petro-States ...

  In the past six months, big players in the global economy have grabbed 50 million acres of arable land, from Africa to Southeast Asia.

• Goodbye Pools, Lawns and a Whole Lot More: Why Lif ...

  Water in the very near future will be neither cheap nor plentiful, and much of the Southwest is destined for real trouble.

TruthHugger

• Who Will Carry The Kennedy Torch? Op Ed

  The passing of Ted Kennedy may have dealt a blow to progressive humanitarian warriors. The Senate is missing the most effective voice for the disenfranchised. From his perch atop the mountain of comfort built by his family, Ted Kennedy used his position to battle legislative discrepancies that ...

• Texas Progressive Alliance – August 24, 2009

  School is starting, and the Texas Progressive Alliance is prepared as always to ace the test. Here is this week’s roundup of blog highlights. From TXsharon: Woo Hoo! EPA testing has now confirmed wells are contaminated “with various substances connected with gas drilling”–proof that h ...

• Bi-Polar America – Who is Worthy of a Healthy Li ...

  The rationing of health care is already a fact of life. The new reform will remove some of that rationing and make health care a right instead of a privilege. Bi-Polar America - I am worthy, You are not. Jesus was a socialist.

• Texas Progressive Alliance – August 17, 2009

  It’s time for preseason football games, but the Texas Progressive Alliance is always in midseason form. Here are this week’s blog highlights. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why we put up with temper tantrums and intimidation from the far right? Everyone should have their say in our d ...

• Without Health Options – Where Is Your Voice? Op ...

  Who needs health care

Dandelion Salad - Featured Writers' Posts

• International People's Declaration of Peace by Cin ...

  by Cindy Sheehan Featured Writer Dandelion Salad Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog Cindy Sheehan’s Soap

• An Interview With Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Part On ...

  by Andy Worthington Featured Writer Dandelion Salad www.andyworthington.co.uk 27 Aug. 2009 Col. La

• Cindy Sheehan Martha's Vineyard Press Conference

  Cindy Sheehan Featured Writer Dandelion Salad Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox

• The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle b ...

  By Gary Corseri Featured Writer Dandelion Salad July 23, 2009 Welcome to the Tipping Point! The En

• American Economy: The Hazards of Recovery by Josh ...

  by Josh Sidman Dandelion Salad Featured Writer Josh’s Blog Post August 24, 2009 Capitalism Orig

Unexplained Mysteries

• Creating dinosaurs from chickens

  Canadian palaeontologist Hans Larsson believes that he can manipulate the embryos of chickens in order to create a dinosaur, research that could o...

• Israeli city to be sued over mermaid ?

  An organisation in America devoted to defending the rights of mermaids is thought to be suing the Israeli city that earlier this month offered a $...

• Space probes team up in hunt for moon water

  US and Indian space probes are joining forces in orbit around the moon to find evidence of water ice which can be identified by the way radar echo...

• Loch Ness Monster sighted on Google Earth

  A security guard believes he has spotted the Loch Ness Monster on a Google Earth satellite photo which shows an anomalous object in the water. Res...

• Landing sites on Europa identified

  Scientists have been examining the images returned by the Galileo spacecraft in an attempt to identify potential sites to land a spacecraft on Jup...

Grassroots

• Building a Movement, Haitian Style

  pigs.jpg I spent the better part of last week crisscrossing Haiti’s arid Northwest with Grassroots International’s partner the National Congress of the Peasant’s Movement of Papay (MPNKP). MPNKP is best known to our allies and friends fo ...

• Resilient Hondurans Lead The Way To Protect Democr ...

  IMG00292.jpg Today, thousands of people will fill the streets of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. They are students, housekeepers, children and farmers from different parts of country—many of whom walked 10-12 miles a day to get to the ...

• Yes, We Can - But Will We Join Our Neighbors to Re ...

  More than a month after the military coup in the Central American country of Honduras (for which the term “banana republic” was originally coined due to the overwhelming influence of U.S. fruit corporations in that country), the junta is still in power and shows little real sign of budging. re ...

• They Are Afraid of Us, Because We are Not Afraid o ...

  Tom Loudon from our ally the Alliance for Responsible Trade, which is a member of the Hemispheric Social Alliance (a Grassroots International grantee) is currently in Honduras as part of an international human rights monitoring delegation. Today, August 11th, the Global Day of Action for Honduras, h ...

• On the Global Day of Action for Honduras, Donate y ...

  Want to do something simple to help support Honduran democracy and keep the crisis in the public eye? Donate your status! It’s free, easy, and can make a huge impact. Right now, the corporate news media is mostly silent about what’s happening on the ground in Honduras and the role of US polic ...

Climate

• August 27, 2009

  African Leaders Consider $67 Billion-a-Year Climate Plan (Bloomberg) African leaders meeting in Libya next week will consider a plan to ask industrialized nations to pay developing countries $67 billion a year as part of a common negotiating position for climate talks in Copenhagen. Coal India ...

• August 27, 2009

  African Leaders Consider $67 Billion-a-Year Climate Plan (Bloomberg) African leaders meeting in Libya next week will consider a plan to ask industrialized nations to pay developing countries $67 billion a year as part of a common negotiating position for climate talks in Copenhagen. Coal India ...

• August 26, 2009

  US Budget Update Stands Pat on CO2 Permit Auction (Reuters) The White House budget update released yesterday still reflects the Obama administration's plan to combat global warming by auctioning all permits to emit greenhouse gases even though Congress plans to give away a large part to industry. ...

• August 25, 2009

  Chinese Legislators Deliberate Climate Change Resolution (Xinhua) China's top legislature is deliberating a draft resolution on climate change that says China will firmly "maintain the right to development” and developed nations should "support developing countries with funds and technology tra ...

• August 24, 2009

  China Nears Climate-Change Deal Over Fuel Efficiency (Bloomberg) While China and India won’t support a treaty that caps their greenhouse gas emissions, they’ll probably agree to steps such as improving automobile fuel economy, raising the efficiency of power plants and installing wind turbi ...

TomDispatch

• Tomgram: The Next War, On-Screen and Off

  [ Note for TomDispatch readers: We're back! Refreshed and ready for action, but still on a somewhat relaxed schedule until after Labor Day. The next piece will be posted Sunday night. Tom ] G.I. Joe, Post-American Hero The Long, Slow Death of American Triumphalism By Tom Engelhardt The Pre ...

• Tomgram: Withdrawing by Bike from Iraq

  [ Note for TomDispatch Readers: So it's sayonara for a couple of weeks. I'm taking my usual August break. TomDispatch will return sometime the week of August 24th, but will be on a limited posting schedule through Labor Day. Let me take this opportunity once again to thank those of you who hav ...

• Tomgram: Mark Engler, Protesting at Climate Groun ...

  We're so past the Roman Empire by now that it's probably time to update the phrase "fiddling while Rome burns." What about, for instance, "writing fake letters ostensibly from real non-profit groups to weaken a climate-change bill while the planet burns"? It's true. According to the New York Ti ...

• Tomgram: Jamail and Lazare, Lost in Military Limb ...

  [ Note for TomDispatch Readers: In Chalmers Johnson's recent piece, "Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire," the mission of the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) was mischaracterized. It has now been corrected at the piece. ] It's not exactly a secret that the U.S. Army and the U.S. M ...

• Tomgram: John Feffer, Their Martyrs and Our Heroe ...

  The way you imagine someone engaged in a suicide attack depends, not surprisingly, on which end of the attack you happen to be on -- in cultural, if not literal terms. In American films and pop culture, there were few acts more inexplicable or malevolent in the years of my childhood than those of ...

Smirking Chimp

• The Guns of August

  INDIANAPOLIS--No wonder President Obama won't stand up for us. He won't even defend his personal safety! Two weeks ago, a right-wing man protested outside the president's healthcare meeting in New Hampshire wearing a gun strapped to his leg. Lest we miss his point, he carried a sign that called for ...

• Living In a Culture of Delusion Leads to Denial, I ...

  What do we have a right to know? In this web-based age, where we can Google almost everything, you’d think we would be better informed than we are. We have Freedom of Information acts and a President who has promised transparency, offering some details on what he’s doing on an easy to access web ...

• Death Care

  Years ago, during the Republican effort to eliminate the estate tax, which is paid primarily by the heirs of the wealthy, the GOP linguistic strategist and pollster Frank Luntz pushed the idea that the Republicans should refer to it as a "death tax." In a Los Angeles Times opinion column where Luntz ...

• The Scapegoat's Apology: Why did the chain of comm ...

  I don't begrudge William Calley his remorse about My Lai, but I'm hesitant to acknowledge his apology for it. If you steal $10 from your mother, you need to apologize. If, as you carry out orders, you lead a raid on a village that slaughters 500 or more defenseless people, something of a higher magn ...

• The Robber Barons Are Back

  Actually, they've never left. The predatory capitalists who stole big chunks of this country at the end of the 19th and early 20th Century were given the moniker "robber barons" and the name stuck. In railroads, they were represented by such sharks as Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkin ...

Ten Percent

• Killing Fields of Sri Lanka

  Channel Four report- Link to unedited clip in 3GP format -Warning, shows the execution of naked bound prisoners by military personnel- A video clip received from Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) evidences the way extra-judicial killings are executed in the island. The video captured in ...

• Is The Obama Administration Victimising A Nobel Pe ...

  Via FreeGaza- After Downing Street, by Ann Wright former US diplomat:- Less than a month ago, in late July, 2009, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire (http://www.peacepeople.com/) was travelling from Dublin, Ireland to Albuquerque, New Mexico to meet Peace Laureate Jody Williams to participate in p ...

• Selection By Occupier

  Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (albeit funded by both US & NATO govts) has reports of systematic fraud, the EU are more upbeat, try to be surprised. The one candidate Ramazan Bashardost, with some real credentials in representing the Afghan people against powerful and corrupt elite ...

• Friday! The Peter Serafinowicz Show

  This is a… sort of a…. best of taster, help get The Peter Serafinowicz Show released, details @ peterserafinowicz.com

• Afghan MP Malalai Joya on the Elections

  BBC Radio 4 from last week- And a short interview- Were you prepared for the consequences of the speeches you made against the government? In parliament, they couldn’t tolerate me because I told the truth. They turned off my microphone so I couldn’t talk, they insulted and threatened me. There ...

Paul Krugman

• A further note on debt and deficits

  Yes, it's fair to blame Bush for debt incurred on his watch.

• A note on the Bush fiscal legacy

  The irresponsibility of the Bush years has left us poorly positioned to deal with the current crisis.

• All out of shrill

  I'm having trouble mustering a sense of shock over the health care lies and distortions, because it's been that way for a long time.

• Housing prices

  Even if the big bust is over, that doesn't mean we'll see a rebound; at best, this is the new normal. 2005 isn't coming back.

• Ted Kennedy

  Now he's remembered as a great man. The thing is, he didn't change -- he always was.

No Quarter

• Shattered Trust

  Have you ever lost trust in someone close to you? (I think we all have.) Then you know that when trust is gone, respect goes with it. And when respect is gone, everything else that was good about that relationship fades. You and I do trust more than we realize. In fact, [...]

• WPost’s Ignatius Forgives the CIA Again and Agai ...

  Editor: This op-ed was first published Aug. 25th at The Public Record, and is reprinted with the express permission of Mel Goodman. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius simply cannot get off the wheel he spins for the Central Intelligence Agency. Only two days after the release of the 2004 CIA s ...

• Finally, Someone Is Talking Some Common Sense

  There has been lots of talk recently about the Health Care Bill, what it contains, how it will be run, and who it will cover. Many folks claim that since the government does such a bang-up job with Medicare, it should be no problem for them to pick up millions and millions more people [...]

• One Way NOT to Save Money During Hard Times

  Most of us see companion animals as our kids, but with a lot more hair. And, as you have probably noticed, we here at No Quarter are animal lovers. And, as times get tougher, we often find ourselves getting more creative with taking care of needs. After all, “necessity is the mother [...]

• Obama’s Summer of Wee Wee

  The author of this WSJ article, Foud Ajami has a more elegant title: Obama’s Summer of Discontent which I recommend for a full read but I will use a couple of thoughts and ideas from the article for my own contemplation. American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by whic ...

Environmental Graffiti

• Crazy Things People Do With Roller Coasters
• La Tomatina 2009: Pictures from the World’s Larg ...
• Rare Photographs of Now Extinct Beasts
• The Finger Lakes
• Lighthouses Vs Waves

Foreign Policy in Focus

• The Iranian Opposition's Second Life

  Protests continue in a virtual world where security police and censors are unable to tread.

• Poems Against the Regime

  Three Iranian-American poets write about protests, images, and a fallen demonstrator.

• The European Loser

  Bosnian artist Damir Niksic specializes in bringing excluded voices into the art world.

• Afghanistan: War Trumps Elections

  The military won't defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban, writes Frida Berrigan. Nor will elections in an occupied country solve this problem.

• UN Reform: Don't Hold Your Breath

  Almost all of the proposals to reform the UN are worse than the situation they purport to remedy.

Therapy News

• The Deafening Sound of Silence

  A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Sarah Jenkins, MC, LPC We are often thinking, for it is rare that we allow the mind to become silent. But, it is in the spaces in between our thoughts that seem to elude us. When our systems are in need of that grace, that time of “nothingness,” we ju ...

• Montana Introduces Veteran-to-Veteran Mental Healt ...

  A GoodTherapy.org News Headline In many parts of the nation, veterans of wars long since concluded as well as conflicts still being carried out overseas often face difficulty in locating affordable and relevant mental health services. In areas of low population density, such as Montana, this problem ...

• Researcher Explores Modern Society’s Impact on S ...

  A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Sharing is one of the most basic facets of human interaction, both on a personal and familial level and in terms of working with the rest of the world. Interested in the ways in which certain facets of modern society may be impacting the use and prevalence of sharing, ...

• Kenya Holds Conference to Expand Mental Health Ser ...

  A GoodTherapy.org News Summary Kenya may not be the first place that comes to mind when considering the psychology hot spots of the world. But a growing community of mental health care professionals in the country is beginning to reap the rewards of concentrated efforts and inspiring diligence as a ...

• Study Finds Confidence in Restraint May Indicate R ...

  A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Temptations, in myriad different forms, are available everywhere, often in copious amounts. To some people, temptation may take the form of a cigarette or stiff drink, while to others, a sweet snack or attractive person may represent the ultimate temptation. Most peop ...

Mountaintop Removal

• Tree-sitters staying put in third day of mine prot ...

  MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- For Laura Steepleton, the worst part of being 80 feet up a tree is trying to relieve herself in a harness. Fellow mountaintop removal mining protester Nick Stocks doesnt like the bugs -- or the heavy-equipment horns that blare throu...

• Tree-sitters staying put in Day 3 of mine protest ...

  MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- For Laura Steepleton, the worst part of being 80 feet up a tree is trying to relieve herself in a harness. Fellow mountaintop removal mining protester Nick Stocks doesnt like the bugs -- or the heavy-equipment horns that blare through ...

• Tree-sitters staying put in Day 3 of mine protest ...

  MORGANTOWN, W.VA. — Mountaintop removal mining protester Laura Steepleton says the worst part of being 80 feet up a tree is trying to use the bathroom in a harness.

• U.S. Supreme Court asked to consider mining appeal ...

  CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Several environmental groups are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether the Army Corps of Engineers is properly issuing fill permits for mountaintop removal mines.Thursdays filing asks the nations highest court to overt...

• Tree-sitters staying put in Day 3 of mine protest ...

  Associated Press - August 27, 2009 3:15 PM ET MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) - Mountaintop removal mining protester Laura Steepleton says the worst part of being 80 feet up a tree is trying to use the...

Memeorandum

• Markey: Medicare will take hit (Robert Moore/Color ...

  Robert Moore / Coloradoan Online : Markey: Medicare will take hit — Some people, including Medicare recipients, will have to give up some current benefits to truly reform the nation's health-care system, Rep. Betsy Markey told a gathering of constituents in Fort Collins on Wednesday. — ...

• ABC, NBC Won't Air Ad Critical of Obama's Health C ...

  Joshua Rhett Miller / Fox News : ABC, NBC Won't Air Ad Critical of Obama's Health Care Plan — The refusal by ABC and NBC to run a national ad critical of President Obama's health care reform plan is raising questions from the group behind the spot — particularly in light of ABC's health c ...

• The Onion Wins The Internet. (Adam Serwer/American ...

  Adam Serwer / American Prospect : The Onion Wins The Internet. — First, there was the article on the “afterbirthers” demanding to see Obama's placenta. Now, we have an Onion segment discussing whether or not using a minotaur to gore detainees is, in fact, torture. Obviously there ar ...

• Obama Targets Medicare Advantage (Karl Rove/Wall S ...

  Karl Rove / Wall Street Journal : Obama Targets Medicare Advantage — Seniors would lose with health ‘reform,’ and seniors vote. — Printer — Friendly — President Barack Obama was wise to vacation this week on Martha's Vineyard. Not because it's one of the few places i ...

• Steele Confused, Overwhelmed By NPR Interview: 'No ...

  Amanda Terkel / Think Progress : Steele Confused, Overwhelmed By NPR Interview: 'Now Wait A Minute. Hold up. ... You're Trying To Be Cute.' — In an interview with Michael Steele, NPR's Steve Inskeep repeatedly asked the RNC chairman to explain why Republicans keep defending Medicare a ...

Energy & Environment News

• More Sun for Less: Solar Panels Drop in Price

  More factories that make the material used in solar panels have opened, and the global demand for them has fallen.

• Chinese Solar Firm Revises Price Remark

  At Suntech Power Holdings, a misstatement on selling below “marginal cost” in the United States.

• Plant to Cut Production of Toxic Chemical

  Owners of a West Virginia chemical plant, where two workers were killed in an explosion last year, said they would cut production of poisonous chemical.

• Nuclear Regulators Urge High-Tech Fire Detection

  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants plants to shift from human fire detection to high-tech tools.

• Australia Clears Way for $41 Billion China Gas Dea ...

  Environment Minister Peter Garrett said Chevron had agreed to meet conditions set for the development of the Gorgon natural gas field.

5+ quakes - 7 days

• M 5.4, east of the Kuril Islands

  Thursday, August 27, 2009 20:10:31 UTC Friday, August 28, 2009 06:10:31 AM at epicenter Depth : 2.60 km (1.62 mi)

• M 5.1, Kuril Islands

  Saturday, August 22, 2009 13:18:35 UTC Sunday, August 23, 2009 01:18:35 AM at epicenter Depth : 169.40 km (105.26 mi)

• M 5.2, near the coast of northern Peru

  Thursday, August 27, 2009 14:56:38 UTC Thursday, August 27, 2009 09:56:38 AM at epicenter Depth : 9.70 km (6.03 mi)

• M 5.0, off the east coast of the North Island of N ...

  Friday, August 21, 2009 17:24:25 UTC Saturday, August 22, 2009 05:24:25 AM at epicenter Depth : 52.20 km (32.44 mi)

• M 5.7, southeast of the Loyalty Islands

  Friday, August 21, 2009 11:15:46 UTC Friday, August 21, 2009 10:15:46 PM at epicenter Depth : 64.60 km (40.14 mi)

China Dialogue

• Do we know change when we see it?

  An agreement between the US and China on climate change and clean energy may be more significant than its detractors initially supposed, write Banning Garrett and Jonathan Adams. Did the United States and China recently take a game-changing step on climate change and clean energy? Quite possibly so. ...

• Building regional cooperation

  Can people across the Himalayan region mobilise to build a common, collaborative response to the impacts of climate change? Isabel Hilton interviews Mohan Munasinghe, vice chairman of the IPCC. Mohan Munasinghe is a Sri Lankan physicist and the vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ...

• Glaciers and guesswork

  The “third pole” is hugely vulnerable to the effects of glacier retreat -- but the science is scarce. Isabel Hilton speaks with Andreas Schild, a specialist in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region. Andreas Schild is director general of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development ( IC ...

• Biofuels: learning from Obama

  The US president’s directive on advanced biofuels – and its implementation by government departments – sends an important message to China’s energy planners, write Zhang Jinyuan and Xu Dingming. [Produced in association with Rutgers Climate and Social Policy Initiative ] On May 5, 2009, ...

• The dangers of boosting consumption

  China’s government and the domestic market are calling for greater spending. Economic growth may be maintained, writes Huo Weiya, but US-style living may mean we need another two Earths. To maintain an 8% economic-growth target through the current global financial crisis, the Chinese government ha ...

AlterNet Top Stories

• The Fast Food Industry's 7 Most Heinous Concoction ...

  Some of America’s favorite chains have concocted some thoroughly repellent dishes that make the Double Quarter Pounder look like a celery stick.

• Reverse Aging: Easier Than You Think

  A landmark experiment suggests reverse aging needn't be relegated to the realm of science fiction.

• Ted Kennedy: The Real Deal

  In a political world dominated by bipartisan cynicism, there are few touchstones of integrity for the common folk -- Kennedy was one of them.

• Sarah Palin's Facebook 'Friends' Celebrate Ted Ken ...

  One commenter: "Now if we could just talk God into taking Arlin Spector, Harry Reid,and Nancy Pelosi America would be Eutopia!"

• This Just In: College Will Make You an Atheist

  A recent study finds that certain majors are likely to make students less religious. Why is this such a big deal?

Threat Level

• Accused TJX Hacker Expected to Finalize Plea Deal ...

  An attorney for accused TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez says his client is expected to finalize a plea agreement with authorities in New York and Massachusetts by this Friday, according to the Associated Press. “My client is extremely remorseful as to what has happened,” said Rene Palomino, Jr., who ...

• Conficker Botnet Messes With Reporters’ Heads By ...

  Remember the Conficker botnet? It’s still out there, lurking, waiting, dreaming like Cthulhu, as mysterious and deadly as it was last spring when the New York Times called it an “unthinkable disaster” in the making, and 60 Minutes warned the entire internet could be disrupted. Now, five month ...

• Shareholders Approve Pirate Bay Purchase

  As expected, the Pirate Bay moved a step closer Thursday to being sold to a Swedish-based software concern that hopes to turn the world’s notorious BitTorrent tracker into a legitimate, pay-to-play site. Global Gaming Factory shareholders approved the $8.5 million transaction Thursday, four months ...

• Hollywood, Big Software and Coal Miners Pros at Ti ...

  Money in politics is an old story. But armed with a new tool that shows just how closely timed votes and contributions are, Threat Level uncovered some interesting connections between high tech industries, lawmakers and legislation that became the law of the land. MAPLight.org’s new Money Near ...

• Court’s Steroid Ruling Pumps Up Computer Privacy

  A divided 11-judge federal appeals court panel has dramatically narrowed the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age, ruling Wednesday that federal prosecutors went too far when they seized 104 professional baseball players’ drug results when they had a warrant for just 10. The ...

Reuters - Most Popular Articles

• Want the world's best wages? Move to Switzerland

  SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) - It pays to work in Switzerland: employees in Zurich and Geneva have the highest net wages in the world, a study by banking group UBS shows, while those in India's Mumbai take home the lowest.

• Kidnapped California girl resurfaces 18 years late ...

  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A woman who was kidnapped in 1991 at the age of 11 turned up at a California police station on Wednesday, authorities said, and a couple accused of abducting her has reportedly been arrested.

• Storm Danny in Atlantic, wave could strengthen: NH ...

  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Danny, off the coast of North Carolina on Thursday, was expected to slowly become the season's second hurricane during the next couple of days, while a tropical wave could strengthen into a cyclone, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

• British teen becomes youngest to sail world solo

  LONDON (Reuters) - A 17-year-old Briton became the youngest person to sail round the globe single-handed on Thursday after nine months at sea.

• EXCLUSIVE: AIG CEO defends holiday, slams "lynch m ...

  DUBROVNIK, Croatia (Reuters) - Wearing flip-flops, khaki shorts and a green polo shirt, the new chief executive of bailed-out insurer American International Group Inc says he's getting a lot of work done from his massive villa overlooking the Adriatic.

Godspace

• Mothering as a Spiritual Practice

  Another beautiful day in Seattle and Tom and I are getting ready for a few days vacation up on Mayne Island, one of the Canadian gulf islands. Â The weather is supposed to be good and I am really looking forward to a few days off – hoping that the blackberries and apples are ready like [...]

• The Eight Weirdest Ways to Go Green

  I just could not resist this article in Alternet and thought that even if you are not interested in green living that you might enjoy it. From the solar-powered bikini that can charge your iPod to the benefits of eating free range snails, here’s few things you may not have thought of yet. Â Read ...

• Colouring as a Spiritual Practice

  Greets from a cool and overcast Seattle. Â My beans are growing, tomatoes ripening and squash proliferating. Â Last night I was furiously processing some of the produce before Tom and I head out of town tomorrow afternoon for a few days – made 2 Hunza pies and a cheesy tomato bake to take with ...

• Cloister Talks – Best Read of the Summer

  The summer is almost over and I have been intending to write a review on Jon Sweeney’s Cloister Talks: Learning From My friends the Monks, for most of it but as you know my summer has not gone as I intended so I am just getting around to it. In this delightful book Sweeney relates some [...]

• Re-establishing Spiritual Practices in a New Place

  This morning I have decided to post two articles in the What is a Spiritual Practice Series. The first is by my good friend Eliacin Rosario Cruz who is obviously having a little fun with his post. He has entitled it Being Quiet as a Spiritual Practice. The second is by Ed Cyzewski author of [... ...

Equality Trust

• Shattering the myth of equality

  An article by Boris Frankel in Melbourne's newspaper 'The Age'.

• Polly Toynbee: This bold equality push is just wha ...

  Polly Toynbee writing about the new Equality Bill today's Guardian. "Harriet Harman's bill is a frank recognition of the role of class in Britain. A decade earlier, it might have had a real impact..."

• Seumas Milne: This naked display of class egotism ...

  "It's more than a week since Alistair Darling's budget, but the howls of protest haven't stopped for a day ever since. That's not been the public sector employees facing a harsh squeeze on jobs and pay who've been squealing, or the million workers expected to join the dole queues in the next year, ...

• Bob Holman on social breakdown

  Bob Holman writes in the Glasgow Herald about the evidence in The Spirit Level.

• Inequality is the root of our unhappiness

  Former director of the Institute of Education Peter Mortimore, writing in today's Education Guardian.

IntelNews

• News you may have missed #0082

  The spy who prayed. Shadowy Turkish group used journalists as spies. CIA sacked Baghdad station chief after deaths.

• French spy escapes Somali captors, allegedly killi ...

  One of two French intelligence agents arrested by a Somali militia in July has escaped, after allegedly killing three of his captors.

• CIA loses turf war as new US interrogation unit is ...

  The CIA appears to have been stripped of its senior role in America’s post-9/11 interrogation program, as the Obama Administration announced this week the creation of a new interrogation unit.

• News you may have missed #0081

  Russians arrest "spies" at air show. Interview with Israeli intelligence minister. Karadzic asks for French intelligence documents.

• News you may have missed #0080

  UN human rights commissioner rejects immunity in CIA abuse cases. Iran accuses popular reformist of links to British intelligence. Sri Lankan army chief’s cook was LTTE spy.

PsyBlog

• The Acceptance Prophesy: How You Control Who Likes ...

  · Is interpersonal attraction a self-fulfilling prophesy? The mystical-sounding 'acceptance prophesy' is simply this: when we think other people are going to like us, we behave more warmly towards them and consequently they like us more. When we think other people aren't going to like us, we beha ...

• Brainstorming Reloaded

  · Why brainstorming is ineffective and how to fix it. Brainstorming was once thought a fantastic way for groups to generate new ideas. Although not as fashionable as it once was, brainstorming is still frequently used in business and, often inadvertently, for all sorts of personal decisions; peop ...

• Consumer Psychology

  · How and why we consume and how our beliefs, ideas and senses influence consumption. Peter Drucker, the management consultant, famously argued that about 80% of all products and services fail or fall well short of targets within six months of launching. Clearly markets have little understanding ...

• Why Left to Right Punches Are More Aggressive, Pow ...

  Reading and writing from left to right is a skill so well-practised, so ingrained in language, that it's easy to ignore. Yet, according to some research, the direction in which language flows could have implications that spread into many other areas of our experience. Consider that people are often ...

• Persuasion: The Right-Ear Advantage

  If you want someone to comply with a random request for a cigarette, you should speak into their right ear, according to a new study by researchers in Italy. Marzoli & Tommasi (2009) had a female confederate visit a disco and approach 176 random people asking for a smoke. Clubbers were about twice ...

After Downing Street.org

• Ted Kennedy Speaking 3 Days After MLK Killed, 2 Mo ...

• Flushing Blackwater

  By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation Blackwater, the private mercenary company owned by Erik Prince, has been thrust back into the spotlight by a series of stunning revelations about its role in covert US programs. Since at least 2002, Blackwater has worked for the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan on "black ...

• I Demand We Stop Pampering These Terrorists

  By: John Caruso , A Tiny Revolution You may recall a Los Angeles Times article from February which reported that Obama planned to continue Bush's renditions program in largely-unchanged form: Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as ...

• Prosecuting Bush and Cheney Could Prevent Future C ...

  PROSECUTING BUSH AND CHENEY COULD PREVENT FUTURE CRIMES By Sherwood Ross Allowing today’s leaders to get away with war crimes will send a dangerous signal to future leaders that they can do the same. “The battle to impose criminal responsibility upon them (Bush, Cheney, etc.) is not for today ...

• International Tribunal Takes Up Case Of Innocent V ...

  International Tribunal Takes Up Case Of Innocent Victim Of CIA Extraordinary Rendition Program | Press Release Petition Filed By ACLU Seeking Justice For Kidnapping And Torture Of Khaled El-Masri Moves Forward NEW YORK - The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has accepted a petition ...

Grist - News

• Let’s (re)do school lunch

  It’s time to get active in the campaign to improve school lunches, says Kurt Michael Friese.

• Ruminations on the Obama era, with a side of spicy ...

• Cheap-chicken ad from KFC hides true cost of food; ...

• For a quick fix to school-lunch woes, pack an appe ...

• Stalking the wild leeks of spring

  What could improve a forest walk in early spring? Spotting a bunch of that delicious wild relative of the leek known as the ramp.

Popular Bookmarks on Del.icio.us

• Top 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems - Ne ...
• Diagrammr
• Playgrounder - The Buyers Guide for Kids and Paren ...
• Add zoom icon to images using CSS (and jQuery, of ...
• People of Walmart: a collection of all the creatur ...

Technorati - What's Hot in Blogs

• Shepherding a Lamb's Lost Legacy

  Though his later writings eventually eclipsed his early work, recent rereleases of Harold Lamb's pulp fiction are reviving an appreciation for his unique brand of historical fiction.

• What Happened to the Web Series?

  Two years ago, the Internet was aflutter with the potential of Web video. That exuberance has since dissipated. How the popular series "The Guild" stays afloat? Home mailing parties and payments in bagels.

• Does Health Care Cover Abortion?

  When it comes to the question of whether health care reform bills cover or provide taxpayer support for abortion, there are many shades of gray, writes Steven Waldman.

• Montfort hospital supports N.B. health fight

  The group taking the New Brunswick government to court over last year's health reforms is getting support from the Montfort Hospital, an Ontario institution that faced a similar fight a decade ago.

• Obama girls fly under the radar -- but how long wi ...

Time - Top Stories

• The Kennedy Legacy: Intimate Photos of the Family
• Subprime Lenders at the Head of the Line for Fede ...

  As the government spends heavily to fight home foreclosures, some of the biggest beneficiaries will be banks that created the subprime mortgages

• FDIC's Shrinking Insurance Fund: Cause for Worry?

  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which insures $4.8 trillion in bank deposits, reported today that its insurance fund was down to $10.4 billion at the end of June.

• London: Police Use Twitter at Climate-Change Prote ...

  With activists readying for a weeklong climate camp, or climate-change protest, in London, the police are turning to Twitter to prove they can do low-key monitoring

• Ted Kennedy's Quiet Catholic Faith

Washington Independent

• Who’s Wellstoning Who?

  This morning, our Minnesota colleague Paul Schmeltzer noted that a conservative attack line that the coverage of Ted Kennedy’s death would be a “Wellstone memorial on steroids” had “taken off, with pundits on Fox, MSNBC and conservative media piling on.” This afternoon, Ben Smith fi ...

• Curious Discrepancies in Reports on Sleep Deprivat ...

  On page 30 of the 2004 CIA inspector general report, the CIA’s interrogation guidelines provided for “standard techniques” of interrogation that include, among other things, “sleep deprivation not to exceed 72 hours.” Clearly the CIA must have told John Helgerson, the inspector gener ...

• Even More CIA Documents to Be Disclosed Monday

  The deluge continues. Word comes that in response to pending requests from the American Civil Liberties Union, another tranche of CIA documents about Bush-era interrogations and detentions could be released as early as Monday. That’s on top this week’s release of the 2004 CIA inspector general†...

• [UPDATED] Commission Inquiry Into Rendition May Ra ...

  Today’s news that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear the claims of kidnapping and torture filed against the United States by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Khaled El-Masri, an innocent German citizen and car salesman subjected to the Bush administration’s ex ...

• Torture Victim May Get His Day in (Inter-American) ...

  It’s not just Mohammed Jawad. In 2007, U.S. courts blocked Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped and tortured by the CIA in Afghanistan in a disastrous case of mistaken identity, from suing the government. The American Civil Liberties Union has kept his case alive, and has found a ne ...

CowBoss' Brain Food

• Sockeye Collapse: BC Indian Chiefs Accuse Canada's ...

  An Aborigine chief and Secretary-Treasurer of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs has stated his horror at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans ignorance to the full range of problems affecting salmon runs in British Columbia. Submitted by cowboss for the Cows to Business | Note-it! | Add a Comme ...

• Health care debate creates new diseases

  URGENT New Flash… Breaking News…The Center for Disease Control has identified a new strain of the Mad Cow Disease called Insane Donkey Virus running rampant among elected officials, Obama Administration personnel and high profile personalities. The CDC be Submitted by cowboss for the Cows to Offbe ...

• Coroners 'should test for CJD to monitor spread of ...

  Coroners are refusing to carry out post-mortem tests for an infection which causes the human form of BSE despite pleas that they could help monitor the spread of the disease, it was reported today. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-120 Submitted by cowboss for the Cows to Society & ...

• Food processors' spraying leaves west Michigan wel ...

  FENNVILLE -- John Dekker feels like he's camping out in his own home. He showers with bottled water and drags his laundry to a Laundromat. He can't sell his house without disclosing its glaring flaw -- his well is contaminated. Neighbor Kari Submitted by cowboss for the Cows to Business | ...

• Minister warned over 'UK Roswell'

  A former head of the armed forces told the defence secretary a UFO claim known as Britain's Roswell could be a "banana skin", newly released files show. In 1985 Lord Hill-Norton wrote to Michael Heseltine about the "Rendlesham incident" in 1980, when U Submitted by cowboss for the Cows to Offbeat

• IPS - Inter Press Services

• RIGHTS-MEXICO: Slow Progress Against Human Traffi ...

  MEXICO CITY, Aug 27 (IPS) - Despite progress in bringing Mexican law into compliance with the international treaty against human trafficking, little has been achieved so far in this country in terms of prosecutions and convictions of traffickers, protection of victims and prevention of this inc ...

• WATER-NAMIBIA: For What Does It Profit a Man...

  OKOMBAHE, Namibia, Aug 27 (IPS) - "Our profit so far is 5,000 Namibian dollars, divided by twenty people," reports Anna Nauses. Silence descends on the office of the Prosopis Project in Okombahe as all do the math. Sixteen months of hard labour felling water-thirsty trees along the Omaruru River ...

• ZIMBABWE: Women’s Rights Activists Lobby to ...

  HARARE, Aug 27 (IPS) - Zimbabwe’s latest constitutional reform process has generated strong interest among activists in strengthening protection for women's rights. The early signs are that the drafting of a new constitution will not prioritise correcting legal, social and economic discrimina ...

• ENERGY: Pipeline Sabotage Blows Image of Stable C ...

  POUCE COUPE, British Columbia, Aug 27 (IPS) - North America's largest natural gas corporation hopes a one-million-dollar bounty will take down the saboteur who is blowing up their pipelines in northern Canada.

• NICARAGUA: Literacy Goal Met – Further Educ ...

  MANAGUA, Aug 27 (IPS) - After an intense two-year literacy campaign, Nicaragua has managed to reduce the number of people who cannot read and write to below four percent of the adult population, from nearly 21 percent.

The Intelligence Daily

• Top CIA Officials Ordered Detainee Tortured Even T ...

• The Widening Gap In America's Two Tiered Society

• Screwing the Self Employed Out of Health Insurance

• Nouriel Roubini and the Future of the Stock Market

• U.S. Increasing Use of Private Contractors in War ...

My AntiWar

• Israeli Group Slams Facebook as Anti-Semitic
• US Military in Afghanistan Denies Rating Reporters
• US Moves Toward Formal Cut Off of Aid to Honduras
• Clinton Ponders Action Against Honduras
• Over 80 Pct of Pakistan’s War-Displaced Retu ..

• Rogue Government.com

• Facebook meets RFID in marketers' Dreams

  Technologists and marketers are getting excited at the prospect of tying individuals to retail items, through social networking and RFID tags.

• The media can't handle the truth; Media sheep fac ...

• 1,000 Banks to Fail In Next Two Years: Bank CEO

  The US banking system will lose some 1,000 institutions over the next two years, said John Kanas, whose private equity firm bought BankUnited of Florida in May.

• China Eyes Ban On Rare Metal Exports

• Rothschild Connection to Megrahi Release

  Now that the dust has settled, only somewhat and perhaps only for now, over the return of the Lockerbie bomber , we can see some things with a little more clarity -- but much remains murky in the extreme.

Innovation Canada

• i2eye with Palmiro Campagna

  Widely seen as Canada’s crowning technical achievement of the day, the Avro Arrow supersonic interceptor was scrapped after only five test planes were completed. Half a century later, aviation enthusiasts still mourn the loss and the Avro workers who left Canada to help realize NASA’s moon-rocke ...

• Testing ground

  Think of it as a case of lab life trying to imitate real life. From behind a two-way mirror, researchers observe and record medical staff trying to use intravenous drug pumps and other devices while being continuously interrupted by a Code Blue or other emergencies that could cause them to make mist ...

• Ocean view

  The winch at the rear of the ship slowly lowers a 13-tonne steel capsule about the size of three minivans into still water in early July. The shell, painted a garish yellow, is a trawl-resistant frame designed to deflect fishing nets. More important, once settled on the ocean floor, the capsule will ...

• Space reader

  (Article courtesy of the University of Windsor) Bill McConkey probably won’t be around to see the day when humans are finally able to travel tremendous stretches through outer space to distant planets such as Jupiter. When they do make that journey, however, they’ll owe a significant debt of gra ...

• Filling the glass

  Walkerton, Ont., North Battleford, Sask., and the Kashechewan First Nation Reserve, in Northern Ontario, have all become high-profile — and tragic — examples of what can go wrong when a community’s drinking water becomes contaminated. Surprisingly, they are not alone. At any given time, 1,700 ...

Signs of the times

• California woman kidnapped as child resurfaces 18 ...

  Placerville - Joyous, miraculous news that a little girl kidnapped nearly two decades ago was found alive gave way Thursday to the horrifying details of how police say she has lived all those years: Kept by a convicted rapist in his backyard as a sex slave and forced to bear two of his children. ...

• Dehumanized: When math and science rule the schoo ...

  Many years ago, my fiancée attempted to lend me a bit of respectability by introducing me to my would-be mother-in-law as a future Ph.D. in literature. From Columbia, I added, polishing the apple of my prospects. She wasn't buying it. "A doctor of philosophy," she said. "What're you going to do, op ...

• Digging up the Saudi past: some would rather not

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Much of the world knows Petra, the ancient ruin in modern-day Jordan that is celebrated in poetry as "the rose-red city, 'half as old as time,'" and which provided the climactic backdrop for "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." But far fewer know Madain Saleh, a similarly ...

• Sugar Consumption Limits Urged by Heart Associatio ...

  Sweet Surrender: Sugar Curbs Urged Most women should limit sugar intake to 100 calories, or six teaspoons, a day. Men should limit their consumption to 150 calories. That won't be easy. A 12-ounce can of cola has 130 calories, or eight teaspoons. The American Heart Association is taking aim at ...

• 'Fiery' meteor sighted in New Zealand

  A fiery meteor blazed a trail through the skies this morning, with sightings reported from Christchurch to Rotorua Zoe Battersby was out for an early walk along Jimmy Amers beach in Kaikoura at around 6.10am when she noticed a "very large meteor". "It was very bright - the size of a streetlight. I ...

Threat Level

• Accused TJX Hacker Expected to Finalize Plea Deal ...

  An attorney for accused TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez says his client is expected to finalize a plea agreement with authorities in New York and Massachusetts by this Friday, according to the Associated Press. “My client is extremely remorseful as to what has happened,” said Rene Palomino, Jr., who ...

• Conficker Botnet Messes With Reporters’ Heads By ...

  Remember the Conficker botnet? It’s still out there, lurking, waiting, dreaming like Cthulhu, as mysterious and deadly as it was last spring when the New York Times called it an “unthinkable disaster” in the making, and 60 Minutes warned the entire internet could be disrupted. Now, five month ...

• Shareholders Approve Pirate Bay Purchase

  As expected, the Pirate Bay moved a step closer Thursday to being sold to a Swedish-based software concern that hopes to turn the world’s notorious BitTorrent tracker into a legitimate, pay-to-play site. Global Gaming Factory shareholders approved the $8.5 million transaction Thursday, four months ...

• Hollywood, Big Software and Coal Miners Pros at Ti ...

  Money in politics is an old story. But armed with a new tool that shows just how closely timed votes and contributions are, Threat Level uncovered some interesting connections between high tech industries, lawmakers and legislation that became the law of the land. MAPLight.org’s new Money Near ...

• Court’s Steroid Ruling Pumps Up Computer Privacy

  A divided 11-judge federal appeals court panel has dramatically narrowed the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age, ruling Wednesday that federal prosecutors went too far when they seized 104 professional baseball players’ drug results when they had a warrant for just 10. The ...

PERRspectives : Blog

• America Wins When Democrats Go It Alone

  Back in January, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman presciently warned President Obama about the GOP's bad faith in negotiating the stimulus bill, announcing, "Look, Republicans are not going to come on board." Now Krugman's paper is reporting the White...

• CBS News Slams AARP, Promotes Right-Wing ASA Inste ...

  As its 2003 support for President Bush's overpriced, unfunded and deeply flawed Medicare prescription benefit showed, the AARP can make some strange political bedfellows. Buti in a segment Monday slamming the 40 million member organization over its role in the...

• Obama Falling Victim to Krugman's Law. Again.

  Following President Obama's lead, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Sunday announced that a public option is "not the essential element" of the administration's health insurance reform push. Sadly, that development seems to signal that, as with the...

• Right-Wing Rage: Recurring Symptom of a Preexistin ...

  There's nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to the frothing at the mouth right-wing rage over health care reform. But thanks to the 24/7 media's transformation of politics into just another form of entertainment, delusional Birthers, deceitful...

• Health Scare: When Politics is Entertainment

  "When politics is just another form of entertainment," I lamented in a presentation on the 2008 campaign last year, "the first thing that suffers is the truth." And so it is with the incendiary health care debate and so much...

Blackspot News Feed

• Files Prove Pentagon is Profiling Reporters

  Washington - Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters' coverage is being graded as "positive," "neutral" or "negative." read mo ...

• Promises, Promises: Early Katrina Praise for Obama

  Washington - As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to right the wrongs he said bogged down efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Seven months into the job, he's earning high praise from some unlikely places. Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., says Obama's team has bro ...

• McCain Speaks With Angry Crowd at Arizona Town Hal ...

  Phoenix - Sen. John McCain met with an angry crowd at a town-hall meeting about health care reform Wednesday, sometimes having to fight to talk and telling one woman who wouldn't stop yelling that she had to leave. The Arizona senator hadn't yet opened up the meeting at McCain's central Phoe ...

• Delay Further Muddies Confused Afghan Poll Picture

  Kabul - Afghan officials said on Thursday they had delayed releasing further results from the nation's disputed presidential poll, adding further confusion to a contest which appears headed for a second round. Votes from about 17 percent of 27,000 polling stations have been counted so far, m ...

• Town Hall Lunacy Includes Outraged Calls to 'Keep ...

  Some can't reconcile what they believe about the propaganda that is fed to them with their own positive experiences with public programs like Medicare.

Consortium News

• Lockerbie Doubts

  Lost in U.S. outrage over release of a Libyan convicted of the PanAm 103 bombing is the doubt about his guilt, Lisa Pease notes. August 21, 2009

• CIA: Osama Helped Bush in '04

  From the Archive: Osama bin Laden's pre-election video in 2004 was viewed at the CIA as a bid to boost George W. Bush. By Robert Parry

• Blackwater's Unwritten Death Contract

  President Bush's CIA farmed out assassination work to Blackwater mercs without regard to legal constraints, says Ray McGovern. August 20, 2009

• Tom DeLay Stomps Woodstock Nation

  Peaceful dreams of Woodstock lost out to the likes of GOP leader (and dance contestant) Tom DeLay, writes Michael Winship. August 20, 2009

• The Republican Ayatollahs

  Nine GOP senators protest an investigation of CIA torture with arguments like those of Iran's ayatollahs, says David Swanson. August 20, 2009

CounterPunch

• Doug and Andrea Peacock : Bearly Making It: How Ma ...
• Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada : Incapacitating the C ...
• Ray McGovern : Closing in on the Torturers
• Gideon Levy : The Last Refuge: Neve Gordon and the ...
• Shamus Cook : World Bankers Agree: the Recession i ...

Institute for Middle East Understanding

• Between political statements and reality on the gr ...

  This report provides the AIC's analysis of the Annapolis process 18 months after it took place. Through our analyses we can affirm that in spite of the peace conferences, the Roadmap, and speeches, the Israe ...

• Israel shuts down Bethlehem radio station (Ma'an ...

  Palestinian radio fixture Radio Bethlehem 2000 was shut down this week when Israeli forces seized their transmission equipment during a raid. An Israeli force of five patrols stormed Radio Bethlehem 2000's ...

• Abbas-Netanyahu meeting a possibility at UN sessio ...

  Hopes rose yesterday that the leaders of Israel and Palestine would meet for ground-breaking "talks about talks" as early as next month after Israel and the United States appeared to be edging towards a deal ...

• Israeli academics must pay price to end occupation ...

  Several days ago Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times. He explained why, after years of activity in the peace camp here, he has decided to ...

• The future of the roadmap (Ghassan Khatib, Bitter ...

  The three phases of the roadmap are strongly interrelated. It is the role of the members of the Quartet not only to support the two sides in fulfilling their obligations under the roadmap but also to judge t ...

Planetsave

• What’s In Your Bloodstream?

  A two-year-old Minnesota biomonitoring program has now confirmed that residents of suburbs east of the Twin Cities have perfluorochemicals (PFCs) in their blood, although government agencies stress that the levels are only slightly higher than those in the general population. Several landfill site ...

• New Shipping Rules Agreed To Protect The Antarctic

  The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has agreed new rules which ban the transportation and use of heavy grade oils by ships in the Antarctic Ocean. The change was agreed during the 2009 meeting of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee and is scheduled to come into force in 201 ...

• Fashionable Activism and Fundraising: I’m Tired ...

  Tell the world how you feel about our dirty coal addiction by wearing your message right on your arm: I’m Tired of Coal . Read more of this story »

• Minnesota Moose on the Run from Climate Change

  An expert advisory committee this week released recommendations on restoring Minnesota’s dwindling moose population, whose decline one expert said is related to gradual warming of the state’s climate. “The moose, of course, is not an animal that deals very well with heat,’’ pane ...

• Greenpeace Exposes Oil Industry’s Really Dirty F ...

  We can’t expect much from the oil industry, but Greenpeace’s newest finding is as ugly as it gets. Read more of this story »

Water Quality - WordPress

• Thirst

  Thirst (verb) to feel a need to drink to have a strong desire for something

• Harmful Pesticides Found in Drinking Water Through ...

  The Natural Resources Defense Council release a report today which finds evidence of the pesticide A

• Frontiers in Soil Science Research : Report of a W ...

  National Research Council http://tinyurl.com/m824gn Free with registration [Description] There has b

• Pesticides: Report Finds Inadequate EPA Regulation ...

  Report Finds Inadequate EPA Regulation of Pesticides in Water

• Syngenta in your ice cubes

  Atrazine, ever heard of it? It’s the widest used herbicide sprayed on corn products in this c

Public Citizen in Texas

• King Williams Parade Pics 038 [Flickr]

  Public Citizen Texas posted a photo:

• King Williams Parade Pics 036 [Flickr]

  Public Citizen Texas posted a photo:

• King Williams Parade Pics 058 [Flickr]

  Public Citizen Texas posted a photo:

• King Williams Parade Pics 049 [Flickr]

  Public Citizen Texas posted a photo:

• King Williams Parade Pics 047 [Flickr]

  Public Citizen Texas posted a photo:

Press TV

• Sufi Mohammad's sons arrested again

  Pakistani Police have detained the sons of banned Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) leader Maulana Sufi Mohammad soon after their release from a local jail.

• Castro: US aims to overthrow Chavez's government

  Fidel Castro has accused the US of seeking to overthrow Venezuela's government and to establish power through its future military bases in Colombia.

• Gaza rights group office attacked

  Unknown assailants have attacked the office of a human rights group in the Gaza Strip, incurring damage and stealing personal laptops, a statement says.

• In Turkey, train-excavator collision kills 5

  A passenger train crashes into a construction machine illegally crossing the tracks in northwestern Turkey killing five people and injuring 16 others.

• Pakistan court rejects Musharraf's trial

  Pakistan's Supreme Court has returned a constitutional petition seeking the trial of former president Pervez Musharraf for imposing the state of emergency in 2007.

Axis of Logic

• Capitalist Attacks on Tradition and Culture.

• The US War against Iraq: The Destruction of a Civi ...

• Pakistan: Interviewing Relief Workers Inside the I ...

• U.S.: Troy Davis must "prove his innocence" after ...

• Money is God, Greed is King and Corruption Runs th ...

They Gave Us a Republic

• Make the Eulogy a Declaration of War

  The wingnuts are hysterically screaming orders to Democrats not to "politicize" Senator Kennedy's death. Why? Because they are justifiably terrified of the power inherent in a eulogy to the nation's Greatest Modern Liberal. And who but the nation's greatest living orator to give a rafter-shaking, ...

• The Cub's First Roar

  For everyone younger than me, who has never heard a modern politician make a full-throated liberal call to arms, a gift from David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo: The brief post I did yesterday on Ted Kennedy's April 7, 1968 speech to the Alaska state Democratic convention didn't really do it justice. ...

• I learned a life-lesson today...Don't listen to Mi ...

  It wasn't voluntary. We leave the radio on in our room and listen to the BBC overnight, which segues into NPR's Morning Edition . I woke up to Steve Inskeep interviewing Michael Steele about healthcare reform, and the ton of drugs I took last night to get to sleep with this miserable effing virus ...

• Perverse and sickening

  I don't get stunned speechless very damned often., but that has been my fallback position since Monday when the IG report was released. It was bad enough to learn that our own SERE training guidelines, developed to assist our own forces to resist torture should they be captured, had been turned on ...

• "Fighting for Progress Without Shame or Obfuscatio ...

  Another wonderful tribute, with lessons for Democrats, this one from Digby: The Kennedys always pissed off the wingnuts to an absurd degree, and yet they never complained about it, even though they paid such a huge price for their public service. It's one of the things I like the most about them. SN ...

Care 2

• Empty Bottle's cat dies: Radley, left at the bar s ...

  Tuesday was last call for Radley, the black cat that had roamed the Empty Bottle on Western Avenue for 16 years. Radley developed a devoted following among clubgoers and musicians at the rock club. It was his home, and he'd stroll down the bar as if Submitted by Rafael Apollo Lido to Animals | ...

• Lights out for old 100-watt bulbs in EU next week

  Old-style 100-watt light bulbs will be banned in Europe's shops from next week in favour of new energy-saving models, but consumers groups on Wednesday gave the move a guarded welcome. Submitted by Michelle M. to Environment | Note-it! | Add a Comment

• Rice woman cares for critters- St. Cloud Times

  The young tortoiseshell cat purred as she rubbed against Jan Hovda on a sunny summer day. It had been hanging around Hovda’s house for days, and Hovda started to feed her alongside the garage. The cat was thin, and it appeared she had been nursing. Submitted by Rafael Apollo Lido to Animals | ...

• The devil wears pet dander --

  There are certain imponderables to living in South Florida. I don't understand, for example, how the blades on a ceiling fan that is always turning can get dusty. I wonder how three cats and a dog, none of which move very much or very often, can Submitted by Rafael Apollo Lido to Offbeat | No ...

• NOW Launches Action-Oriented Blog on Women's Equal ...

  is proud to celebrate Women's Equality Day this year by launching Say It, Sister! — a new blog designed to inform, inspire and instigate feminist activism. Submitted by Peace Love Earth to Society & Culture | Note-it! | Add a Comment

GreenBiz

• The State of the Art for Water Management

  Chuck Gordon, the CEO of Siemens Water Technologies, explains why water is the next frontier for companies looking to reduce their footprint, and explores some of the challenges they face on their way to success.

• The Green Connection Between Singapore and the O.C ...

  In this excerpt from a longer podcast interview with the CEO of Siemens Water Technologies, Chuck Gordon explains how wastewater recycling and reuse are the bridge between the West Coast and Southeast Asia.

• Energy Harvesting System to Gather Drive-Thru Powe ...

  New Energy Technologies is finding out how much energy it can harvest from cars stopping at a couple hotels and a burger joint.

• Selling Intangibles: How to Sell What the Customer ...

  In these uncertain and cash-strapped times, how do you convince customers that buying green is smart and profitable? We asked four companies for their tips on selling the real value of green products and services.

• The Promise of Energy Ace's LEED Guarantee

  A first read of Energy Ace's LEED certification guarantee may raise eyebrows, but it limits potential damages if certification is not achieved.

Reuters Global

• Brown must create Afghanistan war cabinet

  Col. Richard Kemp argues that every sinew of strength of the armed forces must go into Afghanistan and that Prime Minister Gordon Brown must take close personal direction of the war through a war cabinet. What do you think?

• ‘Dinnergate’ perks up German campaign

  The German election campaign has so far lacked the riveting debates and explosive issues to which voters were treated in previous battles for power. Filling the void have been several somewhat bizarre little scandals that each side has tried to use to tarnish the other, taking pot shots without reso ...

• Merkel softens up and talks baking, makeup and clo ...

  Between running an election campaign and trying to save European carmaker Opel at the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was baking a currant cake and writing out a shopping list for her husband.

• Athenians lament Attica forest destruction

  Dark smoke covered the Athens sky over the weekend, its thick plumes rising over the Acropolis and rekindling memories of the huge, deadly fires of 2007 that nearly cost Greece's ruling conservatives their re-election

• Afghanistan, still the new Vietnam ?

  Will Afghanistan become President Barack Obama's Vietnam ? As public support drops for the war, a spate of articles are again drawing analogies between the two wars.

Ezra Klein

• Tab Dump

  • In my chat today, someone suggested a fantasy Congress league. Turns out there already is one . • What's wrong with eco-stunts . • Are soccer players afraid of planes? • The Onion asks: Is using a Minotaur to gore detainees a form of torture? Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Fo ...

• Mark Peterson on Senate Committees

  In reply to this post , Mark Peterson, a political scientist at UCLA, e-mails a more expert take on the culture and rules of the Senate's "power committees." Long ago Richard Fenno wrote about the congressional committees and the differences among them (some of which is now dated, to be sure, but t ...

• Is the Deficit Being Used as a Distraction?

  Jon Gabel had an important op-ed yesterday noting that the Congressional Budget Office has a fairly consistent record of underestimating the savings and overestimating the costs of changes to Medicare. In the 80s, the CBO estimated that payment changes would slow spending to $60 billion in 1986. The ...

• Quagmire Thinking

  Michael Crowley catches Bruce Riedel offering this justification for ramping up the fight in Afghanistan: The triumph of jihadism or the jihadism of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in driving NATO out of Afghanistan would resonate throughout the Islamic World.This would be a victory on par with the destr ...

• Is Ben Nelson in Hock to Big Nebraska?

  A Research 2000/Daily Kos poll shows that Nebraskans approve of Ben Nelson's approach to health-care reform and oppose the public option. That's not surprising. Nebraskans are conservative. And given that their Democratic senator is painting health-care reform as liberal overreach and the public pla ...

Booman Tribune

• What Health Care Can Do For Your District

  Because Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) is a stud-hoss, you can look up your district at the Energy & Commerce website and find out exactly how much their health bill would help your community out. For example, I live in Rep. Jim Gerlach's sixth congressional district. We're doing pretty we ...

• Casual Observation

  When the vice-president of Afghanistan is a high-volume heroin dealer, I think it might be time to cut bait and run. I'd like to see Afghanistan become a stable country with a growing economy. But we are so far from seeing that become reality that we're just kidding ourselves that we can significa ...

• More Right Wing Jokes

  I'm sure someone thinks these are simply hilarious: ATWATER, Calif. — Violent and racist e-mail jokes alluding to the assassination of President Barack Obama, the killing of Latinos and violence against black people were forwarded by Atwater City Councilman Gary Frago during the last six months, ...

• The Lie that Charity Can Save Us

  It's a popular right wing/conservative talking point. Government doesn't help people. We'd all be better off to let charities and the good natures of our neighbors take care of us in bad times. Trouble is, when bad times hit, less people step up to the plate to help others: As the recession to ...

• The Inside Baseball of the Senate

  Understanding the congressional committees is real inside baseball stuff. But it matters a lot who controls which committees. For example, the fact that Max Baucus is the chair of the Finance Committee is greatly complicating Obama's efforts to pass a health care reform bill. Now that Teddy Kenne ...

European Tribune

• Tobin tax in the headlines a second day in a row

  The FT seems to be enjoying the row created by Lord Turner, the chairman of...

• European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 28 ...

  A Daily Review Of International Online Media Europeans on this date in history:1913 – Birth of...

• Thursday Open Thread

  Discuss your wild theories here!...

• Call for Tobin tax on front page of the FT

  The head of the FSA - the UK's main financial regulator, made an explicit call...

• European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 27 ...

  A Daily Review Of International Online Media Europeans on this date in history:1770 – Birth of...

Futurismic

• Speaking of marine conservation…

  …as we were, here is news of the first incursion into the collossal garbage patch that has collected in the Pacific Ocean: Scientists surveyed plastic distribution and abundance, taking samples for analysis in the lab and assessing the impacts of debris on marine life. Before this research, littl ...

• Speaking of marine conservation…

  …as we were, here is news of the first incursion into the collossal garbage patch that has collected in the Pacific Ocean: Scientists surveyed plastic distribution and abundance, taking samples for analysis in the lab and assessing the impacts of debris on marine life. Before this research, littl ...

• Tobias Buckell on marine conservation and his next ...

  I like to keep an eye on what former members of the Futurismic family are getting up to. Back when I joined the crew, one of my fellow bloggers was Tobias Buckell; nowadays he’s too busy with writing novels to contribute here, and bravo to him for that – it’s always nice to see good [...] Proj ...

• Utility-belt artificial kidney module

  OK, so it actually takes up the entire belt at the moment… but given a few more years of miniaturization the Wearable Artificial Kidney could end up no bigger than the holster for your cellphone: A miniaturized dialysis machine that can be worn as a belt, the WAK concept allows patients with end s ...

• Scottish island to shift to tidal power

  The remote Scottish island of Islay suffers from irregular electricity supply thanks to being separated by the sea from the the soon-to-be-decommissioned Hunterston nuclear reactor on the mainland. That’s set to change, however, with ScottishPower about to sign a deal that will see the island gett ..

SideBar Search

To Do

renewable recycling conservation

Gov. Granholm: Wixom renewable energy park could be crown jewel in ...

MLive.com

- Aug 27, 2009

- 16 hours ago

Jennifer Granholm says a plan to convert Ford's shuttered Wixom factory into a $725 million renewable energy park that might create more than 4000 jobs ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 8/2009

Watermelon Juice - Next Source of Renewable Energy

Reuters

- Aug 27, 2009

- 13 hours ago

The authors of this new study show that they could be very useful as a renewable energy source. "The results of this investigation indicate that watermelon ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 8/2009

3 Milwaukee colleges to research renewable energy

Chicago Tribune

- Aug 27, 2009

- 17 hours ago

UW-Milwaukee says the partnership brings together regional resources to establish a national center that will research renewable energy. ...

clipped from Google - 8/2009

Caltex: eyes investment opportunities in renewables

Forbes

- Aug 27, 2009

- 1 hour ago

PERTH, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Caltex Australia Ltd, the country's top oil refiner, said on Friday it was looking at investment opportunities in the renewable ...

clipped from Google - 8/2009

powered by

Human Habitat

ecology water energy

Ecology certifies spill readiness plans for 13 Western Washington ...

Access Washington

- Aug 27, 2009

- 5 hours ago

OLYMPIA – The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) today approved 13 oil spill readiness plans for refining, oil handling and vessel shipping ...

clipped from Google - 8/2009

Is 'Citizens for a Clean Idaho' a grass-roots group or not?

IdahoStatesman.com

- Aug 27, 2009

- 16 hours ago

The issue: American Ecology's request for a federal exemption to allow it to bring extremely low-level nuclear waste to its Owyhee County burial facility. ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 8/2009

French ecology official orders pipeline assessments

Oil & Gas Journal

- Aug 27, 2009

- 10 hours ago

Ecology Secretary of State Chantal Jouanno described the pollution as “a real ecological disaster” and launched an inventory of all pipelines in France, ...

clipped from Google - 8/2009

Summer school adds life skills and ecology

The Republican - MassLive.com

- Aug 25, 2009

- Aug 25, 2009

Then last week the students in both courses joined those in a life-skills summer school program and together they held an ecology fair to show off what they ...

clipped from Google - 8/2009

powered by

Water Power

water floods pollution

'Glitch' in LA mayor home irrigation wasted water

San Jose Mercury News

- Aug 27, 2009

- 6 hours ago

Villaraigosa told reporters about the glitch at a City Hall press conference Wednesday announcing that Los Angeles residents had reduced water usage in July ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 8/2009

Coast Guard proposes ballast water rules

The Associated Press

- Aug 27, 2009

- 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The Coast Guard on Thursday proposed national standards for regulating the release in port of ships' ballast water, which can introduce new, ...

clipped from Google - 8/2009

US finds water polluted near gas-drilling sites

Reuters

- Aug 27, 2009

- 10 hours ago

By Jon Hurdle PHILADELPHIA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - US government scientists have for the first time found chemical contaminants in drinking water wells near ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 8/2009

Northrop to clean up Calif. water at Superfund site

Reuters

- Aug 27, 2009

- 5 hours ago

The treated water will be used for drinking, water reclamation projects or discharged to surface water, EPA said. The project is aimed at stopping the ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 8/2009

powered by

Related articles by Zemanta

• 225 complaints filed about fraud in Afghan election (ctv.ca)
• How the CIA Became Dangerously Dependent on Outside Contractors (usnews.com)
• Young Guantanamo Afghan to sue US (news.bbc.co.uk)