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Thursday, October 8, 2009

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Blacklisted News

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My AntiWar

  • Ahmadinejad calls Geneva talks a ‘step forwa ...
    Summary: TEHRAN (AFP) ? President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his first comment on last week’s talks in Geneva between Iran and six major powers, said on Wednesday that they were a “step forward”. source: AFPread more

  • Is McChrystal dovish on Iran?
    Summary: There’s no love lost between Iran and the Taliban, in part because the Taliban murdered ten Iranian diplomats in Mazari Sharif back in 1998. But Iran does retain some influence there—as McChystal points out—and they would undoubtedly be looking for some way to pay us back if we were ...

  • Fortress Europe, struggles continue
    No Borders activists staged a protest on 6th October at a Arora hotel near Heathrow in protest at the company’s plan to convert one of its Gatwick hotels into an immigration prison. Management of the Arora International Hotels have applied for a change of use, which would see the hotel rooms conve ...

  • Pakistanis Slam ‘insulting’ US Aid Bil ...
  • Arlington Unveils a New Kind of Unknown Soldier

    Rogue Government.com

    Innovation Canada

    • i2eye with Bif Naked
      The last few years have been a roller-coaster ride for Bif Naked. After two years of touring, TV work and datelessness following her 2005 album Superbeautifulmonster, the Vancouver-based alt-rock singer-songwriter — whose real name is Beth Walker — met and married her husband, sportswriter Ian W ...

    • Cultural evolution
      When Jane Goodall reported her observations of tools use by chimps to famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, he responded by saying, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine man or accept chimpanzees as humans.” Leakey would have likely had a similar reaction to the current work of University of Calgary ...

    • Faces of aggression
      Even if you can’t distinguish NHL enforcers Todd Bertuzzi and Chris Neil from a referee, you’d probably know at first sight not to mess with them. And not just because of their physical size. The men employed to intimidate the opposition tend to have wide faces, and that, Brock University’s Ch ...

    • i2eye with Bruce McNaughton
      One of the world’s foremost neuroscientists, Bruce McNaughton is renowned for his groundbreaking research into how the human brain stores, processes and transmits information. One year ago, the Ottawa-born McNaughton was lured back to Canada after spending more than a quarter century in the United ...

    • Little boxes
      With more than half the Canadian population now living in the suburbs, Jill Grant says it’s an obvious time to study this increasingly popular living option, one that remains a bane to urban planners and downtown boosters. Are people drawn to the concept of perfectly matching houses throughout a n ...

    Signs of the times

    • Encrypting Messages In Our "How-to-Make-a-Human" D ...
      DNA isn't just a code, it's the ultimate information - the data without which the ability to perceive data wouldn't exist. We now have the ability to write our own messages into this biological blueprint, but there are important factors to consider before you start scribbling cellular graffiti. Th ...

    • Is Eli Lilly Milking Cancer by Promoting and Treat ...
      Years ago, an owner of a glass company was arrested for throwing bricks through store windows in his town. What a way to increase business! Has Eli Lilly figured out the drug equivalent of breaking, then fixing our windows? In August 2008, the huge drug company agreed to buy Monsanto's bovine growt ...

    • Low herbicide sales hit Monsanto
      US agrochemical giant Monsanto has reported wider losses in the fourth quarter, after a drop in sales of its Roundup herbicide brand. The group made a net loss of $233m (£147m) in the quarter, compared with a $172m loss a year earlier.

    • Threat of next world war may be in cyberspace: UN
      The next world war could take place in cyberspace, the UN telecommunications agency chief warned Tuesday as experts called for action to stamp out cyber attacks. "The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that i ...

    • Most Americans see Afghan fight worth US bloodshed ...
      A solid majority of Americans are willing to see some of their countrymen die to achieve a terror-free Afghanistan, but US misgivings about sending more troops remain, a poll released Wednesday said. Sixty-five percent of US voters "are willing to have American soldiers 'fight and possibly die' to ...

    Threat Level

    • Gang of 100 Phishers Charged in U.S., Egypt
      A gang of more than 100 alleged phishers has been charged in the U.S. and Egypt in connection with a global scheme to steal bank credentials of victims and siphon money from their accounts. A total of 53 defendants (.pdf) ranging in ages 18 to 44 are charged in a thick indictment (.pdf) unsealed We ...

    • ACLU Says Extracting DNA From Suspects Unconstitut ...
      California’s law requiring the authorities to take a DNA sample from every person arrested on felony accusations was challenged in federal court Wednesday as an unconstitutional privacy breach. A lawsuit (.pdf), filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two Californians who were ar ...

    • Former Teen Stock Swindler Pleads to New Hacking C ...
      A former teenage hacker who once served prison time for an online stock-trading scheme pleaded guilty last week to new charges of cracking a New York-based currency exchange service and gifting himself more than $100,000. Van T. Dinh leaves a federal courthouse in Philadelphia in 2003, when, as a 1 ...

    • PayPal Suspends Researcher’s Account For Distrib ...
      A security researcher who disclosed a serious vulnerability in online certificates has been blocked from accessing his PayPal account after someone released a counterfeit PalPal certificate he created for a professional training session. Moxie Marlinspike, who gave a talk at the Black Hat security ...

    • Twitter: Tweeting Method is Not Patent Infringemen ...
      With a fresh infusion of $100 million in venture funding, Twitter is fighting a lawsuit claiming the tweeting method amounts to patent infringement. The San Francisco-based, venture-funded microblogging service, in its first public response to the lawsuit, is telling a Texas federal judge that the p ...

    PERRspectives : Blog

    • KrongardGate II
      Among the most comically disturbing moments in the ongoing national embarrassment surrounding the mercenary firm Blackwater was the November 2007 revelation that the brother of the State Department Inspector General overseeing the company was on its board. Now, Howard "Cookie"...

    • Still Another 10 Moments in Mike Huckabee's Extrem ...
      During the 2008 presidential campaign, I documented 10, then 10 more and yet another 10 moments in the extremism of Mike Huckabee. Now, fresh off his victory in the straw poll at the so-called Values Voters Summit, the one-time Baptist...

    • Michael Steele's Problems with Dr. King Continue
      Speaking at Philander Smith College in Little Rock Monday, RNC Chairman Michael Steele declared, "Dr. King would be disappointed in the political leadership of this country for failing to address the least of us." But while Steele denied "we're all...

    • Will GOP Call for Prosecution of McChrystal Report ...
      One day after the Washington Post's Bob Woodward published the confidential McChrystal report on Afghanistan, the Politico asked, "Who leaked and why?" But while the article speculates on the identity and motivation of the leaker, one issue - the punishment...

    • What's (Still) the Matter with Oklahoma?
      As previously detailed here, the state of Oklahoma has become the poster child for the often comic and always tragic contradictions of the Republican war on health care reform. A 2007 study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked Oklahoma dead last...

    Blackspot News Feed

    Consortium News

    CounterPunch

    Institute for Middle East Understanding

    Planetsave

    • Algae blooms in Lake Erie bring back bad memories
      Lyngbya wollei, south shore Maumee Bay in Ohio, September 23, 2009. Lake Erie, declared dead by the news media in the 1960s because of widespread, repulsive algae blooms, is once again marred, this time by both old and new causes. Some scientists and lake advocates worry that the unsightly algae i ...

    • Dog Death Caps Summer of Blue-Green Algae in MN
      Blue-green algae blooms on Minnesota lakes are linked to a dog death and illnesses, and apparently caused by runoff pollution. The death of a dog after it frolicked in a Minnesota lake plagued with blue-green algae was a sad coda for a late summer in the state. Although no necropsy was done, a spo ...

    • Yellowstone Grizzlies Back on Endangered Species L ...
      In 2007 federal protections were dropped for the protection of Yellowstone grizzlies. Ever since then, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition have been fighting to give protection back to the bears. They argued that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) failed to address the loss of essential food s ...

    • Double Whammy of Pollution for Mississippi River i ...
      A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee samples river water for endocrine disrupting pollutants. Study results publicized this week suggest Twin Cities water resources and the Mississippi River downstream from the Cities are suffering from pollution by road salt and endocrine disrupting chemical ...

    • 14 Deer Die in One Night at Zoo under Mysterious C ...
      According to reports , 13 cheetal and one swamp deer died Friday evening under “mysterious circumstances” at the Kanpur Zoo.  Viscera samples and stomach content have been sent to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI). Results are expected sometime within the next two weeks.  The ...

    Water Quality - WordPress

    Public Citizen in Texas

    • Public Citizen Salutes Roger Duncan on His Retirem ...
      Statement from Tom “Smitty” Smith, Director, Public Citizen’s Texas Office Roger Duncan announced his retirement today. Although it is sad to see a dedicated public servant move on, Public Citizen congratulates him on a fine career as general manager of Austin Energy, a municipal power compa ...

    • A Successful ‘Roll Beyond Coal’ Tour, Now What ...
      Yesterday marked the end of a State-Wide “Roll Beyond Coal” press tour of Texas coal plants. This tour has seen representatives from Public Citizen of Texas and Sierra Club travel across the state visiting communities which would be impacted by proposed coal plants and meeting with local organ ...

    • Good News for Houston, Corpus Christi- So. Califor ...
      Great news from the Edmunds.com Green Car Blog: Southern California Port Pollution Drops Dramatically Under Clean-Truck Program A clean-trucks program at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California has shown quick progress, with an 80 percent decline in diesel emissions expected by the en ...

    • Texas: Sparkly Mythical Wonderland of Green Jobs
      Texas is a sparkly mythical wonderland full of unicorns.  And by unicorns, I mean green jobs.  And by green jobs, I mean well-paying, long-term jobs ranging from maintenance to operations, project management, and high-tech engineering. Wortham: Unicorns are alive, well and working the wind out wes ...

    • King Williams Parade Pics 048 [Flickr]
      Public Citizen Texas posted a photo:

    Press TV

    • Iraq releases detained MKO members
      The Iraqi government has released 36 members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) detained in a July raid on the notorious Camp Ashraf in Diyala province.

    • Bodies of 15 militants found in Swat
      Pakistani authorities say they have found the corpses of 15 suspected pro-Taliban militants in the country's northwest Swat.

    • Iran swine flu death toll reaches seven
      Iran's Health Ministry has reported one more swine flu death in the country, bringing the total toll of the fatal disease to seven.

    • Study: One in four people is Muslim
      A new study has shown that nearly one in four people worldwide is Muslim, and two out of three of the world's Muslims live in Asia, extending from Turkey to Indonesia.

    • Strong quakes rattle South Pacific
      A 7.0 magnitude earthquake has hit around the South Pacific Island archipelago of Vanuatu after a series of earlier strong quakes that have sparked Tsunami alerts.

    Axis of Logic

    They Gave Us a Republic

    • Still Searching for Terrorists Where They Aren't
      You remember the joke:  A guy walking down the street at night comes across another guy searching the ground under a streetlight.  First guy says, "What are you looking for?" Second guy says, "I dropped my keys in the alley back there."  First guy: "So why are you looking for them over here?" Second ...

    • Nightowl Newswrap
      In a rational world, this would be a no-brainer.  "A cross erected in California's remote Mojave National Preserve captivated the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as the justices clashed over the most closely watched religion case of the year." We have no idea what this is really all about, but that's OK ...

    • Franken Amendment Passes, 68-30
      On Monday I wrote a quick post urging you to call your Senators and urge them to vote Yes on an amendment Senator Franken was offering to the Defense Appropriations Bill that would give female sexual assault victims who work for defense contractors the right to sue rather than be limited to binding ...

    • Brilliant!
      My friend Steve Benen at Washington Monthly has unearthed a treasure, and in so doing he has found the modern GOP's theme song! So can we start calling the obstructionist assholes on the other side of the aisle "Marxists" now?

    • It's time for insourcing
      Forget outsourcing . We tried that and it was costly and inefficient and we do well to move away from that and back to in-house performance of integrated job duties - or as I call it "returning to the way we did things back when the things we did worked" - and getting things to work was the goal. Th ...

    Care 2

    • Controversial cormorants
      One obvious change in Finland's coastal scene has been the sudden reappearance of cormorants, hundreds of years after they were hunted into local extinction. Since the first birds bred in Finland again in 1996, their numbers have shot up to 16,000 pairs. Submitted by Maria Oniga to Animals  |   Not ...

    • America's Children in Afghanistan need basic supp ...
      No matter how you feel about the war and the morons who sent them there..they are our children who need basic supplies now- please help them.56 of our solders lost everything. Submitted by faith a. to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

    • NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION!!! : What do you need to ...
      TO LEARN: nonviolent solutions might also exist? over the world, people will get cancer and leukemia among other DISEASE AND PERILS? and over 1000 other nuclear blasts, for hundreds of generations to come? or more and worse? OPPOSE NUCLEAR ACTIVITY!!! Submitted by Ge ARACELI to Offbeat  |   Note-i ...

    • Tiger victim linked to security guard at Calgary z ...
      The man mauled by a tiger at the Calgary Zoo is the common-law husband of a security guard who was working the night he and a friend scaled a fence and snuck up to the cat’s enclosure, according to a police source. Submitted by Cher C. to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

    • Take Action--Repower America. Restore American lea ...
      Tell your senators to support the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act — legislation that will repower America with clean energy, reduce global warming pollution, and strengthen President Obama’s ability to negotiate a strong international treaty on e Submitted by Cal Mendelsohn to US Politics ...

    GreenBiz

    • Executive Order Firmly Commits Federal Agencies to ...
      Federal agencies must set 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals within 90 days and devise a string of action plans to size up and soften their environmental impacts, President Barack Obama ordered this week.

    • Abbott Shifts to Green Power From Coal and Oil
      Fuel switching and a shift to renewable energy allowed health care company Abbott to cut its coal and oil consumption by 15 percent last year across its global operations, relative to 2006 levels.  When normalized against sales, which have grown since 2006, the decline in the company’s coal and ...

    • Reinventing Fire: RMI's Quest to Foster a Future F ...
      What will it take to secure a future free of fossil fuels and transition to efficient and renewable energy that is not just economically viable, but profitable? The Rocky Mountain Institute proposes to drive such a change and ignite further interest in efforts to transform the way people get and use ...

    • Abbott Shifts to Green Power From Coal and Oil
      Fuel switching and a shift to renewable energy allowed health care company Abbott to cut its coal and oil consumption by 15 percent last year across its global operations, relative to 2006 levels.  When normalized against sales, which have grown since 2006, the decline in the company’s coal and o ...

    • EPA Calls for Chemical Law Reform, More Responsibi ...
      The EPA has released a set of principles that reflect changes the Obama Administration would like to see made to the country's chemical management law, including support for green chemistry efforts and requiring manufacturers to provide more detailed data on chemical hazards.

    Reuters Global

    • Everyone needs a private banker
      Everyone needs a private banker. Full service means exactly that for one speaker at the Reuters Wealth Management Summit. The 'normal' range of extras that wealth managers are offering super-rich clients under the banner Lifestyle Management has expanded as they scramble to keep on board clients who ...

    • Grandpa Wen, so happy to see you!
      North Korea knows how to put on a show. Visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was this week treated to a special performance of the "Arirang" mass games, the world's biggest choreographed extravaganza with as many as 100,000 participants. This time it included one-off Chinese messages -- which in the ...

    • Pakistan: Getting Waziristan right this time
      Is the Pakistan Army really ready for a full-scale military operation in South Waziristan? U.S. officials say it has the capaiblity and troops but some question that claim.

    • Swine flu vaccination finally starts
      "very unpleasant consequences for humanity"

    • Are Pentagon contracts funding the Taliban?
      A U.S. military aid program that favors Afghan vendors is being used by the Taliban as an extortion racket to the tune of a projected $80 million in the last year.

    Ezra Klein

    • Meet the New Health-Care System, Not That Differen ...
      You probably can't see that table particularly well. Click on it, and it'll enlarge. It comes from one of the final pages of the Congressional Budget Office's score (pdf) of the Senate Finance Committee's bill, and it lays out the CBO's expectation of the bill's impact on health-care coverage. Thi ...

    • Comparing the Finance Bills
      Igor Volsky has a fantastic chart comparing the CBO estimate of Max Baucus's first draft and of the amended bill. The takeaway is that the final bill spends slightly less on subsidies, does somewhat more to reduce the deficit and costs a bit more overall. In other words, for all of Baucus's vaunted ...

    • Things to Worry About in the CBO's Score
      The top-line numbers are very good for reformers. But there are certain things worth fretting over. The first is an amendment that the committee adopted that would require "the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) [to] certify annually whether or not the provisions of the legislatio ...

    • The Congressional Budget Office Gives Its Blessing ...
      The Congressional Budget Office rendered its verdict (pdf) on the Senate Finance Committee's bill this afternoon. In effect, the agency said the Senate Finance Committee can pass go, and can collect $200. The legislation is projected to cost $829 billion over 10 years, reduce the deficit by $81 bill ...

    • Another Stimulus Dissent
      In Tuesday's tab dump, I offhandedly mentioned that I agreed with Robert Reich's idea to stimulate the economy by exempting the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes. In comments , ExGovGirl replied: You would never be able to end a payroll tax 'holiday.' It would turn into a permanent exempti ...

    Booman Tribune

    • It's Silly Season
      With the release of the Congressional Budget Office's score of the Senate Finance Committee's health-care bill, it is now officially silly season. Speculation is running rampant, including some truly goofy theories. But Steven Benen has a level-head: I'll have more in the morning, but in the m ...

    • Guns and Bombs in New Haven
      Something tells me these guys might not be affiliated with Al Qaeda. Call it an educated guess. Two men were arrested when police found a pipe bomb, two shotguns, bomb-making materials, ammunition, a can of propane and SWAT costumes in their car Tuesday night in New Haven, Conn. So far the po ...

    • Serious Question
      If Rush Limbaugh buys the St. Louis Rams, do you think he'll be able to field an all-white team?

    • U.S. Midwest: Open Discussion
      Minnesota: Sen. Al Franken has already earned this year's pay with his successful amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill making it illegal to for the government to pay any contractor who makes their employees resolve allegations of rape and sexual harassment through arbitration. Amazingl ...

    • GOP Looking to Run Moderates
      Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE-At Large) announced yesterday that he will retire from the House to seek the remaining four years in vice-president Joe Biden's Senate term. If you look at Castle's Progressive Punch numbers, he has a lifetime score of 261, which places him as the fifth-most moderate Republic ...

    European Tribune

    Futurismic

    • Air-gunned to orbit, plasma thrust to Mars
      Here’s another prospect to add to the list of alternatives to rocketry, if only for launching inert and non-fragile stuff like fuel or water into orbit. It’s a dirty great air-gun, basically: At the Space Investment Summit in Boston last week, Hunter described a design for a 1.1-kilometre-long g ...

    • Book review: Michael Basnett – Sparklers
      Michael Basnett, Sparklers (ILT Books, 2003) [pp.757. $24.95. ISBN: 723483445127] Readers may remember Canadian writer Basnett from his Substars trilogy (Density, the second volume of which, was nominated for the De Granville Prize). Sparklers is a fat stand-alone volume in the same mode, which i ...

    • Here today, gone tomorrow: why the next decade’s ...
      People seem to be waking up to the impermanence of the web of late. TechDirt points us to a mainstream journalism article at the Globe & Mail, which springboards from the imminent nuking of GeoCities to worrying what will happen to all of your pictures uploaded to Facebook when it eventually (and in ...

    • Crime may not pay, but perhaps watching for it mig ...
      As much as things may be tough in the States right now, at least you can all get a good laugh watching the UK slide towards becoming a pseudo-totalitarian panopticon state. [image by JapanBlack] Via Cheryl Morgan comes news of the latest iteration of our enthusiastically participatory society of sno ...

    • Touchscreen tech goes 3D
      People keep doing clever stuff with touchscreen interfaces, despite a continuing dearth of products bigger than a smartphone that actually include one. Some chaps from the University of Potsdam have been working at making a Microsoft Surface touchscreen computer detect items that aren’t necessaril ...

    Therapy News

    • Celebrations of Mental Illness Awareness Week Ensu ...
      A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Across the country and in many places around the world, mental health professionals and advocates are marking their calendars for Mental Illness Awareness Week, which takes place the week of October 5th. The week is committed to highlighting the plight of those with m ...

    • Link Found Between Past Alcoholism, Poor Sleep
      A GoodTherapy.org News Headline There are many adverse symptoms, both psychological and somatic, associated with alcohol abuse, and those in recovery often find themselves struggling with the inherent challenges. However, a study recently published in the journal Sleep suggests that even those who h ...

    • Ongoing Research Uses Computational Brain Models t ...
      A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Typically, studies examining the precise functioning of the brain are lengthy and expensive, given the need to use advanced MRI equipment and recruit patient participants. But a student at the University of Missouri is proving that such studies can extract meaningful ...

    • Study Finds Links Between Stress, Stroke
      A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Severe and prolonged bouts of stress have been identified as playing crucial roles in a number of physical health problems, but in many cases, the extent of the impact of stress on physical health is imprecise at best. A new study produced by the Sahlgrenska Academy a ...

    • Scientist Predicts Importance of Mental Exercise W ...
      A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Neurological exercises, logical thinking, and meditation are just some of the methods through which people regularly challenge their minds, whether as a necessity or by choice. Recently, a noted neuroscientist has predicted that by the year 2050, mental exercise will ...

    Mountaintop Removal

    Memeorandum

    • Religion Largely Absent in Argument About Cross (A ...
      Adam Liptak / New York Times : Religion Largely Absent in Argument About Cross   —  WASHINGTON — A Supreme Court argument on Wednesday about the fate of a cross in a remote part of the Mojave National Preserve in southeastern California largely avoided the most interesting question in the cas ...

    • Thugs attack two transvestites... who turn out to ...
      Daily Mail : Thugs attack two transvestites... who turn out to be cage fighters wearing fancy dress   —  Two thugs who attacked what they thought were a pair of transvestites picked on the wrong men - when their intended victims turned out to be cage fighters on a night out in fancy dress.

    • 'Code Pink' rethinks its call for Afghanistan pull ...
      Aunohita Mojumdar / Christian Science Monitor : ‘Code Pink’ rethinks its call for Afghanistan pullout   —  In Afghanistan, the US women's activist group finds that their Afghan counterparts want US troop presence - as well as more reconstruction.  —  KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -  —  When M ...

    • Battle of Books Rages in Afghan Debate (Wall Stree ...
      Wall Street Journal : Battle of Books Rages in Afghan Debate   —  WASHINGTON — The struggle to set the future course of the Afghan war is becoming a battle of two books — both suddenly popular among White House and Pentagon brain trusts.  —  The two draw decidedly different lessons fro ...

    • Latest Internal Whip Count: Nearly Three-Fourths O ...
      Greg Sargent / The Plum Line : Latest Internal Whip Count: Nearly Three-Fourths Of House Dems Support Robust Public Option   —  Still more grounds for cautious optimism about the public option:  —  I've got the latest internal whip count numbers from Dem Rep. Raul Grijalva, the co-chair of ...

    Energy & Environment News

    5+ quakes - 7 days

    • M 5.1, Santa Cruz Islands
      Thursday, October 8, 2009 10:47:30 UTC Thursday, October 8, 2009 09:47:30 PM at epicenter Depth : 88.80 km (55.18 mi)

    • M 5.4, Santa Cruz Islands
      Thursday, October 8, 2009 10:11:06 UTC Thursday, October 8, 2009 09:11:06 PM at epicenter Depth : 35.00 km (21.75 mi)

    • M 6.5, Santa Cruz Islands
      Thursday, October 8, 2009 08:34:37 UTC Thursday, October 8, 2009 07:34:37 PM at epicenter Depth : 35.00 km (21.75 mi)

    • M 6.8, Vanuatu
      Thursday, October 8, 2009 08:28:48 UTC Thursday, October 8, 2009 07:28:48 PM at epicenter Depth : 35.00 km (21.75 mi)

    • M 5.1, Santa Cruz Islands
      Thursday, October 8, 2009 06:44:50 UTC Thursday, October 8, 2009 05:44:50 PM at epicenter Depth : 45.80 km (28.46 mi)

    China Dialogue

    • Kenya’s last nomads?
      In the country’s isolated northern and eastern border lands, families have always clung to a precarious existence. Now a decade of droughts is driving them to the brink. Peter Beaumont reports. Hawa Hassan comes leading three donkeys, accompanied by two female relatives and a handful of the family ...

    • “China is on the right track”
      How has China’s low-carbon path developed – and what lies in the future? chinadialogue spoke to Wu Changhua, director for Greater China at the Climate Group. Wu Changhua is Greater China director at the Climate Group, leading their operations and strategic development across the region. She was ...

    • Catching the wind
      Wind power could provide all of China's electricity, says a new study, if the country raises its subsidy and improves its grid. Ben Block reports. Wind power alone could provide electricity for all of China if the country overhauls its rural grids and raises the subsidy for wind energy, a new study ...

    • Slideshow: Times of crisis (1)
      The collapse of Lehman Brothers shook the world from Wall Street to Beijing. Maryann Bird introduces some images of China from a Reuters multimedia project charting 365 days of upheaval. The 10 photographs in the slideshow are Copyright 2009 Thomson Reuters and published by chinadialogue with the pe ...

    • A birthday wish list
      The 60-year history of the People’s Republic saw a move from an era of revolution to one of pragmatism. The country’s low-carbon future, writes Julian L Wong, requires both approaches. This week marks the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. The first 30-year phase was one of re ...

    AlterNet Top Stories

    Threat Level

    • Gang of 100 Phishers Charged in U.S., Egypt
      A gang of more than 100 alleged phishers has been charged in the U.S. and Egypt in connection with a global scheme to steal bank credentials of victims and siphon money from their accounts. A total of 53 defendants (.pdf) ranging in ages 18 to 44 are charged in a thick indictment (.pdf) unsealed We ...

    • ACLU Says Extracting DNA From Suspects Unconstitut ...
      California’s law requiring the authorities to take a DNA sample from every person arrested on felony accusations was challenged in federal court Wednesday as an unconstitutional privacy breach. A lawsuit (.pdf), filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two Californians who were ar ...

    • Former Teen Stock Swindler Pleads to New Hacking C ...
      A former teenage hacker who once served prison time for an online stock-trading scheme pleaded guilty last week to new charges of cracking a New York-based currency exchange service and gifting himself more than $100,000. Van T. Dinh leaves a federal courthouse in Philadelphia in 2003, when, as a 1 ...

    • PayPal Suspends Researcher’s Account For Distrib ...
      A security researcher who disclosed a serious vulnerability in online certificates has been blocked from accessing his PayPal account after someone released a counterfeit PalPal certificate he created for a professional training session. Moxie Marlinspike, who gave a talk at the Black Hat security ...

    • Twitter: Tweeting Method is Not Patent Infringemen ...
      With a fresh infusion of $100 million in venture funding, Twitter is fighting a lawsuit claiming the tweeting method amounts to patent infringement. The San Francisco-based, venture-funded microblogging service, in its first public response to the lawsuit, is telling a Texas federal judge that the p ...

    Reuters - Most Popular Articles

    • Barbra Streisand tops U.S. pop chart for ninth tim ...
      LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Barbra Streisand scored her ninth No. 1 album on the U.S. pop chart on Wednesday with a jazz release that overshadowed high-profile releases by some much-younger artists.

    • Pakistan wants US 'trust,' drones, market access
      (For more on Pakistan and Afghanistan, click on [ID:nAFPAK]) * Pakistan appeals for trade as well as aid * Islamabad wants U.S. to give it "drone" technology * Stop doubting the ISI, foreign minister says (Adds U.S. lawmaker's denunciation of Pakistan criticism, paragraphs 13-17) By Simon Denyer an ...

    • Pakistan wants U.S. "'trust", drones, market acces ...
      WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As President Barack Obama discusses the U.S. strategy toward Pakistan with his top advisers Wednesday, Pakistan's foreign minister appealed for market access, military technology -- and above all, trust.

    • Amazon up on Kindle price cut, overseas launch
      SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Shares of Amazon.com Inc rose as high as 4 percent on Wednesday after the global online retailer announced it would launch its popular Kindle electronic reader overseas and cut the price of its U.S. Kindle in advance of the holidays.

    • Guy Ritchie says he still loves "retarded" Madonna
      A year after Madonna called him "emotionally retarded," former husband Guy Ritchie said in an Esquire magazine interview that hit the Web on Wednesday that he still loves her, but that she is "retarded" herself.

    Godspace

    • Report from Down Under
      It is hard to believe that the first week of our trip Down Under is over.  Much to my discouragement the weather here in Sydney has been cold and wet – not much fun for Black Stump where most of the speaking was in tents.  I came back to my mother’s with very muddy shoes [...]

    • Are the Turbulent Times Already Here?
      Tom & I arrived in Sydney yesterday and are still fighting to get our clocks turned around.  The weather here is warm and balmy.  Quite a contrast to Seattle where it was heading towards winter temperatures and rain when we left on Tuesday.  The fact that it is now Friday is hard to believe.  Go ...

    • Turbulent Times: Ready or Not
      We leave this afternoon for Australia – the house sitter has moved in (well more of a dog sitter actually as Bonnie told us she does not like being alone) and are furiously working to get our contributions for the MSA Seed Sampler done – as well as working on powerpoint presentations for all ou ...

    • What Does it Take To Change a Bad Habit
      “Keep it simple, make it meaningful, stick to it”  That is some of the best advice that I have ever received on how to establish a new habit.  It came to mind as I read this article from Zen Habits Our daily lives are often a series of habits played out through the day, a trammeled [...]

    • Where is Christmas?
      I am sitting at our dining room table looking out on a beautiful September morning.  It is hard to believe that in a couple of days I will be in Australia – once more heading into spring rather than into autumn.  I will miss the glory of the fall leaves around the lake but I [...]

    Equality Trust

    IntelNews

    • Iran has as many as 40,000 spies in Arab world, sa ...
      An alleged former Iranian spy, who defected several years ago, claims that the Islamic Republic has “as many as 40,000” covert operatives in the Persian Gulf.

    • News you may have missed #0133
      US defense secretary hints at more secret nuke sites in Iran. CIA intercepted communication between Zazi and al-Qaeda. Book examines Central Asian espionage in WWI.

    • Anti-Castro terrorist was CIA informant, declassif ...
      An anti-Castro operative, who has admitted planting bombs against civilian targets in Cuba, and currently faces immigration fraud charges in the US, was a CIA informant, newly declassified documents show.

    • Israel diplomats angry at ex-Mossad man’s ambass ...
      Israel's hardline foreign minister has reportedly angered several Israeli diplomats after announcing that a former Mossad official will be Israel's ambassador to Turkmenistan.

    • News you may have missed #0132
      Emirates to deport Syrian ex-spy and witness in Hariri assassination probe. US national security advisor insists Iran cannot currently build the bomb. Book claims CIA-linked network killed anti-drugs campaigner.

    PsyBlog

    • How to Make People Believe in Telepathy
      Have you ever been thinking about someone and then moments later they've called you? Is that random coincidence or something more? People love to believe in supernatural powers like telepathy. At least one-third of Americans report a belief in extra-sensory perception (ESP), with a further 40% refu ...

    • Are You a Liar?
      Do people really lie 3 times within 10 minutes of meeting someone new? It's a statistic often quoted to show how callous and heartless people are. It's the kind of number the misanthrope TV doc Gregory House (played by Brit Hugh Laurie) should have tattooed across his forehead. But what kinds of li ...

    • PsyBlog Now on Twitter
      PsyBlog is now on Twitter, right here. So many people have kindly been sharing articles from PsyBlog with others on Twitter that the tweet count for recent articles is now fairly hefty. Thanks very much to all the Twitterers who've been spreading the word! PsyBlog's Twitter feed is another way to ...

    • How Long to Form a Habit?
      Research reveals a curved relationship between practice and automaticity. Say you want to create a new habit, whether it's taking more exercise, eating more healthily or writing a blog post every day, how often does it need to be performed before it no longer requires Herculean self-control? Clear ...

    • Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read
      You shouldn't believe everything you read, yet according to a classic psychology study at first we can't help it. What is the mind's default position: are we naturally critical or naturally gullible? As a species do we have a tendency to behave like Agent Mulder from the X-Files who always wanted t ...

    After Downing Street.org

    • Keith Olbermann: Health Care Reform - Saving Ameri ...
        Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy Watch the other segments here . read more

    • Substitute 'Obama' for 'Bush' and 'Afghanistan' fo ...
      Substitute 'Obama' for 'Bush' and 'Afghanistan' for 'Iraq' . . . By Dana Milbank | Washington Post It was a scene repeated countless times during the Bush years: A few hundred people massed on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, wearing orange jumpsuits and hoods, holding photos of wounded ...

    • A War of Absurdity
      A War of Absurdity By Robert Scheer | Truthdig Every once in a while, a statistic just jumps out at you in a way that makes everything else you hear on a subject seem beside the point, if not downright absurd. That was my reaction to the recent statement of the president’s national security advis ...

    • Will Obama Listen to the Women of Afghanistan?
      CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans recently returned from an eye-opening trip to Afghanistan. Their experiences convinced them even further that sending 40,000 more US troops would be disastrous for Afghan women and children. On October 3, their last day in the country, a US bo ...

    • IBM CEO Sees Big Opportunity In Health-Care Techno ...
      IBM CEO Sees Big Opportunity In Health-Care Technology >IBM By Peter Loftus | WSJ The chief executive of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) sees a huge business opportunity in making the U.S. health-care system more efficient. "Someone is going to drive incredible progress," IBM Chief Exec ...

    Grist - News

    Popular Bookmarks on Del.icio.us

    Technorati - What's Hot in Blogs

    • Asus rumored to sell cheaper ultra-thin laptop nex ...
      Apple’s MacBook Air will soon be challenged on its super-slimness, by Windows-powered computers from Asus, Acer and MSI that may lack Apple’s aluminum-cased pizazz, but will cost a lot less. Digitimes reports that Asus, maker of the low-cost Eee PC netbook, will begin selling two ultra-slim n ...

    • Birthday cannon
      Happy birthday, here's your cannon ... @ Dailymail Mike Daugherty asked his 11-year-old son Logan what he wanted for his birthday. The boy said, "I want a cannon." Dad didn't scoff at Logan's request by saying, "How about a hippopotamus instead," as a Christmas song from another era lamented. No ...

    • I-Swarm, real micro-sized robots!
      These tiny I-Swarm (Intelligent Small-World Autonomous Robots for Micro-manipulation) robots are incredibly neat! They move by using a piezoelectric transducer to vibrate across a surface in a manner similar to a bristlebot, only controllable. Because they are vibrating at audible frequencies, ...

    • Home-haircut indicator: In the footsteps of the un ...
      Filed under: Columns , Economic data , Recession , Comic Relief So, who out there cuts their own hair? I do, mainly because it is fading fast and it is a lot easier to have my wife take the clippers and then razor to my head rather than paying to go get my hair cut professionally. Now that I ...

    • Joe Jackson says ?someone should pay? for son Mich ...
      Joe Jackson: ‘Someone should pay’ for son’s death NEW YORK ? Michael Jackson’s father says he’d never heard of the drug propofol until it was implicated in his son’s death. “I’m not angry. I’m mad,” Joe Jackson said in an interview that aired Monday on NBC’s “Today” show. ...

    Time - Top Stories

    Washington Independent

    • McConnell: CBO Score Is Much Ado About Nothing
      Even as Senate Finance Committee Democrats are patting themselves on the back over a damn fine cost estimate for their enormous health reform proposal, Republican leaders are quick to remind us that it’s a far different bill than the rest of the chamber will be voting on. Senate Minority Leader Mi ...

    • CBO: Co-ops ‘Unlikely’ to Be Effective
      To the dismay of many liberal lawmakers, the Senate Finance Committee famously excluded a public option from its health reform bill, instead proposing the creation of state-based health care cooperatives in hopes of bringing insurance costs down. For the second time, the Congressional Budget Office ...

    • Baucus Reaction to CBO Score
      The just-released statement from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) following a report from the Congressional Budget Office that the panel’s $829 billion health bill will reduce federal deficits by $81 billion. Our balanced approach to health reform has paid off yet again with ...

    • Alan Keyes: My Birther Lawsuit Will Proceed
      The perennial presidential candidate blogs that his quest to overturn the results of the 2008 election — which he surely would have won had Barack Obama had to answer questions about his citizenship — will continue, his lawsuit having not been dismissed. I just received a call from Orly Taitz, m ...

    • CBO Says Finance Health Reform Bill Will Save $81 ...
      The Senate Finance Committee’s health reform bill will save the federal government $81 billion over the next 10 years, according to the much-anticipated Congressional Budget Office estimate released this afternoon. CBO found that subsidizing the coverage expansion will cost $518 billion over a dec ...

    CowBoss' Brain Food

    • If you think drinking raw milk is weird
      Read this story to learn how a man, who was dedicated to a diet of raw vegan foods and striving to be healthy, had a powerful experience that led him to start eating raw meat: Submitted by cowboss at wscc to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

    • Seaweed invasion plagues France's pristine Brittan ...
      Hillion is a picture-postcard Breton town with grey stone houses, a pretty granite church and long sandy beaches. But the seaside idyll has been ruined by mounds of rotting seaweed that have settled across swathes of France's northwestern coast, giving o Submitted by cowboss at wscc to Business  |  ...

    • Pennyslvania regulators threaten to prosecute land ...
      This is an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries regarding a pond on his property. It was sent by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality, of the state of Pennsylvania. Submitted by cowboss at wscc to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

    • Animal waste agreement reached at landfill
      CLINTON — After more than a year of negotiations, cattle brain and spinal cord material could start coming to the Clinton County landfill next week, according to recent action by the Clinton County Area Solid Waste Agency board. Submitted by cowboss at wscc to Health & Wellness  |   Note-it!  |  ...

    • Vultures are making a comeback Spain finds out th ...
      PAMPLONA, Spain — Vultures circling overhead have traditionally been a harbinger of death. But in Spain, their renewed presence after a long lull is being regarded by many as a good omen — the sign of a healthy eco-system. "They're essential," said Lui Submitted by cowboss at wscc to Offbeat  |  ...

    Suzie-Q

    • Your Health Care Sucks!
      Over the weekend, I took a rainy walk down Wall Street and through the financial district in lower Manhattan. As I navigated my way across the busy intersections and between the arrays of decorative sidewalk bollards, I noticed something really strange. No protesters. None, despite the fact that wit ...

    • Hardin Montana To Create Their Own Police Force- W ...
      American Police Force logo Hardin To Create Own Police Force — But Pledges Not To Hire APPF TPM MUCKRAKER- Zachary Roth | October 7, 2009, 10:02AM We told you this week the contract between Hardin, Montana and American Private Police Force gave the shady security contractor the chance to take ov ...

    • Olbermann’s “Special Comment” On ...
      Keith Olbermann To Deliver Hour-Long “Special Comment” On Health Care First Posted: 10- 6-09 12:21 PM   |   Updated: 10- 6-09 12:29 PM Keith Olbermann will deliver an hour-long “Special Comment” on health care Wednesday night, MSNBC announced Tuesday. Wednesday’s “Co ...

    • Hardin Montana Stops Deal With American Police For ...
      Michael Hilton Hardin, Montana, Puts Jail Deal With APPF On Ice TPM MUCKRAKER– Justin Elliott | October 6, 2009, 9:08AM Spooked by a man who turned out to be a convicted felon and who appears to have repeatedly lied on his way to acquiring a lease for an empty jail in Hardin, MT, town leaders y ...

    • American Police Force Story Gets More Like The Twi ...
      APPF’s Dubious Story Gets Even More Dubious TPM MUCKRAKER– Justin Elliott | October 5, 2009, 6:46PM We’ve known since last week that the story surrounding a deal that handed an empty jail in Hardin, MT, to shadowy private security company American Private Police Force just wasn’t adding u ...

    Solari

    • Go GATA! Special Solari Report Offer
      My colleagues at GATA (Chairman Bill Murphy and Treasurer Chris Powell above) have done an extraordinary job of documenting manipulation of the gold market. By so doing, they have helped private investors around the world protect their businesses and family savings. For the last year, GATA has used ...

    • Web Bot Project: Heads up! Reality Change Ahead!
      By Clif [High} ,Cathy and Igor at Half Past Human In running our MOM (model of modelspace) cleanup of the lexicon prior to tuning, it became apparent that October 25 turn in emotions globally will be dominated by a [lock down/implosion] of the [planetary financial/banking system]. The data suggests ...

    • UN Calls For New Reserve Currency
      The United Nations called on Tuesday for a new global reserve currency to end dollar supremacy which has allowed the United States the “privilege” of building a huge trade deficit. “Important progress in managing imbalances can be made by reducing the reserve currency country?s ‘privilege’ ...

    • Bigger Bonuses For Wall Street
      By Josh Fineman More than a third of Wall Street finance professionals surveyed expect their bonuses to increase for 2009, a year after the credit-market collapse that some regulators say was fueled by outsized pay packages, eFinancialCareers.com found. About 36 percent of the 1,074 people who resp ...

    • Congress Wants Health Care Bill Off Line
      By Susan Ferrechio As Congress lurches closer to a decision on an enormous overhaul of the American health care system, pressure is mounting on legislative leaders to make the final bill available online for citizens to read before a vote. Lawmakers were given just hours to examine the $789 billion ...

    Global Insights

    • Less Than a Week Away
      We encourage you to register for Awake and Aware. George Green will be a featured speaker. September 19th & 20th • Burbank, CA Click here for Tickets & Reservations

    • The Georgia Guidestones
      On one of the highest hilltops in Elbert County, Georgia stands a huge granite monument. Engraved in eight different languages on the four giant stones that support the common capstone are 10 Guides, or commandments. That monument is alternately referred to as The Georgia Guidestones, or the Ame ...

    • The Creation
      THE CREATION (A recent message given to George Green from the "guys upstairs") We are pleased to bring understanding and clarification on what is the Creation. This is a challenge because your language of communication has not the words for describing this conception of Creation. So as not to put an ...

    • The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catas ...
      In his previous books, James Kunstler focused on the shortsighted vision of suburban planning; now he expands that view to the country's urban growth challenges and the need to drastically change our current course of auto and oil dependency. The Long Emergency is filled with history plus eye-openin ...

    • About George Green
      Dear Friends, Thank you for your interest in our catalog of unusual and informative materials. The knowledge gained will give you choices in the days ahead and lessons of discernment as the chaos increases. It is necessary for those of you who are now in the "know" so to speak, to begin to focus ...

    Insurgency Watch - Posts

    • At Home with a Swat Lashkar
      I just finished up a few days in Swat and while I’m working on a story about it, I thought you might like to see a few pictures I took while there. Enjoy. Share/Save

    • FACTBOX: Uzbek militant leader killed in Pakistan ...
      Washington PostFACTBOX: Uzbek militant leader killed in PakistanReutersBy this time he is thought to have fled the region for the safe haven of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. * Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader ...Pakistan to Target Taliba...

    • Editorial: Indo-Pak dialogue: some basic questions ...
      Editorial: Indo-Pak dialogue: some basic questions Daily Times Neither of these conditions obtains in the case of India and Pakistan . * We all know that the Taliban and Al Qaeda get their “terror money” from diverse ... and more »

    • A US Counteroffensive In Pakistan - International ...
      A US Counteroffensive In Pakistan International Analyst Network ... news service accusing Pakistan of refusing to join the US in eliminating one of the Afghan local parties – the Afghan Taliban – whom her own government ...

    • Somalia’s Al Shabaab Releases Extensive Training ...
      The Mujahideen Youth Movement, also known as al-Shabaab, released yesterday an extensive 48-and-a-half minute training video titled, “At Your Service, Osama.” It shows extensive footage from the Commander Abu Suleim Training Camp somewhere in Somalia — likely southern Somalia where the al Sh ...

    AlterNet - DrugReporter

    Twilight Earth

    • President Obama Gives Federal Agencies 90 Days to ...
      The Obama administration has given federal agencies 90 days to submit aggressive targets to reduce greenhouse gasses and energy use. Related posts: President Obama on the Clean Energy and Security Act (Video) President Allocates 786M in Recovery Act Funds to BioFuel Infrastructure Federal Governm ...

    • Caribou Herds Getting Smaller as a Result of Globa ...
      Caribou herds are growing thin on the Porcupine river Tundra in the Yukon Territory. It's not the only place where the caribou are suffering. Related posts: Reindeer About to Go the Way of the Polar Bear? How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic ANWR – Is It The Caribou, Or Ourselves That Need S ...

    • Photo Sunday – The Truth of Clarity as Darkness ...
      Life offers us many realizations in darkness, that may not be available to us during the light of day. Related posts: Global Warming – Somewhere between THE truth and YOUR truth, is Denial Photo Sunday – Brandywine Falls – Cuyahoga Valley National Park Photo Sunday – Great Falls National ...

    • Climate Change – How Can We Dance When the Beds ...
      A re-mix of the hit "Beds are Burning", with over 60 artists and celebrities, to reflect the greatest humanitarian crisis today - climate change. Related posts: White House: The Primary Cause of Climate Change is Carbon Dioxide Emissions White House Follow-up on Global Climate Change Impacts New 3 ...

    • Solar Decathlon on the Mall in Washington DC
      For three weeks in October 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy will host the Solar Decathlon in Washington DC. Related posts: The BeauSoleil Solar Home: Self Sufficient Solar Decathlon Entry Solar Power from Outer Space: Microwaves and Frickin’ Lasers New Jersey to Double its Solar Power Genera ...

    Inhabitat

    • Crowd-Sourced Initiatives to Create a More Livable ...
      City governance and open-source programming never seemed like a likely marriage. However, emerging initiatives have been working towards it, and have received a boost of popular support through Obama’s call for open government. When NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg launched the Big Apps competition this pa ...

    • Green Roofs Are Changing the Way Architects Design ...
      Als swedish Restaurant, photo Luanne Lozier Green roofs are wonderful things; like a thick blanket, they keep roofs cool in summer and warm in winter. They have been around for centuries in Scandinavia and Iceland, where they moderate the cold winters and sometimes very hot summers. They reduce the ...

    • SolarHeart Generates Energy and Heat in Cold Clima ...
      Fall is here, and If you aren’t part of the lucky few to still be basking in the sun (ah, Italia!), don’t fret – we have some great news that will surely brighten your day and warm your house. Recently Boulder-based company Cool Energy, Inc. unveiled SolarHeart, a specialized engine that can c ...

    • Hopworksfiets Bike is a Pedal-Powered Party
      Pedal power is clearly on the rise. Bike sharing programs are spreading throughout the world, David Byrne’s new book Bicycle Diaries is flying off the shelves, and brilliant new designs like this, this and this, are appearing all over the globe. A wonderfully quirky addition to the scene is the Ho ...

    • GREEN TALKS: Meet the Inhabitat Editors and Win A ...
      Hey Inhabitat Readers from around the globe! Want to meet the editors of Inhabitat and win this awesome folding bike? As we head into October we’re thrilled to announce a fabulous new initiative at Inhabitat: GREEN TALKS! We’re going to be harnessing the power of the internet to bring you LIVE ...

    Pogue's Posts

    Open Your Eyes News

    • Profits panacea for GlaxoSmith-Kline as swine flu ...
      Daily Mail - Drugs giant GlaxoSmith-Kline is cashing in on demand for its swine flu vaccine, revealing it has won a further 22 government orders in the past two months. This takes the total number of doses ordered for the H1N1 vaccine from the company to 440m, worth some £2.2bn. The pharmaceuticals ...

    • Kabul blast kills 12
      ABC - A large bomb has exploded near the Indian embassy in the centre of the Afghan capital, killing 12 people and wounding 83, the interior ministry says. Read Article

    • Australia should have Human Rights Act: report
      The Australian - AUSTRALIA should adopt a Human Rights Act and give the High Court the power to issue “declarations of incompatibility” over federal laws, according to the report on human rights released today.The Human Rights Consultation panel, has also urged the government to conduct an audit ...

    • Coeliac bone loss link uncovered
      BBC NEWS - People with coeliac disease may be more susceptible to osteoporosis because their own immune system attacks their bone tissue, a study suggests. Osteoporosis is a known risk of coeliac disease and has been explained by a failure to absorb calcium or vitamin D. But a study in the New Engl ...

    • ElBaradei says nuclear Israel number one threat to ...
      Xinhua (China) - Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that “Israel is number one threat to Middle East” with its nuclear arms, the official IRNA news agency reported.   At a joint press conference with Iran’s Atomic Energy Org ...

    Monkey Smashes Heaven

    • KKKolumbus Day in Amerikkka
      KKKolumbus Day in Amerikkka is the celebration of white supremacy, land theft, genocide, slavery, and the exploitation of the Third World. Maoist-Third Worldists seek to abolish this racist holiday just as we seek the abolition of Amerikkka itself. MSH issues the Anti-Kolumbus Program for the Dest ...

    • RAIM: Afghan Locals Give U.S. Occupiers Proper Goo ...
      Afghan Locals Give U.S. Occupiers Proper Goodbye (http://raimd.wordpress.com) On Saturday, October 3rd hundreds of insurgents stormed two remote military bases near the Pakistan border in Afghanistan. A proper goodbye– the attack killed eight occupiers from Fort Carson and injured many more as th ...

    • Indigenous of Ecuador confront state and corporati ...
      Indigenous of Ecuador confront state and corporations (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)   Hundreds of Shuar people, an Indigenous tribe in Ecuador that constitutes 35 percent of the country’s population of 14.5 million, have occupied a highway in protest over state and corporate exploitation o ...

    • IJC: White settler admits crimes of his parasite c ...
         White settler admits crimes of his parasite class against the Azanian nation By Jacob Brown (jacobinternationalism.wordpress.com) Klanada’s Globe and Mail’s Sept. 17 article reads: “Brandon Huntley, a white South African who had overstayed his Canadian work permit, applied for ...

    • Settler hypocrisy in Zimbabwe
      Settler hypocrisy in Zimbabwe (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)   In 2000, Mugabe’s regime removed roughly 4,000 colonial-era white farmers from their land and resettled the land with Africans. The land reform was meant to address injustices and poverty suffered by Africans at the hands of the ...

    PakAlert

    • Pak Army Abuse? We’ve Seen Worse, Thanks!
      BBC has released a video showing alleged Pakistani army cruelty against throat-slitters. Unfortunately, this video is being used to generate hatred among Pakistanis and stir ethnic conflict. Since the American occupation of Afghanistan, Pakistan and its military have been championing the rights of ...

    • Scenarios & Fallout: The Zionist Attack On Iran
      From Lord Stirling 10-6-9 Now that the Iranian/Six Power talks have concluded with no breakthrough we can expect an Israeli attack on Iran at any time. We need to consider what will happen next. Scenario 1 — The Israeli Air Force bombs the major Iranian nuclear sites. The destruction of the fully ...

    • Swine Flu And Its Intriguing Links – By Dr Ghayu ...
      By Dr Ghayur Ayub Swine flu is a contagious viral respiratory disease linked with pigs. Symptoms include fever, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. According to statistics, common seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people every year worldwide, far more than the current outbr ...

    • Open Letter To Citizens Of the U.S
      Dear Citizens of United States, We Pakistanis are ordinary beings like you, having the same dreams, same needs,  ambitions, emotions, reservations and same passion if not more for our country. We like you, to feel the same regret for wars, same grief for the world problems, same distress towards in ...

    • Video: CIA threats to Pakistan | Episode 8
      BrassTacks presents another bitter-facts series exposing threats to Pakistan and deliberate ignorance of current government. Zaid Hamid exposes the covert war which CIA is waging against Pakistan, as he explains the current domestic scenario of Pakistan and the threats to our nationals security that ...

    ecogeek

    • Researchers Proposing Method for Determining Plug- ...
      The Society of Automotive Engineers and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are recommending that the EPA come up with two different ratings for plug-in vehicles:  miles per gallon and electricity per mile. The two groups will finalize their proposal within the next six months, hoping to pre ...

    • Google PowerMeter Finds a Gadget Partner
      Before now, the Google PowerMeter software could only estimate your energy use, unless you happened to be a customer of the handful of utilities it was working with.  That has changed.  The company announced yesterday that they have partnered with The Energy Detective (TED), allowing you to bypas ...

    • Recycling Your Cell Phone Just Got Easier
      While some cell phone companies are introducing convenient ways for you to recycle your phone once you're done with it, a new start-up is making it just plain simple.  EcoATM will be deploying kiosks at retailers around the country where you can drop off your old phone, have its value assessed and ...

    • Is Renewable Energy the Biggest Threat to Land Con ...
      I'm a conservationist. I was a conservationist before I was an EcoGeek. There is very little land on earth left in a sem-natural state, and I believe that we should keep as much of that land as natural as possible forever. Unfortunately, that belief does sometimes collide with my belief that we need ...

    • IBM Sponsoring 500 Mile EV Battery Project
      In the last few years, electric vehicles have gone from a dream to the next logical step for vehicles. Of course, the future of EVs is still being debated, but IBM is using its cash and influence to push for an electric vehicle battery that can carry a car 500 miles without recharging. 500 miles is ...

    Times Online - Science

    Environment _ National Geographic

    drinking liberally in new milford ( with beersphere feeds )

    • The only thing between us and the terrorists?
      Is the neoconservative echo-chamber between Joe Lieberman's ears : "I don't think anybody who has any fairness or is in their right mind would think the president or the secretary of homeland security would raise an alert level and scare people for political reasons... That's outrageous." - Joe Lieb ...

    • Bethel First Selectman Arrested
      ctblogger had the story up early at HatCityBLOG and MLN , and the Newstimes got around to covering it as well, on Bethel's First Selectman, Bob Burke, being arrested for making harassing phone calls. Ellis said Burke and the alleged victim had a personal relationship that was private between them an ...

    • The Lion Sleeps Tonight
      RIP Edward Kennedy   Via WCVB Boston: Kennedy, who waged a public fight against a malignant brain tumor in the last year of his life, was surrounded by family members who had come in recent days to say a last goodbye to him. His death marks the end to a life where like the phoenix. Kennedy rose abov ...

    • A pie fight between an incompetent poseur and a re ...
      There has been a lot said and written about the current arguments between Salon's Glenn Greenwald and Time's Joe Klein . I wonder what the real journalist will have to say in response to Klein? That didn't take long? Beltway culture, checks on journalists and secrecy obligations I'm ambivalent about ...

    • Real Canadians Talking Real Health Care
      For those of you that just don't get what single payer healthcare is all about, via Karoli at US Health Crisis , real Canadians talk about healthcare: Why this video? Why now? In the spirit of truth, my friend Matte Black (@Shoq on Twitter) and his brother took their video camera to Canada on vaca ...

    SPL Center

    • White Supremacist Wiginton Turned Back at Heathrow ...
      Globetrotting white supremacist financier and organizer Preston Wiginton (at right, showing the flag at a 2007 white nationalist rally in Moscow) was barred from entering the United Kingdom last week by Home Office authorities at London’s Heathrow Airport. Wiginton, a U.S. citizen, was trying to e ...

    • Arizona Sues Minuteman Group Leader, Alleging Prop ...
      The leaders of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the largest and richest border vigilante organization in the United States, have long been accused of scamming donors and members with shady fundraising practices. These practices included the supposedly “Israeli-style” border fence fundraising c ...

    • FAIR Continues Hero Treatment for Convicted Ex-Bor ...
      In a promotion for its lobbying extravaganza on Capitol Hill next month, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) asserts that lawmakers must “restore integrity to our immigration system.” Apparently, such integrity does not preclude the use of deadly force against an unarmed suspec ...

    • Gun-Toter’s Interview Was Staged — And In ...
      As President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have learned this month, an antigovernment, pro-militia mentality is alive and well in the United States. On Monday, a guy named Ernest Hancock staged a videotaped interview with a man carrying a semiautomatic rifle slung over his shoulder outsid ...

    • Website: Accused Nativist Killer Set Up By Hispani ...
      Last week, prosecutors in Pima County, Ariz., announced they’re seeking the death penalty for Minuteman American Defense leader Shawna Forde, who allegedly masterminded a May 30 home invasion robbery in which a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter were shot to death. But those prosecutors have i ...

      IPS - Inter Press Services

      • DEVELOPMENT: Rural India Set to Ring in 3G Mobile ...
        NEW DELHI, Oct 8 (IPS) - As India prepares to roll out third-generation (3G) mobile services in the world's fastest growing telecom market, there are high expectations that it will benefit people in the vast, impoverished rural hinterland most.

      • HONDURAS: Talks Seek Solution to 102-Day Crisis
        TEGUCIGALPA, Oct 7 (IPS) - Talks began Wednesday between delegates of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and de facto leader Roberto Micheletti, under international observation, to seek a solution to the crisis triggered by the Jun. 28 coup.

      • FINANCE: Not Reforms, But Reformed
        LONDON, Oct 7 (IPS) - The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have run into a predictable roadblock in setting out brave new directions: a roadblock called memory. What could have been an immensely sensible idea of turning the IMF into a new central bank for th ...

      • POLITICS-US: Obama Weighs Options as Afghan War E ...
        WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (IPS) - On the eighth anniversary of the launch of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama spent a good part of Wednesday deliberating with his top advisers on what is likely to be one of the most momentous decisions of his tenure: the future of U.S. inv ...

      • POLITICS-US: Democrats Disgruntled as Obama Fails ...
        WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (IPS) - Since before taking office, U.S. President Barack Obama has been no stranger to being in the crosshairs of Republican pundits who have accused him of everything from bring a "secret communist" to a tax-and-spend liberal who would oversee huge expansions in the federal g ...

      Scoop - NZ

      • More than 16% young Aussies unemployed
        A new report has found a large jump in the number of young Australians who are unemployed or not studying.The annual How Young People are Faring report looks at education and employment for people aged 15 to 24 years of age.It found that more than 16 per cent of the nation's teenagers are not workin ...

      • A letter to the Minister of Conservation
        Mining in the national conservation estate . Please explain ?  »  PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews

      • China calls time on $US hegemony
        Beijing does not need to raise money abroad since it has $2 trillion (£1.26 trillion) in reserves. The sole purpose is to prepare the way for the emergence of the yuan as a full-fledged global currency."It's the tolling of the bell," said Michael Power from Investec Asset Management. "We are only ...

      • Our record in tackling climate change has been lam ...
        Our record in tackling climate change has been lamentable and our current ambitions are little better- so says Jonathan Boston in the Pallot memorial Lecture  »  PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews

      • Wall St relief exceeds cost of WWII
        There are many possible responses to the news that we have committed more than four trillion public dollars to Wall Street.Mine is a roar of admiration.Four trillion dollars! Holy hell! I didn't even know that was possible!U.S.A.! U.S.A.!After all, the cost of World War II in inflation-adjusted doll ...

      Independent ( London )

      • Polish president 'won't sign EU treaty'
        Poland's President Lech Kaczynski will not sign the European Union's Lisbon Treaty on Sunday, his twin brother Jaroslaw said today, contradicting an earlier statement from a presidential aide.

      • Pacific quakes cause new panic but no damage
        Thousands of panicking South Pacific islanders ran from coastlines after a series of strong earthquakes rocked the region creating a small tsunami today, just over a week after a massive wave killed 178 people in the Samoas and Tonga.

      • Irish dentist denies putting camera in nurse's pan ...
        A dentist has denied touching a trainee dental nurse between her breasts and placing a micro-camera inside her pants.

      • Car blast outside India embassy in Kabul
        At least 12 people were killed and dozens injured when a powerful car bomb exploded outside the Indian Embassy in the busy centre of Kabul as commuters arrived for work today, officials said.

      • Mystery as Iran nuclear scientist disappears
        The disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June is raising questions about whether he defected and gave the West information on Iran's nuclear programme.

      CASMII - Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

      • Ahmadinejad calls Geneva talks a 'step forward'
        Summary: TEHRAN (AFP) – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his first comment on last week's talks in Geneva between Iran and six major powers, said on Wednesday that they were a "step forward". source: AFP read more

      • Is McChrystal dovish on Iran?
        Summary: There's no love lost between Iran and the Taliban, in part because the Taliban murdered ten Iranian diplomats in Mazari Sharif back in 1998. But Iran does retain some influence there -- as McChystal points out --and they would undoubtedly be looking for some way to pay us back if we wer ...

      • US Senators Threaten New Sanctions Against Iran
        Summary: Though there appeared to be little call for their skepticism, the Obama Administration’s top officials continued to reject the idea that last week’s Geneva talks had been anything but a very limited success. source: Antiwar.com read more

      • Leaked Iran Paper Based on Intel That Split IAEA
        Summary: Excerpts of the internal draft report by the staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published online last week show that the report’s claims about Iranian work on a nuclear weapon is based almost entirely on intelligence documents that have provoked a serious conflict ...

      • Hard Talk with Iran's Envoy to IAEA
        Summary: In its Hard Talk series, the BBC interviews Dr Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's Envoy to the International Atomic Agency. source: The BBC read more

      The Daily Galaxy

      • Window on Past Climate Change : Logbooks of Darwin ...
        One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species revolutionized how we view evolution and our place in the natural world. Now the voyages of the HMS Beagle are influencing modern research on the evolution of our...

      • A Planet of Peak Water? Leading Experts Says Water ...
        A rare herd of desert elephants in Mali is being ravaged by one of the worst droughts in living memory, which has left water sources at lowest level in the past quarter of a century. Could this haunting event be...

      • You Create the Caption



      • The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (10/08)
        Google’s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles A few geeks with long memories remember the last time Google assembled a giant library that promised to rescue orphaned content for future generations. And the tattered remnants of that online archive are...

      • The "Dark Halo" -The Biggest Things in the Univers ...
        The biggest things in the universe just got bigger - or rather, they've always been bigger and we somehow missed it up to now. Supercomputer simulations of galactic core black holes indicate that instead of being a mere two billion...

      Natural News

      • Top researcher who worked on cervical cancer vacci ...
        (NaturalNews) One of the key researchers involved in the clinical trials for both Gardasil and Cevarix cervical cancer vaccines has gone public with warnings about their safety and effectiveness. This highly unusual warning against these vaccines by one of Big Pharma's own researchers surfaced in an ...

      • Garlic is natural medicine for treating high blood ...
        (NaturalNews) Garlic is one of the most amazing medicinal herbs on the planet. It has been among my top-recommended healing foods and medicines for years. Most people know garlic as being anti-cancer. Others recognize its ability to naturally lower high cholesterol. But did you know that garlic also ...

      • Green Tea could Naturally Prevent and Treat Osteop ...
        (NaturalNews) According to the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the bone thinning condition known as osteoporosis is a major public health threat for 44 million Americans, 68 percent of whom are women. Approximately 10 million Americans already have osteopo ...

      • Teen girl suffers permanent brain damage after cer ...
        (NaturalNews) As the cervical cancer vaccine continues to maim or kill even more teenage girls across the UK, 18-year-old Stacey Jones is the latest victim to suffer severe harm. Previously in a state of apparent health, Stacey began to suffer severe seizures and brain inflammation within days after ...

      • New Danger: Medical Industry Pushes Brain Scans fo ...
        (NaturalNews) Technological advances, especially in critical emergency medical situations, can be life-saving. For example, scans of the body can locate with great precision a bullet that needs to be removed from near a vital organ, or detail how a shattered bone needs to be treated. But there's gro ...

        TheGallopingBeaver

        • Well, How 'Bout That ? ? ? ?
          New York Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, yesterday introduced a bill in Congress. From the Representative's web-site : September 15, 2009 Nadler, Baldwin and Polis Introduce the Respect for Marriage Act to Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) Civil Rights advocates and LGBT Ame ...

        • Steve's big 42 minutes with O
          White House greeter : Hi, Steve, is it? The big O is terribly sorry not to greet you himself - he's in the loo. Steve : Well, uh, that's perfectly fine WH greeter : He knew you'd understand. Right this way. Of course I can't go in there with you myself ... h/t West End Bob for the laugh this mornin ...

        • Why cops don't belong in schools
          My only question about this incident is why it took so long to happen. Teens question authority. It is what they do, its practically hardwired into the DNA. Putting an authority figure in their way for no good reason is just asking for trouble. If that authority figure is a coach or a teacher or a ...

        • More cover-ups for the higher-ups
          My guess would be that, as in most government scandals, the big problem here is not going to be the initial misconduct by some underling, but the subsequent bullshittery by the government in trying to hush the whole thing up. Obviously, at some stage someone in the chain of command figured out a mis ...

        • Handy Hallmark
          Believe me, I am grateful. It saves me so much time and trouble in listening to government officials, to know that once they use the word "academic" as an epithet I can stop listening at once and go take a shower instead. In their minds, "academic" means "someone who spends their whole working lif ...

        Media Matters for America

        • Fox hosts let GOP Rep. Issa attack ACORN over emb ...
          In separate interviews, Fox News hosts Bill Hemmer and Greta Van Susteren allowed Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to attack the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on the grounds that in 1999 and 2000, one of its leaders embezzled from the group. However, at no point did eith ...

        • In vicious new smear, Rove falsely claims Jenning ...
          After Sean Hannity introduced his Fox News show by asking, "Does Kevin Jennings support the group NAMBLA?" Karl Rove falsely claimed that Jennings, a Department of Education official, had engaged in "high-profile, in-your-face advocacy of things like NAMBLA and gay rights and queering elementa ...

        • Beck, Limbaugh fomenting fear about H1N1 vaccine
          In recent days, both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have suggested that the H1N1 flu vaccine may be unsafe and questioned the Obama administration's recommendation that Americans get vaccinated, with Limbaugh asserting that "[y]ou'll be healthier" if you don't believe what the government says and ...

        • Sports media gang-tackle Limbaugh's bid to buy St ...
          On October 6, Rush Limbaugh released a statement confirming that he and St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts "have made a bid to buy the [NFL's St. Louis] Rams and are continuing the process." In response, numerous sports journalists and figures -- including contributors to ESPN, where Limbaug ...

        • Fox News attacks ACORN over grant to give smoke d ...
          Fox News' Bill Hemmer criticized the Department of Homeland Security for awarding a since-rescinded fire prevention grant to ACORN, ignoring that the Bush administration awarded similar grants to ACORN in 2007. Moreover, other Fox personalities and The Washington Times claimed that Sen. David V ...

        Global Research.ca

        TPM Cafe

        • Khomeini guardian's jarring question
          Iran's ongoing internal "chess match," the intense controversy over Iran's presidential elections and the aftermath, is not only "not over," it's getting profoundly interesting. The charges & counter-charges continue to fly, with both sides dredging up extraordinary heavyweights, figuratively and... ...

        • Israeli Ambassador: Criticizing Gaza War Is Calli ...
          I have to wonder if Israel's new ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, is just trying to impress his boss, Prime Minister Netanyahu. I mean, it is just not possible that he honestly believes the hysterical nonsense he published... Sponsored Topics: Israel - Michael Oren - United States ...

        • Fatal Choices in Afghanistan
          I have always thought that Robert Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War, written in 1994 was one of the most prescient books of the last quarter century. Interweaving environmental degradation, ethnic migrations, the rise... Sponsored Topics: Afghanistan - Comin ...

        • Why Did We Pressure Palestinians To Deep Six Golds ...
          Mahmoud Abbas clearly knows the truth of the adage "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" The friend in this case is the United States. Last month a United Nations team headed by the distinguished South African jurist Richard Goldstone... Sponsored Topics: United States - Richard Goldsto ...

        • World Game Changer
          If this article from the U.K. Independent is true, the world financial center of gravity just moved. In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning - along with China, Russia, Japan and France... Sponsored Topics: Middle East - China - Russia - Saudi ...

        TruthOut

        • Firms Divided Over Obama's Emissions Cuts
              Washington - Momentum is building in Washington for an overhaul of climate policy, with President Barack Obama signing an executive order Monday directing federal agencies to monitor their greenhouse gas emissions and set targets to reduce their emissions by 2020.     Meanwhile, tensions ...

        • What Really Happened in Rwanda?
               Researchers Christian Davenport and Allan C. Stam say the accepted story of the mass killings of 1994 is incomplete, and the full truth - inconvenient as it may be to the Rwandan government - needs to come out.     In 1998 and 1999, we went to Rwanda and returned several times in subse ...

        • Afghanistan: Will Obama Listen to the Women?
               Eight years ago on October 7, the United States sent troops into Afghanistan. Having just returned from there, the author, co-founder with Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, brings an open letter to President Obama from prominent Afghan women and their supporters from Pakistan, India and the ...

        • Goofing Up Health Care Reform
              America's shouting match over health care reform has turned completely goofy - and I'm not talking about confused seniors at teabag rallies getting red-faced with anger after being told by the right-wing scare machine that "government is trying to taker over Medicare." No, I'm talking ...

        • An Open Letter to President Barack Obama
              Dear President Obama:     Afghanistan is the good war, you tell us, necessary to ensure that it not again become a training ground and base from which al-Qaeda can launch attacks against the United States. This is also what we heard from the Bush administration war criminals and from ot ...

        The Heathlander

        • The ‘Spirit of the IDF’
          Good to see the Israeli military is taking the recommendations of the Goldstone report on board: ‘The Israel Defense Forces should adopt a “Code of Ethics for the War on Terror,” because its existing ethical code is insufficient, according to Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, the head of Military Intelli ...

        • Docs to watch
          First up, American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein: There’s a good review in the Daily Star, which begins: ‘A dissenting voice is a peculiar thing. For those with a stake in a political status quo, the more contentious the issue, the more the dissident must be silenced. How this is do ...

        • Goldstone’s report on the Gaza massacre
          Reading through the Goldstone report [.pdf], one theme becomes immediately apparent: the deliberateness of the destruction in Gaza. The authors keep returning to this point throughout the text, in a direct rebuke to those liberal apologists for Israel who insist, contrary to all the evidence, that w ...

        • 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 ...

        Water - AlterNet

        TruthHugger

        • Sabotage Experts: US Coast Guard Exercise on 9/11, ...
          Coast Guard to review exercise after Potomac security scare Security incident on Potomac River prompted by “training exercise,” two police sources say Coast Guard told them. With the nation already on edge and somewhat paranoid on September 11 each year, what is the LAST thing you want to do? ...

        • Texas Progressive Alliance August 31, 2009
          It’s the week before Labor Day, and the Texas Progressive Alliance is hard at work bringing you the best of the Texas blogosphere. Here are this week’s highlights. The Texas Cloverleaf wonders why only one person showed up to a budget meeting where taxes are being increased in Denton County. No ...

        • 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 drillingâ€�–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.

        Dandelion Salad - Featured Writers' Posts

        Unexplained Mysteries

        • Jack the Ripper's identity finally uncovered?
          A historian has allegedly uncovered the real identity of infamous killer Jack the Ripper, his background, profile and the fact that he is likely t...

        • Blind boy uses his ears to 'see'
          Seven-year-old Lucas Murray is completely blind but is nonetheless able to see through a type of echolocation, a technique involving the use of cl...

        • New horned Tyrannosaurus discovered
          A new species of Tyrannosaur has been discovered by researchers in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, named Alioramus altai the new dinosaur was much sm...

        • Shroud of Turin 'is a medieval fake'
          Italian scientists who have been able to reproduce an effect with the same characteristics as the Shroud of Turin in an experiment have claimed th...

        • 2012 - facts vs predictions
          With 2012 only a few years away now theories and predictions of potential disasters set to occur are rampant, but exactly how much truth is there ...

        Grassroots

        • Honduras: 19 Days of Democracy
          der-protestas--13979.jpg The standoff in Honduras is reaching a critical point. The coup government, led by Roberto Michelleti Bain, has suspended five constitutional rights for 45 days. According to the Executive Decree, it is prohibited to a ...

        • Farmers are central to the success of any African ...
          Mamadou Goita, the Executive Director of the Institute for Research and the Promotion of Alternatives in Development (IRPAD) in Mali, was interviewed at the Salzburg Global Seminar by Susanna Thorpe, of WREN Media. IRPAD is a Grassroots International ally that works closely with our partner, the Via ...

        • Amigo, Can You Spare a BTU?
          Subheadline:  Mexican Peasants Pay the Price for U.S. Energy Consumption Outside Author Bio:  Daniel Moss is a Grassroots International consultant who spent a year living and working in Oaxaca ...

        • Calling President Obama
          DSC09338.JPG   With the dramatic return of President Manuel Zelaya to Honduras, the hemisphere is hoping for a solution to the political crisis that has lingered for 87 days. Still, President Obama has not taken a strong enough position on thi ...

        • Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission ...
            Last week, Justice Richard Goldstone of the United Nations Human Rights Council's Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict and his colleagues relesaed their report  on Israel's war on Gaza during December 2008-January 2009. Justice Goldstone is a former judge of South Africa's Constitutional Cour ...

        Climate

        • October 7, 2009
          G77 Members Walk Out Over Plan to Change Kyoto Pact (Reuters) Senior G77 members walked out of a meeting during climate talks in Bangkok last night, saying they would not discuss a future without the Kyoto Protocol climate pact. Mexico Describes US as a ‘Stumbling Block’ in Climate Talks (R ...

        • October 6, 2009
          Big Business Flexes Muscle on Capitol Hill for Climate Action (Politico) Two coalitions of top U.S. corporations are pouring into Washington this week and launching $1 million in advertising to prod the Senate and White House to accelerate an energy and climate bill. Apple Leaves Chamber of C ...

        • October 5, 2009
          China, 130 Countries: Rich Nations Trying to Sabotage Climate Treaty (Guardian) A joint statement by China and 130 developing countries at UN climate talks in Bangkok today accuses the US and other developed countries of attempting to "fundamentally sabotage" the Kyoto protocol and the negotiati ...

        • October 3-4, 2009
          Only 10 Days Left For Climate Deal, U.N.'S Ban Says (Reuters) UN head Ban Ki-moon warned on Saturday that negotiators had just 10 negotiating days left to secure a global climate deal and governments must not be hindered by domestic troubles. Obama Pressured to Return to Copenhagen for Climate ...

        • October 2, 2009
          Browner: Obama Unlikely to Sign Climate Bill Before Copenhagen (Reuters) President Obama is unlikely to sign climate legislation ahead of the UN global warming meeting, but he is committed to passing comprehensive legislation, White House climate and energy coordinator Carol Browner said today: ...

        TomDispatch

        • Tomgram: Ira Chernus, Cold War's Ghost Blocks Mid ...
          And you thought "don't ask, don't tell" was a U.S. law on gays in the military that Barack Obama has promised to change . As it turns out, the same phrase plays quite a different role in the Middle East, where Obama seems to have no intention of changing it at all. Successive administrations hav ...

        • Tomgram: Matt Bivens, Pox Americana
          With up to 61% of Americans, according to a recent poll, convinced that things are going badly indeed in Afghanistan and an official 9.8% of Americans unemployed, Congress is set to respond. This week, it's slated to pass a $636 billion appropriations bill for the Pentagon that will include anoth ...

        • Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Pipelineistan's Ultimate O ...
          Back before email, a world traveler who wanted to keep in touch and couldn't just pop into the nearest Internet café, might drop you a series of postcards from one exotic locale after another. Pepe Escobar, that edgy, peripatetic globe-trotting reporter for one of my favorite on-line publication ...

        • Tomgram: John Feffer, Will NATO's 60th Anniversar ...
          If you think the Afghan War is increasingly unpopular in the United States, try Europe. A recent German Marshall Fund poll offered these figures on the question of the "share of population who want to reduce or withdraw troops" from that country: Romania, 71%; Poland, 68%; United Kingdom, 60%; G ...

        • Tomgram: Arundhati Roy, Is Democracy Melting?
          So you, as a citizen, want to run for a seat in the House of Representatives? Well, you may be too late. Back in 1990, according to OpenSecrets.org , a website of the Center for Responsive Politics, the average cost of a winning campaign for the House was $407,556. Pocket change for your averag ...

        Smirking Chimp

        • Behind closed doors: Who cares who David Letterman ...
          Well, the national economy is still terrible, and the situation in Michigan far worse. The deal under which Roger "Superman" Penske would have saved the auto manufacturer Saturn fell apart, which probably means thousands more jobs down the drain. And in Lansing, the dysfunctional set of wretches kno ...

        • Barack Hussein Hoover: It's 1933 Again. But FDR Lo ...
          NEW YORK--When the economic collapse began a year ago, many Americans took comfort in the historical parallels with the Great Depression. As it had in 1929, the current crisis began under the clueless reign of a Republican, George W. Bush. Universally reviled since his non-response to hurricane Katr ...

        • NBC Pressures Leno to Have Affair
          With its primetime and late night lineups in free fall, NBC is reportedly putting pressure on talk show host Jay Leno to have a scandalous affair, a network source confirmed today. "[NBC chairman] Jeff Zucker is adamant about this," the source said. "He wants Jay to be up to his neck in sexual monke ...

        • A War of Absurdity
          — from Truthdig Every once in a while, a statistic just jumps out at you in a way that makes everything else you hear on a subject seem beside the point, if not downright absurd. That was my reaction to the recent statement of the president's national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones ...

        • Obama's Mideast Peace Dilemma
          President Barack Obama’s quest for Middle East peace must navigate very tricky geopolitical straits, with some traditional American enemies emerging as possibly his best allies and usual U.S. allies arrayed as adversaries. To the surprise of some analysts, Obama is finding greater interest in a ...

        Ten Percent

        • 8 Years Ago Today
          “A US military attack would be another catastrophe for Afghanistan” Behjat, RAWA spokeswoman 25th September 2001 Sunday October 7th 2001 US President George W Bush has addressed the nation to announce the start of attacks on Afghanistan… “On my orders, the United States military has begun s ...

        • How Blair Helped Abbas Betray Palestinians
          Disgracefully the Palestinian Authority helped Israel bury the Goldstone report and the mechanics of power are as murky and dirty cash soaked as usual, as well as Abbas being blackmailed in Washington with his keenness for Gaza to continue to be hit to destroy his rivals in Hamas, guess which Peace ...

        • Guinea Fragments
          Does this story seem familiar, a former colony of Western occupiers, rich in resources, a chaotic struggle for power, an impoverished people, arms sellers making their profits, atrocities and other than the IMF/World Bank plans, no help offered, ‘investor confidence’ indeed. Thousands of people ...

        • IMFerialism
          Not really news… Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, said the United States, effectively the only member with veto power in the Washington-based institution, is looking to the IMF “to play a key role in assisting the assessment of G20 economic and financial policies.” Not all were sat ...

        • Last Surviving Leader Of The Warsaw Ghetto Uprisin ...
          Tributes have flowed for Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Jewish Ghetto uprising, who died on Friday aged 87. The revolt broke out in protest at the mass transportation by the Nazis of Jews from the ghetto to concentration camps. With about 60,000 people still in the ghe ...

        Paul Krugman

        No Quarter

        • Stan McChrystal’s Bold Vision
          Looks like Barack Obama and his allies on the Hill who are attacking the integrity of General Stanley McChrystal are illiterate. How else to explain their ignorant statements that are so at odds with what General Mcchrystal actually wrote and recommended. So here’s your homework. Read the Genera ...

        • Mr. President, Why Did You Want This Job?
          I would like an answer to my question. How can someone be so determined to knock everyone else off the stage that he would spend nearly a billion dollars to do it, and when his waffling and doubling dealing in office don’t yield the desired result, blame President Bush and everyone else under the ...

        • Star Dust Losing Its Glitter … and Studio Heads ...
          (Bumped up and expanded from Monday.) A few weeks ago, Will Ferrell and other Hollywood celebrities along with Moveon.org felt the need to educate the American public regarding health care with a satirical video/spoof ad about “protecting” insurance company profits from health care reform. It w ...

        • An Inauspicious Anniversary
          Wednesday, October 7, 2009, marks the 8th Anniversary of the US War in Afghanistan. And, at this point, President Obama is trying to decide how he wants to go forward in Afghanistan: On the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama is gathering his nation ...

        • Fucking Stan McChrystal
          Stan McChrystal, the General now in charge of our military mission in Afghanistan, is a good man getting fucked by Washington politics. The good news is that he could care less about the politics. He is all about the mission. I am not a personal friend of the General but I have [...]

        Environmental Graffiti

        Foreign Policy in Focus

        Global Elite

        Al Jazeera

        Green Inc. - NYT

        • Will E.P.A. Climate Rules Pre-empt States?
          At least 18 states have adopted greenhouse gas rules of their own -- and they may not be pre-empted by federal regulation.

        • Google and the Energy Detective Join Forces
          Google announced this week that it was partnering with makers of the Energy Detective, an in-home power usage monitor, to provide consumers with real time information on home power usage over the Web.

        • Dow Unveils Solar Shingles
          Dow Chemical has unveiled a new solar shingle that can be nailed to a roof like its asphalt predecessor -- but which generates electricity. Test marketing is to begin in 2010.

        • Chamber Representative Says Clean Energy Mandates ...
          At a forum in New York, a representative of the United States Chamber of Commerce discussed his concerns about how clean-energy and efficiency mandates "distort the workings of the market."

        • A Greener Way to Drink Wine? Try a Barrel.
          Winemakers are devising new ways to deliver wine that cut down on packaging and weight -- including using bar-top wine barrels for use in restaurants.

        Dot Earth News

        Doug Feith : Hong Pong

        • A quick hit from the G20: Democracy 101 by Indymed ...
          I was proud to help contribute some footage to this video - soon enough there will be more video out from what happened at the G20. For now please just check this out. It's certainly a "rough cut" and needs some help in the narrative & so forth, but it's a great intro to the widespread police abuse ...

        • Afghanistan UN elections approval unit breaks up u ...
          Gold busted up and out of the old confines as good ol' snarly British antiwar journalist Robert Fisk broke the big news: the Petrodollar cycling system is finally going off the rails as the world's central bankers start digging for a new solution. [This Petrodollar system was the big achievement of ...

        • Sibel Edmonds case: spelled out with the names & d ...
          For those of you just tuning in... Sibel Edmonds worked at the FBI after 9/11, bumped into a big criminal conspiracy, tried to blow the whistle in 2002, got the "States Secret Privilege" gag, which she defied a couple months ago for a deposition in an Ohio case. In a new interview with Phil Giraldi, ...

        • Yr humble correspondent reports back on G20 with A ...
          Alright so I've been out in Pittsburgh helping cover the G20 conference -- things got pretty hairy out here. We've hunkered down at the Pittsburgh Indymedia Center ( http://indypgh.org ) and the crew has turned out a ton of videos of police brutality that have gone viral over Internets! I just did a ...

        • Supercoca Boliviana Negra cocaine win: Glyphosate/ ...
          Boliviana negra - Wikipedia, Also known as supercoca or la millionaria , Boliviana Negra is a relatively new form of coca that is resistant to herbicide Roundup , or the isopropylamine salt of glyphosate . The coca plant is the precursor to the addictive stimulant cocaine , one of the most widely c ...

        Daily Censored

        • Enough is Enough! I’m not sure which is worse… ...
            I know we’ve all heard the buzz for years, our President trading favors in cars for drugs and the ‘open’ secrets that go around in Chicago. Frankly, I’m a little tired of it as are others I’m quite certain. The ‘Larry Sinclair’ story, the weird tales about the church murders, t ...

        • Another Death Wish For Obama On Fox Nation
          Read the full story at News Hounds We have repeatedly posted about death threats toward President Obama on Fox Nation, the website that boasts about its commitment to tolerance and civil discourse. We just found another one. This reader says he hopes Obama “gets what Kennedy got.” All comments a ...

        • Doocy And Kilmeade Use Questions To Slap At Obamaâ ...
          Read the full story at News Hounds Guest blogged by notveryhow “To question is the answer.” It’s a Unitarian thing, but it seems an apt description of this Fox & Friends interview with Dana Perino (of “What Cuban Missile Crisis?” fame), former press secretary to George W. Bush, on Monday ( ...

        • DEVELOPMENT: Rural India Set to Ring in 3G Mobile ...
          Read the full story at IPS Inter Press Service – Media, Technology & Communications NEW DELHI, Oct 8 (IPS) – As India prepares to roll out third-generation (3G) mobile services in the world’s fastest growing telecom market, there are high expectations that it will benefit people in the vast, i ...

        • Gold Digger! Beck Promotes Investment In Gold Whil ...
          Read the full story at Think Progress Yesterday at the top of his Fox News show, Glenn Beck said that America might be “facing the end of the almighty dollar.” He then did an entire segment decrying the demise of the dollar and warning about hyperinflation. As a brilliant solution, he advocated ...

        AlterNet's Breaking News

        Institute for Policy Studies

        Reuters - Most Popular Articles

        • Barbra Streisand tops U.S. pop chart for ninth tim ...
          LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Barbra Streisand scored her ninth No. 1 album on the U.S. pop chart on Wednesday with a jazz release that overshadowed high-profile releases by some much-younger artists.

        • Pakistan wants US 'trust,' drones, market access
          (For more on Pakistan and Afghanistan, click on [ID:nAFPAK]) * Pakistan appeals for trade as well as aid * Islamabad wants U.S. to give it "drone" technology * Stop doubting the ISI, foreign minister says (Adds U.S. lawmaker's denunciation of Pakistan criticism, paragraphs 13-17) By Simon Denyer an ...

        • Pakistan wants U.S. "'trust", drones, market acces ...
          WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As President Barack Obama discusses the U.S. strategy toward Pakistan with his top advisers Wednesday, Pakistan's foreign minister appealed for market access, military technology -- and above all, trust.

        • Amazon up on Kindle price cut, overseas launch
          SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Shares of Amazon.com Inc rose as high as 4 percent on Wednesday after the global online retailer announced it would launch its popular Kindle electronic reader overseas and cut the price of its U.S. Kindle in advance of the holidays.

        • Guy Ritchie says he still loves "retarded" Madonna
          A year after Madonna called him "emotionally retarded," former husband Guy Ritchie said in an Esquire magazine interview that hit the Web on Wednesday that he still loves her, but that she is "retarded" herself.

        Pine River World News

        • SPECIAL REPORT: The Dark Side of Christian Science
          [ Blogmaster note :  I am the author of this report which was first published in 2005. It was removed from the internet shortly thereafter at the request of numerous readers. I am now republishing this report in its original version. I ask that readers not reproduce this report , but link to it inst ...

        • N. Korea media: "Israel had better mind its own bu ...
          The following article is reprinted with permission from Korea News Service (KNS), Tokyo, quoting North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Pyongyang. Foolish Remarks of Israeli Defence Minister Censured ©   KCNA October 6, 2009 Pyongyang, October 6 (KCNA) -- Israeli Minister of Defence Bara ...

        • Niger Delta: Ex-militants to guard oil pipelines
          ©  Pine River World News / IntelTrends October 6, 2009 Nigerian president Umaru Yar'Adua has been offering amnesty to Niger Delta militants who desist kidnappings, violence and sabotage against the government, oil companies and infrastructure. Under the program, militants are expected to surrender ...

        • Obama's Olympic failure
          The following commentary is reprinted with permission of World Socialist Web Site. Obama's Olympic failure ©   World Socialist Web Site By Tom Eley October 5, 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama's failed effort to attract the 2016 Olympics to his adopted home city of Chicago reveals much about the ch ...

        • Paul Craig Roberts: How the Feds Imprison the Inno ...
          The following column is reprinted with permission from Paul Craig Roberts. How the Feds Imprison the Innocent ©  Paul Craig Roberts October 05, 2009 Authors of serious books seldom have cause to celebrate, but Larry Stratton and I have two reasons to open the champagne. Crown Publishing, a divisio ...

        MSM Blogging

        Res'Eau-WaterNet

        PDA AMERICA

        • Tim Says It’s Time - “Time to go to Ja ...
          Tim Says It’s Time - “Time to go to Jail,” - Tim Carpenter, PDA National Director Crossposted from PDA Illinois Tim Carpenter’s statement below is: “One of the most serious calls to action I’ve ever ...

        • The Film That Can Stop the War
          The Film That Can Stop the War, How to Put it on Your Community Access TV Station It’s do or die time for the peace movement, as the Obama administration heads for granting all or part ...

        • Now or Never
          They said single-payer was off the table. In the next two weeks there will be a floor vote on HR 676 in the House. We need to get a big majority of Democrats to ...

        • Video: Greg Palast at Fighting Bob Fest–Arm ...
          Palast was the last speaker of the day at FBF 2009. Everyone stayed to hear Greg’s report on HealthCare, Afghanistan and a host of other issues crippling our nation. Here he is….

        • Congressman Grayson Has Just Begun to Fight
          Cross-posted from the Nation | by John Nichols on 10/01/2009 @ 08:15am Washington Republicans are horrified, horrified, horrified by the bluntness of Florida Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson. The tough kid from the Bronx (and Harvard Law School) ...

        Marler Blog

        • Settlement reached with Cargill on HUS E. coli cas ...
          Late Wednesday afternoon a confidential settlement was reached by the parents of Ruth Hemmingson, an eleven years old from Mahtomedi, Minnesota and Cargill stemming from a 2007 E. coli O157:H outbreak linked to Cargill hamburger. Ruth spent over a month in the hospital. She developed Hemolytic Urem ...

        • If there was an Undersecretary of Agriculture for ...
          Or, what I would do if I changed jobs? The position, although still unfilled, of Undersecretary for Food Safety plainly exists for a reason. Its sole mission should be food safety and public safety. The Undersecretary for food safety should, and needs to, be the responsible person within the FSIS ...

        • Cargill issued this statement in response to the N ...
          "In October 2007 when we learned there may be a problem, we immediately instituted a voluntary recall. A number of people were sickened, including Ms. Smith. Our hearts go out to Ms. Smith and her family, as well as the others whose lives have been so affected by O157:H7. Cargill conducts nearly 400 ...

        • Another Reason that Food Safety is Important to Bu ...
          An 86 year old Wisconsin woman has reached a confidential out-of-court settlement with the fresh produce growers and processors who she says poisoned her three years ago with a bag of spinach contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.  Jane Majeska of Fond du Lac sued Dole, National Selection Foods, Mission ...

        • DeLauro Calls for USDA Investigation into Tainted ...
          The Honorable Tom Vilsack Secretary United States Department of Agriculture Room 200-A, Jamie L. Whitten Building 12th Street & Jefferson Drive, SW Washington, DC 20250-0002 Dear Mr. Secretary: I am writing to strongly urge the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food Safety and Insp ...

        AutoblogGreen

        • AutoblogGreen for 10.08.09
          AltCar 2009: Riding in Green Vehicles' Triac, a prototype that is not quite ready This trike is going into full production in 60 days. Is that enough? Chevy Volt heads to Pikes Peak to practice mountain c ...

        • 2010 Green Car of the Year finalists announced, di ...
          Filed under: LA Auto Show , Hybrid , Diesel Last year, Volkswagen's new Jetta TDI was named the 2009 Green Car of the Year at the LA Auto Show , which means that the Volkswagen Golf TDI has a bit of baggage if it wants to win the 2010 award. Regardless, the Golf was named one of five finalists today ...

        • AutoblogGreen for 10.07.09
          AltCar 2009: EF9's "unlimited clean energy" turbine could go into cars, if it works No comment. Dear Santa: Mission One number two on Neiman Marcus Christmas Book Fantasy List We've been good ...

        • REPORT: GM sees more demand than supply with the C ...
          Filed under: Hybrid , Sedan , Chevrolet , GM 2011 Chevrolet Volt - Click above for high-res image gallery General Motors has already said the Chevrolet Volt will be in short supply at launch . But that isn't stopping Bob Lutz from going out and talking about how popular the hybrid already is -- ev ...

        • AutoblogGreen for 10.06.09
          AltCar 2009: Coda Sedan test ride; wish we could drive the $30,000 (or so) electric vehicle It's a year or more from when first deliveries will take place, so and all we got to do was ride shotgun. ...

        Rafe's Radar

        • OneRiot aims to make money from Twitter search
          The real-time search company OneRiot is launching an advertising play for Twitter. The new feature, called RiotWise, lets content companies push links to their stories on the OneRiot search result pages. It's unlike every other online ad play out there in that the advertisements are for content, ...

        • RR04: How to launch a product
          Should you launch your product at a trade show like Demo or CES, or should you try to drum up interest on your own? This week on the Roundtable, Revision 3 CEO Jim Louderback and Stage Two Consulting's Jeremy Toeman discuss successful and doomed strategies for introducing new products to the mark ...

        • Six Apart resurrects Pownce in new microblogging p ...
          At the Future of Web Apps conference in London this week, blog platform company Six Apart is announcing a new open-source platform called Motion , to be available for download, that enables any Web host or developer to host their own Twitter-like microblog service. The technology is derived from ...

        • Google Wave meets conference calls, with Ribbit
          Ribbit puts a conference bridge inside a Wave message. (Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET) It's becoming clear that Google Wave , which is slowly emerging from closed beta , has potential to be much more than a text-messaging platform. As the telecommunications platform company Ribbit shows ...

        • Reporters' Roundtable #3: Mint CEO Aaron Patzer
          This week, I'm joined by CNET security expert Elinor Mills in a discussion with Mint CEO Aaron Patzer, whose personal finance site is being acquired by Inuit. We grill Patzer on why he sold the company, the future of Quicken, and the security of online financial data. Listen now: Download ...

        Camera Obscura

        • Pathos and pathology: the cinema of Todd Haynes.
          http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-126935025/pathos-and-pathology-cinema.html September 1, 2004... Because infinity--for the eye--begins just a few meters away from the retina.... --Roger Caillois, "The Image" There are at least two shots in Todd Haynes's work that recur so frequ ...

        • The incredible shrinking star: Todd Haynes and the ...
          http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-126935026/incredible-shrinking-star-todd.html September 1, 2004... Critics have consistently characterized the films of Todd Haynes within the terms of what B. Ruby Rich described in 1992 as the "new queer cinema"--films whose style displayed traces of ...

        • Written on the screen: mediation and immersion in ...
          http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-126935031/written-screen-mediation-and.html September 1, 2004... Recently, while engaging in one of my favorite forms of procrastination--using my computer to search for mid-century modern bargains on eBay rather than using it to engage in more rigorous ...

        • Traumatic postmodern histories: Velvet Goldmine's ...
          http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-126935030/traumatic-postmodern-histories-velvet.html September 1, 2004... If modernity was characterized by and imagined itself in terms of a particular awareness of time and history--the unfolding of social, political, and technological projects of pro ...

        • Dangerous spaces: Safe.
          http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-126935029/dangerous-spaces-safe.html September 1, 2004... For me, the problem is always in content; we want to define the perspective of a film solely through its content, and not through its form. --Todd Haynes No matter how much we desire, wit ...

        Democracy Now!

        • Watch What You Tweet
          A social worker from New York City was arrested last week while in Pittsburgh for the G-20 protests, then subjected to an FBI raid this week at home—all for using Twitter. Elliot Madison faces charges of hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possessio ...

        • Nomi Prins on "It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bail ...
          Nomi Prins is a former investment banker turned journalist. She worked at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. She is the author of several books; her latest, just out, is called It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street . She spoke on the them ...

        • Scanning the Horizon of Books and Libraries
          A battle is raging over the future of books in the digital age and the role that libraries will play. One case now before a U.S. federal court may, some say, grant a practical monopoly on recorded human knowledge to global Internet search giant Google. The complex case has attracted opposition from ...

        • Police Crackdown on G20 Protests: Democracy Now! R ...
          World leaders are gathering in Pittsburgh for the G20 summit under the shadow of a police crackdown on protesters in the streets. Heavily-armed riot police are out in force all over the city, using tear gas, stun grenades, smoke canisters, and sound cannons, which direct extremely loud shrill sound ...

        • Arun Gupta asks "What Anti-War Movement?"
          It has now been eight years since 9/11. The United States is still engaged in Iraq and is escalating its wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan with no end in site. Speaking at the Bluestockings Bookstore on the Lower East Side in New York, Arun Gupta, a founding Editor of The Indypendent , takes a cr ...

        Farming Pathogens

        • I Do Like Green Eggs and Ham
          Much of what we’ve addressed on this blog has focused on the epidemiological failures of industrial farming. But what of the alternatives? Can we farm in another way? Is another world possible?    It’s only since I’ve moved to the Midwest that I’ve learned that not only is that world p ...

        • Heart of Modeling
          Greed is often mistaken for humanity’s heart of darkness. Look instead to the rationalization that transforms the most rapacious pillaging into an act of benevolence. A one-ton bomb dropped on a peasant wedding party is dissembled into regret without responsibility or, baser yet, a tough love offe ...

        • Bird Flu’s Industrial Revolution
          Public talks can be private affairs. In sharing our work we bare the triumphs and limits of a thinking born in long hours alone or with a few fellow conspirators sworn to secrecy. But in breaking our oaths we are able to take the next step.   In talking bird flu twice this past month I learned [... ...

        • The Agro-Industrial Roots of Swine Flu H1N1
          Mexico appears ground zero for an outbreak of deadly human-specific H1N1.   Of the over 1400 people that have been reportedly infected there so far, 86 have died. Short chains of transmission of the virus have also been reported in California, Texas, Kansas, Ohio, New York City, Canada and New Zeal ...

        • The NAFTA Flu
          Cases of swine flu H1N1 are now reported in Honduras, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Austria, Thailand, Israel, etc. Can’t keep up at this point.    H1N1 is making its way across the world by hierarchical diffusion. By the world’s transportation network it is bouncing down a hierarchy of citi ...

        Digg Green

        • Seawater Plants Yield Green Aviation Fuel in New R ...
          Boeing is looking into ways of producing commercially viable aviation fuel from saltwater plants in a push toward reducing carbon emissions from air travel. Research has shown that plants, such as saltwater mangroves, thrive when irrigated with seawater and can be produced in large quantities to ext ...

        • Canadian Study Shows Air Pollution May Trigger App ...
          What? How? We all know that air pollution is a bad thing. Not good for your lungs, not good for your heart. Asthmatics, children and older folks are particularly at risk. But a new Canadian study claims that air pollution is also increasing the risk of appendicitis in adults. Even short-term exposur ...

        • E.U. Plan to Curb Carbon Dioxide Would Favor Solar ...
          The plan is intended to show that the European Union is taking the additional steps to cut greenhouse gases before a summit meeting in Copenhagen in December.

        • 16 Incredible Insect Macro Photographs
          Thomas Shahan has a knack for getting up close and personal with bugs, and making even the most underestimated arthropods look cute, interesting, and downright gorgeous.

        • CA Solar-Thermal Power Pjt Bumped For New National ...
          In 2008 we learned BrightSource [was] to Build 500 Megawatts of Solar-Thermal Power in Mojave Desert. By fall the proposed project had become a very visible symbol of a bright future for concentrated solar power (CSP) in CA. Seems there has been a change of plans...The site of the proposed solar pow ...

        Invisible Opportunity

        • Doctor Admits Vaccine Is More Deadly Than Swine Fl ...
          The Swine Flu is an orchestrated attempt to spread fear and chaos into the population and to try to get people vaccinated, which everyone should know contains mercury that damages your nervous system. Mercury, of course, is one of the most toxic substances you can put in a human body. It is a heavy ...

        • Autism rates double in children as vaccines poison ...
          By Mike Adams According to a U.S. government survey just published, rates of autism in children have doubled since 2003. Today, an estimated 1 in 91 children are being diagnosed with autism, making this the highest rate in any population in the history of human civilization. Meanwhile, the vaccinati ...

        • Harvard Survey: Only One Third Of Americans Believ ...
          By Steve Watson A survey conducted by Harvard University has found that only one third of adults trust the safety of the imminently available H1N1 vaccine. Just 40% of respondents said they would take the swine flu shot in the poll carried out by Harvard Opinion Research Program at Harvard School of ...

        • Are New Vaccines Laced With Birth-Control Drugs?
          By J.A. Miller During the early 1990s, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been overseeing massive vaccination campaigns against  tetanus in a number of countries, among them Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines. In October 1994, HLI received a communication from its Mexican affiliate, t ...

        • Will real health reform ever happen in America?
          By Mike Adams When it comes to affordable, effective health care reform in America, there’s only one question that really needs to be asked right now: What works? In other words, what works to keep people healthy? What’s affordable, safe and supports the long-term health of the population? Whatâ ...

        Cognitive Research - Sciences

        Care2 Picks

        • Rumours of War -Destroyers of Peace
          Topical news stories around Iran's nuclear generation plants and a comment with a different twist : why did Iran sign the NPT ? Doing so meant other nations were required to respect her right to use nuclear tech responsibly ! The downside is different too Submitted by John Farnham to US Politics & G ...

        • CIA Experiments on US Soldiers Linked to Torture P ...
          illegal human experimentation on US-held "terrorism" prisoners undergoing torture experiments by a CIA researcher on human subjects undergoing SERE training went unreported Submitted by John Farnham to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

        • David Icke - Freedom Road Part 1-30 HR
          YouTube 4 hour video on the history of humanity's enslavement by teaching all a planned program to restrict viewpoint, discussion and development. Submitted by John Farnham to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

        • "The Penultimate Trump" - By: Dr. Robert C.W. Ett ...
          A chilling story with a smash-hit ending! Follow the life of Harley D. Haworth who has everything, except a trump card against death. Gambling his vast fortune he turns the tables on the grim reaper of finality, entering a strange and different world~~~~ Submitted by SirRobert THE FIFTH KNIGHT to Sc ...

        • World's last great forest under threat: new study
          The world's last remaining "pristine" forest - the boreal forest across large stretches of Russia, Canada and other northern countries - is under increasing threat, a team of international researchers has found Submitted by Cal Mendelsohn to Environment  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

        Insurgency Watch - Newswire

        • Car bomb kills at least 12 outside Indian embassy ...
          ReutersCar bomb kills at least 12 outside Indian embassy in KabulLos Angeles TimesAP KABUL, Afghanistan - A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Indian embassy in the busy center of this Afghanistan capital early today, killing at least ...At Least 1...

        • India says embassy was target of Kabul bomb &#8211 ...
          India says embassy was target of Kabul bomb Sin Chew Jit Poh New Delhi blamed that attack on "elements" in Pakistan , and Rao said that security measures introduced since then had protected the embassy and its staff ... and more »

        • Obama rules out deep cuts into US force levels in ...
          Obama rules out deep cuts into US force levels in Afghanistan People's Daily Online ... the assassinations of al-Qaida leaders and support for the government of neighboring Pakistan in its fight against the Taliban . ... and more »

        • Pakistan’s military rejects US aid package & ...
          Pakistan's military rejects US aid package Denver Post Any breakdown in intelligence sharing and other types of cooperation would hurt the American fight against a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. ...

        • Pak “not willing” to prevent infiltrat ...
          Pak "not willing" to prevent infiltration into J&K: Antony Indiatimes ... Jammu and Kashmir," he said to a query on reports of a large number of ex- Taliban members waiting to infiltrate from across the border with Pakistan . ...

        AlterNet - Rights and Liberties

        Sideways News

        • Facebook happiness index tracks US mood
          Facebook has been tracking the mood of people in the US using a Gross National Happiness index .

        • Winner of the Week: Hilary Mantel
          Author Hilary Mantel has been named the winner of this year’s prestigious Man Booker Prize  for her historical novel Wolf Hall

        • Biggest ever dinosaur footprints found
          The largest dinosaur footprints ever found have been unearthed by amateur fossil hunters in France . Measuring up to 1.5m in diameter, the prints are thought to have been made by a sauropod-type dino like the diplodocus , which could have weighed as much as 40 tonnes.

        • Amazon's Kindle goes global
          Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader will be made available to UK consumers this month, meaning keen readers will soon be able to carry up to 1,500 books

        • Apple resigns from Chamber of Commerce
          Apple has become the latest company to resign from the US Chamber of Commerce over its policy on climate change.

        Fabius Maximus

        • Stratfor debunks myths about nuclear weapons and t ...
          A timely and important report from Stratfor.  I strongly recommend reading it in full.  This is what Stratfor does best, and they are one of the best public sources for this kind of analysis. “Debunking Myths About Nuclear Weapons and Terrorism“, Stratfor, 29 May 2009 Contents Terrorist ...

        • Are we defending the Pakistan of our dreams, or th ...
          We’re told that we fight to protect Pakistan – but how many of its people want US help, or even share our views about the threat? “Analysis: Pakistan not apt to cooperate“, AP, 25 September 2009 — A confused mish-mash of views and information, although the headline is probably co ...

        • Stratfor: “Two Leaks and the Deepening Iran ...
          “Two Leaks and the Deepening Iran Crisis“, George Friedman, Stratfor, 5 October 2009 — Reprinted in full with permission.  Linds to other posts about Iran appear at the end. Two major leaks occurred this weekend over the Iran matter. In the first, The New York Times published an article rep ...

        • Today’s hot rumor: Fisk’s story about ...
          “The demise of the dollar“, Robert Fisk, The Independent, 6 October 2009 — “In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.” In the most profound financial change in recent ...

        • Economists discuss the impact of the stimulus on o ...
          Many comments requested this, so I have written this in haste.  It’s a partial, with more to come. Contents  Economic advisors of Bush and John McCain Other economists Government analysis (1)  Economic advisors of Bush and John McCain (a)  From The Washington Independent, 7 August 20 ...

        sibeledmonds - tweets

        WIRED Magazine | Science

        • Nobel Prize for the Chemistry of Protein Productio ...
          This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three molecular biologists who study ribosomes, the protein factories within cells. Ribosomes were discovered in the 1950’s by George Palade, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the makeup of cells, but scient ...

        • Alligator Swamps Are Lousy With Monogamy
          Alligators don’t seem to be the promiscuous, indiscriminate reptiles scientists once though they were. A new 10-year study of alligator mating habits shows that most female crocodilians prefer to mate over and over with the same male, despite encountering a vast array of eligible alligator bachel ...

        • More Than Meets the Eye: How the CCD Transformed S ...
          The 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics went, in part, to the inventors of the charge-coupled device George Smith and Willard Boyle this week. Their innovation, sketched out in 1969, is now the imager in millions of digital cameras and telescopes. digg_url ="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/ccd-s ...

        • Beyond the Genome
          When scientists finished sequencing the human genome, the answers to diseases were supposed to follow. Six years later, that promise has gone unfulfilled. Genetics just isn’t that useful for predicting who gets sick, and why. The blueprint of life turned out to be an intriguing parts list. “Itâ ...

        • Supermassive Black Holes Collide to Become Even Mo ...
          New X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory added to an image previously captured by the Hubble Space Telescope created this amazing composite image of two black holes on the verge of colliding. The two supermassive black holes, which show up as two points of light in the center of th ...

        The Progressive Realist

        • Are China and Russia Free-riding on American Invol ...
          Center for a New American Security Senior Fellow Robert Kaplan has an excellent op-ed in today's New York Times that offers a balanced assessment of the regional and great power dimensions of the United States' involvement in Afghanistan. As Steve Clemons and Steve Coll have noted in recent we ...

        • Stakes are Higher in Pakistan than Afghanistan
          In Afghanistan, the Obama administration faces an array of agonizing choices, none of which is good. Making matters worse, the most important strategic issue is not Afghanistan. The strategic fulcrum in containing and defeating the insurgency that is spilling over and across the Hindu Kush is Pakist ...

        • Using White Phosphorous in Afghanistan: Is that CO ...
          The story of the assault against US troops at Wanat, Afghanistan, has been taking up a lot of blog space elsewhere and finally made the Washington Post in a series of good articles by Greg Jaffe . One of the things noted by some is the use of white phosphorus against suspected Taliban forces. ...

        • All the Non-news Fit to Print: Obama Rules Out Lar ...
          So reports The New York Times . But was there ever any indication that this was under consideration? He campaigned on increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan and has, in fact, delivered on that promised increase. I always understood the debate to be a debate about whether or not to have a fur ...

        • In the Midst of European Shift to the Right, Socia ...
          This seems to have gotten very little attention, but Greece changed governments last week. The ruling center-right New Democracy (ND) party called elections a couple of months ago, and the result was that — predictably — they got stomped hard. ND had a wafer-thin majority of 152 seats out of ...

        TAPPED - The American Prospect

        • Lightning Round: Life of the Party.
          It's often taken as a given that the House will vote for a health-care reform bill that includes a strong public option. But now we have the numbers, in the form of an internal whip count , showing three-quarters of the Democratic caucus is already on board (which makes this raise my eyebrow). Mean ...

        • Passing Environmental Science.
          Back in August, The New York Times published a pretty damning feature on the harmful effects of atrazine: Even in "safe" quantities, the presence of the weed killer in drinking water could cause birth defects, menstrual problems, and cancer, according to recent studies. The idea that the thing we ne ...

        • Today's Health Care News, In A Twitter Nutshell.
          The Congressional Budget Office scoring of Max Baucus ' health-care bill is out. Here's how Michelle Malkin reacted : AP: Congress' budget experts say Senate cmte health bill costs $829 billion over 10 yrs To which Salon's Mike Madden responded : Yes, but they also say it's paid for and will reduce ...

        • "Lively" Debates about National Security.
          Matt riffs off an Abu Muquwama post on the kinds of discussions going on at national security think tank Center for a New American Security . Matt makes good points about the problems in our current national security debate -- "a debate that ranges from 'we should fight a series of small wars agains ...

        • The Takeaway From Today's Bill Ayers Fiasco.
          Bill Ayers , accosted by a conservative blogger in an airport, jokingly confessed to having written Barack Obama 's memoir, Dreams From My Father , mocking a theory that is now a staple of the conspiracy minded right's political mythology. Dave Weigel explains who bought it: People he’s duped so ...

        Andy Worthington

        • FILM LAUNCH: Outside the Law: Stories from Guantá ...
          Where: Cochrane Theatre, Southampton Row, London WC1 When: Wednesday October 21, 2009. Doors open 6 pm, film starts 7 pm. Q&A with Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes, Andy Worthington and Polly Nash starts 8.30 pm. Tickets are free but must be booked via the Cochrane Theatre website. This event is in assoc ...

        • Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo And Bagram ...
          On Friday, just a few hours before I spoke to Jeff Farias, I was interviewed by Scott Horton for Antiwar Radio (the 22-minute show was broadcast on Monday, and is available here). In our tenth outing, Scott and I ran though some recent history: the administration’s decision not to push for new leg ...

        • On Guantánamo, Lawmakers Reveal They Are Still Di ...
          I like to believe that, despite studying Guantánamo for four years, I still have a sense of humor, but last Thursday I lost it, after 258 members of the House of Representatives (including 88 members of President Obama’s own party) voted for an idiotic, paranoid and unjust motion proposed by Rep. ...

        • 75 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 31 C ...
          Last week, the Obama administration finally admitted that it might not be possible to close Guantánamo by the President’s self-imposed deadline of January 22, 2010, when defense secretary Robert Gates told ABC News’ “This Week” that it was “going to be tough” to meet the deadline. The a ...

        • Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo And Habeas ...
          On Friday (at half past midnight in the UK), I was delighted to prop up my wilting eyelids to talk to leading progressive radio host Jeff Farias about the latest disturbing developments in the Guantánamo story. The particular spur for the interview was the recent — and electrifying — District ...

        Buzzflash

        • The 'graveyard of empires' beckons, despite oursel ...
          Body Assuming the latest Associated Press-GfK poll is accurate -- granted, a debatable assumption, since it shows significant, twin upticks in President Obama's handling of health care and the economy, even though his management of these issues has undergone nearly unnoticeable change -- ...

        • Dawn Smith Goes to The Top in Her Fight Against CI ...
          WINGS OF JUSTICE Dawn Smith Dealing with nameless, faceless people on the phone with health insurance companies is one of the most frustrating parts of coping with the U.S. health care system. Dawn Smith certainly knows this first hand. Smith has two brain tumors and only one insurance company (CIG ...

        • GOP Candidate For CA Governor Blames Not Voting Fo ...
          The question to ask is as obvious as The moustache on the face of Gene Shalit: Hasn't Meg Whitman ever heard of The option of using an absentee ballot ?VERSE CASE SCENARIO read more

        • Bill Berkowitz: Attempted deconstruction of Chai F ...
          BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY by Bill Berkowitz Although no video has surfaced with her saying "I would hope that a wise Jewish lesbian with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion," a la the recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, nor has ...

        • Soldiers Fighting the War on Christmas Hypocritica ...
          BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White As the seasonal retail admonishment goes, Christmas comes earlier every year. And that means the religious right has already launched their annual war against the war on Christmas. But this year, the ultra-conservative American Family Association is taking the cr ...

        Glenn Greenwald - Salon

        • The still-missing central fact in the Iran drama
          (updated below) Ever since Iran reported the existence of its Qom enrichment facility to the IAEA, one central assertion has been repeated as fact over and over by the American media to make the story as incriminating as possible:  namely, that Iran only disclosed this because they discover ...

        • The suffocatingly narrow Afghanistan "debate"
          Washington Post , September 21, 2009 : McChrystal's assessment, in the view of two senior administration officials, is just "one input" in the White House's decision-making process. The president, another senior administration official said, "has embarked on a very, very serious review of all op ...

        • The joint Post/Obama defense of the Patriot Act an ...
          The Washington Post 's Anne Kornblut today produces an extreme piece of government-serving, stenographic "journalism," publishing a dubious administration press release masquerading as a lengthy news article on Obama's approach to Terrorism and civil liberties.  The Post depicts Obama as heavily a ...

        • Bagram: The sham of closing Guantanamo
          (updated below) It's now apparent that the biggest sham in American politics is Barack Obama's pledge to close Guantanamo and, more generally, to dismantle the Bush/Cheney approach to detaining accused Terrorists.  In August, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that Gua ...

        • The Post: U.S. must demand accountability for due ...
          (updated below) I'm asking this sincerely, not rhetorically:  is there anything other than extreme self-delusion, grounded in blinding self-regard ( i.e. , self-decreed exceptionalism), that can explain this?   The Washington Post Editorial Page today is demanding that the Obama administratio ...

        The BiPartisan Report

        • #WeLovetheNHS
          The astroturf organization, Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR), started a backlash across the Pond yesterday. As reported by the Daily Times the Brits didn't take too kindly to have their... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

        • Conservatives and “The Big Lie”
          It was GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss who pushed me over the edge. Not that I should be surprised that Chambliss would make up a lie out of whole cloth about health care. The only way that he got elected... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

        • Why the GOP can’t afford to have Obama succeed o ...
          I’m no big fan of Newt Gingrich, but I also know that he has a lot of political smarts (not that he always uses them appropriately). In the early part of the year, he made a very interesting... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

        • Senator Edward Kennedy – 1932-2009
          Senator Edward Kennedy has died, one year to the day after he gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention. In that speech, he restated the cause he has fought for consistently... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

        • 9/12 Movement Sign Glorified Domestic Terrorism
          There were many offensive signs at the so-called 9-12 rallies, so named as they were supposedly catching the spirit of unity immediately following the attacks on 9/11/2001. One sign, however, crossed... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ] ...

        Sciencebase




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