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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

1 Dec - RSS SnapShot!

Fading In The Shadows
When the sun rises at almost 8:30 am and the snow is blowing around to near blizzard conditions, it doesn't take much to visualize a scene such as this one !

Feeds Update From Opit's LinkFest! at My Opera

IPS - Inter Press Services

  • CLIMATE CHANGE: India Plays Guessing Game Ahead ...
    NEW DELHI, Dec 1 (IPS) - With one week left before the start of the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen, there is still no reliable word as to whether Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will attend, or whether or how much the South Asian state will commit itself to emission cuts ...

  • INDIA: Towards an AIDS-Free Society, But at What ...
    NEW DELHI, Dec 1 (IPS) - As the global community observes World AIDS Day today, India is caught in a rancorous debate about a government scheme which mandates that all pregnant women in the country be tested for HIV so that its 1.2 billion people can have "an AIDS-free generation".

  • WORLD AIDS DAY: Growing Up with HIV
    LUSAKA, Dec 1 (IPS) - Sixteen-year-old Andela Milambo* wants a husband. She is not looking for love, but for someone to share the burden of living with HIV. She wants to be able to take her medicine without having to hide, to discuss the recurring herpes with someone who understands.

  • INDIA: Climate Change Fuels Rural Out-Migration, ...
    BHUBANESWAR, India, Dec 1 (IPS/IFEJ) - Under a shed made of bamboo and corrugated sheet metal, Purusottam Sur feeds his two bullocks and a cow with a bundle each of dry paddy plant. A fifth of his five-acre paddy harvest will be used only as cattle feed; the rice seeds just did not develop becau ...

  • U.S.: Katrina Lawsuit Raises Broader Questions A ...
    ATLANTA, Georgia, Nov 30 (IPS) - Since a federal judge ruled earlier this month that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for the devastating 2005 levee breach at the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, some legal scholars believe that millions ...

Scoop - NZ

  • An email from the future
    Today almost 100,000 people around New Zealand received an email from a future self in 2020 ...  »  PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews

  • Alliance mortgage plan turns financial crisis into ...
    Alliance Party finance spokesperson Professor Jim Flynn says the government has to think outside the square to prevent ordinary New Zealanders losing their houses during the economic crisis because they can't afford their mortgage payments.In the wake of the news that in August this year at least 50 ...

  • The trouble with apocalypse
    The trouble with apocalypse is that most people have already seen it at the movie theater, watched it on television, read it in a book, or heard all about it from the pulpit. So inundated with the language of crisis are we that we have become immune to it. From the perspective of the historian our a ...

  • German banks face a4‚¬90bn fresh losses
    The Bundesbank has told German banks to take advantage of renewed confidence while they can to prepare for likely losses of a4‚¬90bn (£81bn) over the next year, warning that the delayed shock waves of the economic crisis still pose a major threat to global recovery and bank finance. The venerab ...

  • US headache over Afghan deserters
    One in every four combat soldiers quit the Afghan National Army (ANA) during the year ending in September, published data by the US Defense Department and the Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan reveals.That high rate of turnover in the ANA, driven by extremely high rates of desertio ...

Independent ( London )

  • Police kill coffee shop massacre suspect
    Police today shot and killed a man suspected of gunning down four police officers, a sheriff's spokesman said, a day after the man eluded police who had spent hours trying to coax him out of a house.

  • Obama ready to reveal Afghanistan war plans
    President Barack Obama today reveals his plan for winning an unpopular eight-year-old war in Afghanistan, embarking on a mission to sell sceptical Americans on the need to put thousands more troops in harm's way and to spend additional billions of taxpayer dollars.

  • Obama to reveal war plan
    President Barack Obama today reveals his plan for winning an unpopular eight-year-old war in Afghanistan, embarking on a mission to sell sceptical Americans on the need to put thousands more troops in harm's way and to spend additional billions of taxpayer dollars.

  • Former Miss Argentina dies after cosmetic surgery ...
    Former Miss Argentina, Solange Magnano, has died from complications after undergoing cosmetic surgery on her buttocks.

  • Cousins extradited over Cyprus death crash
    Two cousins are on their way to Cyprus today after they were extradited to serve three-year jail terms for killing a motorcyclist.

CASMII - Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

  • Iran Should Stop Talking About Leaving the NPT
    Summary: It does not bode well for either Iran's nuclear rights or national interests to be toying with the idea of leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its implementation arm, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). No matter what the just complaints of Iran regarding the unfa ...

  • Iran says to protest over IAEA nuclear resolution
    Summary: Mehmanparast TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday it intended to take unspecified legal action over an IAEA rebuke of its nuclear activities and would provide Iranians with enough gasoline in order to trump any further U.N. sanctions. source: Reuters read more

  • ElBaradei's last hurrah on Iran
    Summary: On Monday, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei stepped down after 12 years as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), passing the torch at the United Nations' nuclear watchdog to his Japanese successor, Yukiya Amano. The sixty-seven-year-old Egyptian leaves behind a rich leg ...

  • US, Iran Moving Again Toward Confrontation
    Summary: Iran’s announced intention to build 10 new nuclear enrichment plants has been deemed "unacceptable" by the administration of President Barack Obama, which warned Monday of increased pressure on Tehran if it does not soon accept Western proposals to curb its nuclear program. source: ...

  • Iran: Time to Leave the NPT?
    Summary: Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) acknowledges the "inalienable right" of non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS) to research, develop, and use nuclear energy for non-weapons purposes. The NPT also supports the "fullest possible exchange" of such nuclear-related information and ...

The Daily Galaxy

  • "Little Ice Age" 12,800 Years Ago Was Triggered in ...
    William Patterson, from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and his colleagues have shown that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini 'ice age' in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated...

  • Whale Song - 'Pop Culture' of the Planet's Largest ...
    Scientists are starting to consider the notion that whales might have a pretty cool culture. It looks as though Herman Melville picked the right hero for his epic novel.. "Whales are pretty hard to study, but evidence is coming up...

  • New Discovery: Supermassive Black Holes Create Gal ...
    The answer may have been found to the question of whether a galaxy or its black hole comes first -one of the most debated subjects in astrophysics today. A startling new study suggests that supermassive black holes can trigger the...

  • Mystery Jet from M87's Supermassive Black Hole Eje ...
    The flare-up in a jet of matter blasting from a monster black hole this past April is giving astronomers an incredible light show. Hubble Space Telescope image shows a 5000 light-year long jet being ejected from the active nucleus of...

  • Mystery of "X" at the Center of Spiral Galaxies
    Astronomy can be the most awesome and annoying thing in the world. The universe is stuffed with stunningly interesting events in every direction, but we're at the mercy of whether we're actually able to see them - we can't exactly...

Natural News

  • Shocking truth about AIDS exposed on World AIDS Da ...
    (NaturalNews) When Brunt Leung started showcasing his groundbreaking new documentary film about AIDS, "House of Numbers" (www.HouseOfNumbers.com), he had no way to comprehend the wave of defamatory attacks that would be unleashed against him. Promoters of conventional AIDS theories (with all their v ...

  • Congressional speeches written by Big Pharma lobby ...
    (NaturalNews) The New York Times recently unveiled a story about industry lobbyists and the power they have over the United States Congress. Examination of a series of statements made by 42 Congressmen revealed that Genentech, the world's largest biotechnology company, has been ghostwriting industry ...

  • Flaxseed oil could reduce the risk of osteoporosis ...
    (NaturalNews) After menopause, women are at increased risk for the bone-weakening condition known as osteoporosis. And women who are diabetic have an even greater chance of developing the disorder. But now comes research from Egyptian scientists that suggests flaxseed oil could be a natural way to p ...

  • ClimateGate scandal demonstrates intellectual prot ...
    (NaturalNews) The inconvenient release of private email conversations among climate change scientists has been a boon for climate change skeptics. What emerges from the leaked emails is a depiction of a group of scientists who practice "intellectual protectionism" -- meaning they know they're right ...

  • Deadly MRSA superbug has 50 percent mortality rate ...
    (NaturalNews) A recent Henry Ford Hospital study revealed that a new strain of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the deadly bacterial "superbug" that becomes resistant to many antibiotics, is five times more deadly than other previously-seen strains. Fifty percent of patients who b ...

    TheGallopingBeaver


  • 900ft Jesus is back!
    'Just When I thought I Was Out...They Pull Me Back In' Dept. 900ft Jesus is back with new digs at "Of Gods & Other Monsters" so drop by and say hello. The trouble with quitting blogging is you've already amassed this wealth of research and every day you watch Steve and the mainstream Medea royally ...

  • 100 Reasons NOT To Vote For Gordo Ever Again
    On BC election night last May, blogger Laila Yuile decided to throw her hat into the ring in her riding of Surrey-Panorama come the next chance we get to throw Gordo's gang out on their sorry asses. This morning she's looking for 100 reader-based reasons and stories why BC can't afford another go-r ...

  • Inspiration for the Old
    OSHKOSH 365 is the site for the Experimental Aviation Association (EAA) who promote civil aviation in the US, especially home-built aircraft. Every summer, the Oshkosh fly-in is astounding to see — thousands of home-builts and restored factory fliers. Well, here's a truly unique home-built. Jim O' ...

  • I want a Torture Inquiry
    To:Prime Minister Stephen Harper pm@pm.gc.ca CC:NDP Leader Jack Layton Layton.J@parl.gc.ca ,Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff Ignatieff.M@parl.gc.ca Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe DucepG@parl.gc.ca .Subject: I Want a Torture Inquiry .Dear Prime Minister Harper, .I am very concerned by t ...

  • It figures . . .

Media Matters for America

  • Cavuto distorts CBO report to claim Senate health ...
    On Fox News' Your World , Neil Cavuto misrepresented the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the Senate health care bill's effect on insurance premiums by claiming that it found that the bill would "jack up premiums by more than 10 percent for a lot of Americans." In fact, the CBO estim ...

  • "Climategate" exposed: Conservative media distort ...
    Since the reported theft of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, conservative media figures have aggressively claimed that those emails undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are causing climate change, dubbing the suppose ...

  • Quick Fact: Baier falsely suggested allegedly hack ...
    On Special Report , host Bret Baier falsely suggested that a series of emails reportedly stolen from the UK's Climate Research Unit (CRU) creates a "basis for disputing global warming." In fact, the validity of climate science is not hinged on the contents of these emails, some of which conservativ ...

  • Quick Fact: Hume repeats debunked falsehood that ...
    On Fox News' Special Report , senior political analyst Brit Hume claimed that global warming is undermined by the "huge problem" that "[t]here's been no apparent increase in global temperatures over the past 11 years." In fact, scientists have rejected the claim that recent temperatures underm ...

  • Wash. Times falsely claims Senate amend ...
    A November 30 Washington Times editorial falsely claimed that an amendment to the Senate health care bill limiting a scheduled reduction to Louisiana's Medicaid reimbursement rate would increase the federal government's contribution to Louisiana's Medicaid obligation. In fact, under the Senate ...

Global Research.ca

TPM Cafe

  • IDF Moves Battle to Twitter and Facebook
    This is pretty amusing. The Israeli Defense Forces will now be pushing the official Israeli line on Facebook and Twitter. I guess it understands that its unofficial defenders (often trolls) on the web run heavily toward bigots and ethnic triumphalists... Twitter - Facebook - Social network - On ...

  • Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Poli ...
    When we were just beginning work on our book, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, we stumbled on a curious but compelling relationship. In a state level analysis, we found a very high correlation between favoring corporal punishment of children... Barack Obama - United Stat ...

  • Jeff Goldberg Faults Obama For Suggesting Settleme ...
    I am always intrigued by the neocon take on the Middle East. There are many elements to it, starting with the belief that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is not central to America's problems with Muslims (Arabs and non-Arabs). That is critical... Middle East - United States - Palestinian people - ...

  • Mark Pittman
    I was never much of a source for Mark Pittman. I'm not sure I ever told him anything that he didn't already know. But some time last year he figured out that I was willing to criticize the financial services... Financial services - Business - Financial Services Committee - Banking Services - Co ...

  • The Stimulus was not a Tiny Win
    "Your list is a bunch of tiny victories." "what's lacking is a broad-based benefit for the middle class." Comments on my last post do seem to show that the old adage that a "billion dollars here and a billion dollars... United States - Economic - Clinton - Government - Presidents

TruthOut

  • Eugene Robinson | The Copenhagen Conundrum
    Washington - Climate-change skeptics are barking up the wrong smokestack. The shell game being played isn't with the science, it's with the solutions -- specifically, the carbon emissions targets that enlightened world leaders are pledging to meet. That's where the numbers don't add up. read more

  • Treasury Still Vague on Penalties for Loan Modific ...
    The administration’s big mortgage modification program features $50 billion worth of carrots – but the stick part has been largely absent. Today, the Treasury Department announced it is increasing oversight of mortgage servicers, and made a vague threat of unspecified penalties against companies ...

  • Iran's Ten New Nuclear Plants? Not Likely, Say Exp ...
    Experts say Iran's plans to build 10 new nuclear plants is not within its capabilities for years, but Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said they would manufacture 500,000 new centrifuges. Two days after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censured Iran for its nuclear program, the ...

  • The First Gay Marriage in Latin America
    Tomorrow, December 1, Álex Freyre, 39 years old, and José María di Bello, 41, have an appointment at the civil registry office in Buenos Aires. They are to become the first husband and husband in Argentina. After an initial rejection from the registry office, a city court judge accepted the couple's ...

  • Mark Weisbrot: Honduran Elections Marred by Police ...
    Elections conducted in a climate of fear, human rights violations, and international non-recognition won't resolve the political crisis in Honduras, said Mark Weisbrot , Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. read more

Planetsave

  • Reducing Greenhouse Pollutants will Save Millions ...
    New research out of the UK shows definitively that reducing greenhouse gases can save millions of lives around the world. The research makes use of case studies to demonstrate the co-benefits of tackling climate change in four sectors: electricity generation, household energy use, transportation, ...

  • Rare Butterfly Rediscovered in Maine
    The Spicebush Swallowtail butterfly species was identified in September by Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department biologists. 1934 was the last Maine sighting of the butterfly.  The recent finding was in the hardwood swamps of Berwick and Wells. Read more of this story »

  • Caveman Thanksgiving: Prehistoric Man Roasted Bird ...
    New findings, published in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, indicate early Europeans enjoyed a much broader diet than first suspected. We have known for a long while that early man hunted big game such as mastodons, now prehistoric bone findings show that early man also ...

  • Some Restaurant Sushi Contains Endangered Species
    A recent study has produced some astonishing and disturbing results. Tuna was ordered from 31 sushi restaurants. Genetic tests were then used to identify the species of fish ordered. Nineteen of the restaurants surveyed incorrectly described or could could not indicate which species of fish they ...

  • Happy Thanksgiving: Turkey Facts as a Tribute to T ...
    Whether you are eating turkey or tofurkey this Thanksgiving, you cannot deny the great sacrifice that turkeys are making to fill dinner plates across the nation. I figured I would honor their sacrifice here on the eve of thanksgiving, with some fun turkey facts. More than 45 million turkeys ar ...

Water Quality - WordPress

Public Citizen in Texas

  • Texas Progressive Alliance Weekly Round Up
    The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes everyone back from the Thanksgiving Holiday with these highlights from the blogs. TXsharon has arranged by area 60 TCEQ fugitive emission videos obtained via the Texas Public Information Act. The videos were taken throughout the Barnett Shale area using a GasF ...

  • Green-up Your Life- Black Friday Edition! Reduce, ...
    By Kirsten Bokenkamp The chance that Congress will pass a US climate change bill before the global summit in Copenhagen is looking increasingly slim, but that does not stop us from individually minimizing our own impact on the earth. Green-up Your Life! is all about reminding us that as individuals ...

  • Your Representatives Spending Taxpayer Money Trave ...
    Texas Representatives, Senators, and other statewide elected officials, both locally and nationally, receive reimbursements for their on-the-job travels. They travel quite frequently to conduct business that benefits their constituents. Or at least that is what we hope they do. Some representatives ...

  • Send Citizen Sarah to Copenhagen
    If you haven’t heard, Huffingtonpost.com has a contest to send a citizen journalist to Copenhagen called the “Hopenhagen Ambassador Contest”. HuffPost in conjunction with Hopenhagen.org is sending one person to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference to both represent concerns of peopl ...

  • You CAN teach an old dog new tricks . . .
    Las Brisas Energy Center, a proposed pet coke power plant, is still in the midst of a protracted permitting process which most recently has taken the form of a state hearing. Opponents have claimed that projected pollution from the proposed plant has been under-estimated by engineers. Testimony ...

Press TV

Axis of Logic

They Gave Us a Republic

  • Death Wish Politics
    Don't let today's Afghanistan speech distract you from the White House's continuing effort to ensure health care DEform enriches health insurance giants at the expense of working Americans. Mike Lux at Open Left: The way some Democrats want to respond to numbers like these is pure and simple death w ...

  • "Declare Victory and Get Out"
    Keith Olbermann's Special Comment last night: So, much of the change for which you were elected, Sir, has thus far been understandably, if begrudgingly, tabled, delayed, made more open-ended. But patience ebbs, Mr. President. And while the first one thousand key decisions of your presidency were alr ...

  • The Nightowl Newswrap
    Willie Horton returns to bite Roger Ailes in the ass In 1988 Ailes was a media consultant to candidate George H.W. Bush and one of the architects of the Willie Horton ads that destroyed Michael Dukakis and his chances of winning the presidency. Now he runs Fox News, and Fox employs Mike Huckabee. An ...

  • Only Liberals Can Save Obama and the Democrats Now
    Let's review: Stuck in a stalemate in Iraq. Escalating the quagmire in Afghanistan . Gutting the little remaining of the fourth amendment. Letting war criminals walk free while trying to re-imprison innocent victims of Rove's framing .Allowing loyal bushies to stay in their jobs and undermine the ju ...

  • A party in disarray
    There is a report in today's Washington Post that provides a pretty clear snapshot of the republican party and the mess it has disintegrated into three decades after Reagan uncorked the crazy and let the christianists have a seat at the table. The republican party has no clear leader, and the only t ...

Care 2

  • Atlanta backyard chicken group tops 800 local memb ...
    Last week, the Atlanta Backyard Poultry Meetup Group topped the 800-member mark. Andy Schneider, aka the Chicken Whisperer started the group just 19 months ago to bring together local Atlanta residents that keep backyard chickens. In the beginning, the g Submitted by Tierney G. to Offbeat  |   Note ...

  • Author to bring backyard farming know-how to Sacra ...
    Novella Carpenter grabs a cup of coffee, heads out to her backyard, where a Discount Market stands just beyond a chain-link fence, and watches four chickens scratch at the ground, chase bugs and lie in the sun. Submitted by Tierney G. to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

  • Yardbirds: urban chickens gain support
    A tide is rising in Columbia, and that tide has a name: Chickens! That was the sense at Wednesday's City Council meeting, where a majority of the six members present expressed support for allowing people to keep up to four hens in fenced-in backyards. Submitted by Tierney G. to Offbeat  |   Note ...

  • Australian aims to breed 'green' sheep that burp l ...
    Australian scientists have said they are hoping to breed sheep that burp less as part of efforts to tackle climate change. The scientists have been trying to identify a genetic link that causes some sheep to belch less than others. Submitted by Simone D. to Science & Tech  |   Note-it!  |   Add ...

  • Planet of the apes as American myth ... Urban Riot ...
    Chapter 3: the animals are (colored) surrogates for all who have been colonized in the name of nature and whose judgment can no longer be repressed....Black people were the beast; it is written in the history of lynching and into the history of biology Submitted by CA J. to Society & Culture  |  ...

GreenBiz

  • How Local Ingenuity Can Model Success for Sustaina ...
    With world leaders poised to begin climate talks, it's time to apply lessons learned locally to the global playing field. We need critical thinking and action by leaders who are willing to apply those local solutions to drive change at a global scale.

  • Majority of SMEs Say Their Green Policies Undaunte ...
    Sixty-one percent of small and medium enterprises say the recession has had no impact on their environmental policies, while the balance are divided on whether the downturn has hobbled or spurred their green plans, a new UK survey reports.

  • Four Studies that Ponder the Road from Here
    As 2009 sputters to an end, it's perhaps unsurprising that we're in the midst of a torrent of studies and findings that all offer some roadmap of where to go from here.

  • The World's Looming 'Water Gap'
    In the face of even more widespread water shortages and scarcity that already affect more than a billion people worldwide, there is some good news in the form of cost-effective, sustainable solutions to address water needs for everyone.

  • Sears, Kmart Among Latest Companies Swearing Off ' ...
    The addition of three new retailers last week brought the total of signatories aiming to reducing mining's environmental and social impact to 60, with more than $1.3 billion in U.S. jewelry sales represented by companies involved.

Reuters Global

  • A historic trip to Antarctica revisited
    Reuters correspondent Pauline Askin is sailing in early December to the Antarctic for a six-week expedition on the ice continent where she will help restore Sir Douglas Mawson's huts on Commonwealth Bay.

  • India and Pakistan: the missing piece in the Afgha ...
    Last year's Mumbai attacks torpedoed hopes of a peace deal between India and Pakistan that might underpin a regional settlement for Afghanistan. Has President Barack Obama picked up the pieces? And if not, what is his back-up plan?

  • Opposition needs a wizard in Oz
    On the surface, Australia's opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull won the endorsement of his party when he put his job on the line over his bipartisan support for the PM's carbon trade plan. But dig deeper and the picture looks much bleaker.

  • Germany: a tale of two foreign ministers
    German media have become gripped by a popularity contest between new foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, and conservative defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, whose globe-trotting has earned him the nickname "the other foreign minister".

  • For Rudd, now it’s personal
    Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd may be a shoo-in to return to office late next year, but this week his reputation as a transformative leader will be on the line

Ezra Klein

  • Obama -- and the Congress's -- impressive first ye ...
    I think Jacob Weisberg has this bit of contrarianism mostly right: About one thing, left and right seem to agree these days: Obama hasn't done anything yet. Maureen Dowd and Dick Cheney have found common ground in scoffing at the president's "dithering." Newsweek recently ran a sympathetic cover ...

  • Tab dump
    1) What is living and what is dead in social democracy? 2) The economics of fancy cupcakes. 3) Paul Krugman predicts the (grim) future. 4) Most mutual funds don't outperform the market. And those that do don't outperform their fees. 5) A deficit-neutral stimulus plan. Recipe of the day : Got so ...

  • The teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy health-care bill
    The graph above comes from Lori Montgomery's article arguing that health-care reform will not do much to cut the deficit. "While the package would not worsen the nation's record deficits, it would not significantly improve them, either now or in the future," writes Montgomery. "Reid's bill would s ...

  • Why don't politicians fear unemployment?
    Brad DeLong wonders why good macroeconomic policies make for bad politics. That's the wrong question, I think. Insofar as Barack Obama is not operating amidst 20 percent unemployment and riots, the economic interventions have worked pretty well to preserve the president's high numbers. Barack Obam ...

  • Smells like polarization
    According to the new Washington Post poll , a plurality of Republicans consider Sarah Palin the "one person [who] best reflects the core values of the Republican Party" and a full 76 percent of Republicans do not think Barack Obama "stand[s] for traditional American values." And thus does America sp ...

Booman Tribune

  • Early Returns on an Afghan Policy
    Elements of Obama's Afghanistan plan are now leaking out at a steady rate. I'm not going to slam the plan until I hear it from the president's mouth, and he might be more convincing than the early reports. I do have one quibble with what I've read so far. It comes at the end of this: [British ...

  • Serious Question
    What do you want to hear from President Obama in his speech on Afghanistan tomorrow?

  • Does the GOP Really Love Palin?
    Is Sarah Palin popular among Republicans? In the poll, taken amid the media whirlwind surrounding the release of her memoir "Going Rogue," more [Republicans and Republican-leaning independents] cite Palin than other Republicans as best reflecting the party's core values and as the top vote-gette ...

  • And We're Back...
    The Senate meets today at 2pm, with debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 (PPACA) starting at 3pm. The House meets tomorrow, and David Waldman tells us what they'll be up to. After all, they've got to pass the time while the Senate gets all the attention doing health car ...

  • The Family Behind Gay Genocide
    Can we call them Nazis now? The politically connected conservative religious group in Washington, DC, known as "The Family" made infamous in the United States recently by the sex scandal of one of it's member's, Senator John Ensign, seemed creepy but also essentially harmless. Sort of a Religious ...

European Tribune

Futurismic

  • Tax ‘em back into town?
    The UK iteration of Wired is doing a themed issue entitled “Rebooting Britain”, kicking around ideas for changing the face of an already-changing nation for the better. Many of them could be more broadly applied to any Western/developed nation, but a few of them address issues that are somewhat ...

  • Software that learns to recognise faces and voices ...
    A computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania has decided to mimic the way children learn to recognise faces and voices in order to speed up the artificial learning curve of intelligent systems: Using novel learning algorithms that combine audio, video, and text streams, Taskar and his rese ...

  • Charlie Stross: we’re probably never going to bu ...
    Here’s a second piece of punditry for your Monday morning, this time from the inimitable Charlie Stross. He’s been poking the traditional sf mythology of the starship with a sharp stick over the last few months, and the end result is a suggestion that – as far as realistic speculation about th ...

  • David Brin: is America’s loss the world’s gain ...
    Y’know, I really like David Brin, even though I don’t always agree with what he says; he’s got a contrary stripe a mile wide, and he’s one of the few self-identifying conservative thinkers in science fiction who’s willing to break ranks with populism and call out the failings of his own si ...

  • The Butterfly Effect
    Does Not Equal is a webcomic by Sarah Ennals – check out the pre-Futurismic archives, and the strips that have been published here previously. [ Be sure to check out the Does Not Equal Cafepress store for webcomic merchandise featuring Canadians with geometrically-shaped heads! ] Project Wonderf ...

Therapy News

  • Australia Reports Success with “Headspace” Pro ...
    A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Talking to youth about mental health issues and concerns has long been hailed as one of the most effective ways to prevent personal crises and break through the stigma surrounding psychotherapy and related fields. A program called “Headspace,” which has been opera ...

  • Missing Questionnaires Give Soldier Mental Health ...
    A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Recently, the Department of Veterans Affairs as well as the US armed services have acknowledged a need to devote greater attention and resources to the mental health of active duty, returning, and veteran soldiers. New initiatives towards this end are anticipated, but ...

  • Study Suggests Untreated Depression may be as Dead ...
    A GoodTherapy.org News Headline The complications, both mental and physical, of depression can be debilitating for people who experience the symptoms of this mental health concern, but the extent to which depression may put one’s life in danger when untreated has been highlighted in a recent study ...

  • The Formation of the Mask
    By Aylee Welch, LICSW, Body Psychotherapy Topic Expert Contributor Click here to contact Aylee and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile Most of us have memories of special moments in our life where we feel spectacularly buoyant, open and excited. In these moments we sometimes feel more open and alive ...

  • Ten Important Concepts to Understand when Learning ...
    By Arthur Becker-Weidman, Ph.D., Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Topic Expert Contributor Click here to contact Arthur and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile In this article about Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy I want to describe the ten take-away points that I want therapists to take away fr ...

Mountaintop Removal

  • New Surface Mining Chief Cracks Down on Mountainto ...
    Environment News Service New Surface Mining Chief Cracks Down on Mountaintop Removal , Valley Fills Environment News Service The agency will issue federal regulations to better protect streams affected by surface coal mining operations, such as mountaintop removal mining, ... DOI to Propose Stream ...

  • 'Coal Country' movie being shown at library - Evan ...
    'Coal Country' movie being shown at library Evansville Courier & Press The film is a documentary giving voice to opposition to the practice of mountain top removal mining in Appalachia, particularly in eastern Kentucky and West ... and more »

  • Mountaintop removal opponent starts hunger strike ...
    Mountaintop removal opponent starts hunger strike at Capitol Charleston Gazette An 81-year-old opponent of mountaintop-removal mining started a fast on Monday that he hopes will draw attention to and help end the controversial practice. ... 81-year-old activist begins fast to end mountaintop remova ...

  • N30 -- San Francisco Climate Justice Protest - Bay ...
    San Francisco Chronicle N30 -- San Francisco Climate Justice Protest Bay Area Indymedia We demand that they either shut down or relocate the moon" -- before the earth resembles the surface of the moon due to mountaintop removal . ... Bank of America as climate villain San Francisco Chronicle all 6 ...

  • Artists unite on CD to fight mountaintop removal - ...
    West Virginia Public Broadcasting Artists unite on CD to fight mountaintop removal West Virginia Public Broadcasting Sales of the CD will benefit the Alliance for Appalachia, an organization working to end mountaintop removal coal mining. Coal Country Music brings together ... Rob Perks: Interior D ...

Memeorandum

  • Cheney slams Obama for projecting 'weakness' (The ...
    The Politico : Cheney slams Obama for projecting ‘weakness’   —  MCLEAN, Va. — On the eve of the unveiling of the nation's new Afghanistan policy, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed President Barack Obama for projecting “weakness” to adversaries and warned that more workaday A ...

  • Why I Parted Ways With The Right (Little Green Foo ...
    Little Green Footballs : Why I Parted Ways With The Right   —  1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)  —  2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchan ...

  • Gibbs: Despite research dispute, 'climate change i ...
    Tony Romm / The Hill : Gibbs: Despite research dispute, ‘climate change is happening’   —  The White House on Monday made exceptionally clear that it wants nothing to do with the furor over documents that global warming skeptics say prove the phenomenon is not a threat.  —  Despite the ...

  • Supreme Court Overturns Decision on Detainee Photo ...
    David Stout / New York Times : Supreme Court Overturns Decision on Detainee Photos   —  WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday set aside a lower court's order that called for the release of photographs of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan being abused by American military personnel.  The h ...

  • Rick Warren, Silent Enabler Of Hatred (Andrew Sull ...
    Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish : Rick Warren, Silent Enabler Of Hatred   —  One of Rick Warren's (and president George W. Bush's) longtime allies in Uganda, Martin Ssempe, is the author of a classic piece of minority-baiting legislation.  Its details belong in the history of genocidal hatred ...

Energy & Environment News

5+ quakes - 7 days

China Dialogue

  • When the ice melts (2)
    Greenlanders have been master survivors and have little to fear from global warming, writes Fiona Harvey. The real disruptions will be felt in sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia and southern Europe. Denmark has a special interest in climate change, in part because of its sense of responsibility – ...

  • When the ice melts (1)
    Greenland is warming up. Its glaciers are moving faster and its ice sheet is disappearing. And, reports Fiona Harvey, it is all happening worryingly faster than science predicted. Disko Bay lay glinting with ice on the bright afternoon we sailed in. Icebergs as big as buses floated among others the ...

  • Storming the clouds
    Chinese scientists claim to be able to control the weather. But is geoengineering more than wishful thinking? And, if so, should we be worried? David Adams reports. The unseasonal snow that fell on Beijing for 11 hours on November 1 was the earliest and heaviest there has been for years. It was also ...

  • The iceman of Ladakh
    Chewang Norphel has pioneered a simple method of creating artificial “glaciers” to irrigate farmland in high-altitude deserts. Athar Parvaiz reports from northwest India. In December 1997, when world leaders assembled in Kyoto to put in place the first treaty to address climate change, Chewang N ...

  • Our disappearing world
    As new plant and animal species are discovered, others are vanishing. Many are threatened by climate climate, while others fall at the hand of man. Maryann Bird asks what future generations won’t ever see. Some extraordinary finds have been made recently in the natural world. Among them: a remarka ...

AlterNet Top Stories

Threat Level

  • Restaurants Sue Vendor for Unsecured Card Processo ...
    Seven restaurants have sued the maker of a bank card-processing system for failing to secure the product from a Romanian hacker who breached their systems. The restaurants, located in Louisiana and Mississippi, have filed a class-action suit against Georgia-based Radiant Systems for producing a poin ...

  • Europe Worries U.S. Bowing to ‘Industry’ in AC ...
    The European Union is alarmed the Obama administration is lobbying on behalf of the entertainment industry as part of the United States’ negotiations for an new international copyright accord, according to a leaked EU document. The document, entitled European Union’s Comments to the US Proposal, ...

  • iPhone Virus-Writer’s New Job: Building iPhone A ...
    An Australian youth who created a worm that attacked iPhone users has been hired by a company that creates applications for the iPhone. At least one security professional expressed displeasure that the malware author has been rewarded for his hack attack. Ashley Towns, a 21-year-old student who goe ...

  • Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned
    The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a federal appeals court decision that dramatically narrowed the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Justice Department officials are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider it ...

  • Wikileaks Says It Has Half-a-Million 9/11 Pager Me ...
    The document-leaking site Wikileaks says it’s preparing to release 500,000 intercepted wireless pager messages from a 24-hour period encompassing the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Site operators say they plan to start rolling out the texts beginning at 3:00 a.m. New York time, paced to  ...

Reuters - Most Popular Articles

  • Suspect in U.S. police murders dead
    SEATTLE (Reuters) - A man accused of shooting to death four police officers in a Washington State coffee shop was shot and killed by police on Tuesday.

  • Iran says may take serious action against Britons
    TEHRAN/LONDON (Reuters) - Iran will take serious measures against five British yachtsmen detained in the Gulf if it proves they had "evil intentions", a close aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday.

  • Dubai debt plan fails to calm Gulf markets
    DUBAI (Reuters) - Gulf markets tumbled again on Tuesday, taking no comfort from Dubai World's plan to restructure about $26 billion of its estimated $59 billion in liabilities, which appeared to calm global fears of contagion.

  • Obama to lay out long-awaited Afghan plan
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama plans to announce on Tuesday that he will send about 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in a long-awaited war strategy shift that he hopes will defeat the Taliban and allow for a U.S. exit.

  • Tiger's world in spin since mysterious car crash
    LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - News of his car accident in Windermere, Florida, turned the carefully managed life of Tiger Woods upside down on Friday, provoking far more questions than answers.

Pine River World News

  • Al Jazeera: Taliban claim French bribery ploy
    The following article is from Al Jazeera. Taliban claim French bribery ploy ©   Al Jazeera December 1, 2009 French troops deployed in Afghanistan are attempting to bribe Taliban fighters not to attack them, a senior Taliban leader has told Al Jazeera. In an exclusive interview, Saif-Allah Jalili, ...

  • Swine flu 'is no worse than seasonal strains'
    The following article is from The Australian. Swine flu 'is no worse than seasonal strains' ©   The Australian By Adam Cresswell, health editor December 1, 2009 THE dominant expert view that swine flu is much more dangerous than seasonal strains is under attack from Australian research, which has ...

  • RUSSIA: Medvedev condoles with victims of train sa ...
    IntelTrends - The following article is reprinted with permission from Kavkaz Center, Caucasus mujahideen media. Medvedev condoles with victims of sabotage without Putin Source:   Kavkaz Center November 29, 2009 It is reported that 661 passenger tickets were sold to the "Nevsky Express" train (No. ...

  • SOMALIA: The release of Amanda Lindhout and Nigel ...
    The recent release from Somali capitivity of Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan is still cloaked in mystery. Was a ransom paid for their release (and if so, by whom)? Shabelle Media Network - a Somali news agency and broadcaster - published an in ...

  • Facebook users increasingly targeted in cyber crim ...
    The following article is from The New Zealand Herald. Facebook users beware ©   The New Zealand Herald By Alice Neville November 29, 2009 Facebook users have been warned they will be among targets of a huge increase in cyber crime next year. Internet scammers are increasingly hacking into persona .

    PDA AMERICA


  • Winograd Calls on President Obama to Fight the Rea ...
    36th Congressional Candidate Opposes Afghanistan Escalation Marcy Winograd, 36th congressional district candidate, expressed deep disappointment in President Obama’s imminent decision to send an additional 30,000 – 40,000 US troops to Afghanistan, to join 68,000 other American ...

  • IOT: Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections November ...
    On this call Wayne Williams and Trent Lange updated us on the CA fair elections act, Emily Levy updated us on the "Diebold Return Our Money" campaign and we did state reports.

  • Tim Carpenter on Connect the Dots with Lila Garret ...
    TIM CARPENTER, Exec Director of Progressive Dems of America speaks to us after his trip to Washington where he and his group lobbied hard for a healthcare plan that might actually help the people. What ...

  • Finishing the Job at Home
    How About a War on Poverty Instead? By JAYNE LYN STAHL | From CounterPunch.org The local news was replete with images of First Lady Michelle Obama in the elegant, strapless designer gown she wore for this White ...

  • Before You Carve that Turkey: All In for Bernie Sa ...
    by Donna Smith | PDA Co-Chair, Healthcare NOT Warfare Campaign Those millions of us who support a Medicare for All, single-payer, reform for the healthcare crisis in this nation have some work to do over the ...

Marler Blog

  • Two More E. coli Lawsuits Filed Against Ixtapa
    We filed two more lawsuits yesterday against the Ixtapa Family Mexican Restaurant in Lake Stevens, Washington.  Laurie Bunney and Amanda Vest ate at Ixtapa on October 9, 2008 and became ill with E. coli O157:H7 infections in the following days. Both women incurred medical expenses and wage loss as ...

  • The 2009 ABA Journal Blawg 100 - Marlerblog on the ...
    According to the ABA Journal - These are the 100 best Web sites by lawyers, for lawyers, as chosen by the editors of the ABA Journal.  Welcome to the third annual ABA Journal Blawg 100 - the best legal blogs as selected by the Journal's editors.  Our readers clued us in to a few law blogs we'd nev ...

  • Consumer Reports Calls Fowl - US Chickens Tainted ...
    Consumer Reports published - How safe is that chicken? Among the findings: • Campylobacter was in 62 percent of the chickens, salmonella was in 14 percent, and both bacteria were in 9 percent. Only 34 percent of the birds were clear of both pathogens. That's double the percentage of clean birds we ...

  • Civil Lawsuit in Melamine Milk Scandal Sees the In ...
    The New York Times reporter, Edward Wong, reported a few hours ago that a hearing began Friday (our Thursday) in the first civil suit to be heard in a Chinese court involving parents suing a dairy company and a supermarket over selling tainted milk. In 2008 at least six children died and 300,000 we ...

  • Larry King and E. coli O157:H7 Deaths
    A friend sent me the below Youtube videos of Larry King's visit with me and the mothers, and one grandmother, of children killed from eating E. coli O157:H7-tainted hamburger that ran last month.  This first video - the first ten minutes of the show - it then got a bit off-track as the hour went alo ...

AutoblogGreen

  • AutoblogGreen for 12.01.09
    Nissan expects to double battery energy capacity by 2015 Ghosn's strategy makes sense, if the company can pull this off. Quick Spin: 2011 Chevrolet Volt charges toward production Driving the ...

  • 2011 Ford Fiesta gets another early reveal
    Filed under: LA Auto Show , Budget , Sedan , Hatchback , Ford 2011 Ford Fiesta Hatchback - Click above for high-res image gallery The Fiesta Movement , Ford's campaign to introduce the little global Fiesta car to the U.S. market, kicked off at the Chicago Auto Show earlier this year and will end t ...

  • AutoblogGreen for 11.29.09
    VIDEO: Wet Liberal rants about Top Gear, electric cars and hydrogen This is just good fun. Mazda2 to be basis of electric vehicle test fleet eZoom-eZoom? ...

  • AutoblogGreen for 11.27.09
    VIDEO: Chevrolet Volt tests driver controlled audio warning system with the blind Beep! Electric Smart Fortwo gets shot in Berlin Just off the production line, the Smart Ed is already a star. ...

  • AutoblogGreen for 11.25.09
    Quick Spin: Nissan Leaf the tip of mass market EV spear Ghosn's plan of attack makes sense, especially when the first shot is this silver (blue) bullet. Volt battery life affected by hot weather, but 10 y ...

Rafe's Radar

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!

  • Keith Olbermann reports on Amy Goodman's Canadian ...
    Video from the Mon., Nov 30, 2009 episode of Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s Countdown, where he reports on Amy Goodman’s Canadian border detention, in his program’s “Best Persons” segment–where he berates the Canadian authorities. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and ...

  • Amy Goodman Detained at the Canadian Border, quest ...
    While traveling to Vancouver, BC, Canada on Weds., Nov. 25th, to speak at the Vancouver Public Library at a benefit for community radio stations, Amy Goodman and her two colleagues were detained by Canadian authorities. Amy was questioned extensively about the speech she intended to give; their ca ...

  • Books, Not Bombs
    California campuses have been rocked by protests this past week, provoked by massive student fee increases voted on by the University of California Board of Regents. After a year of sequential budget cuts, faculty and staff dismissals and furloughs, and the elimination of entire academic department ...

  • Mail Tribune of Southern Oregon news story on Amy ...
    The Mail Tribune newspaper of Southern Oregon published a story on Amy Goodman’s tour stop in Ashland, Oregon. Reporter Paris Achen wrote, "Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! , told a crowd of about 300 people at Ashland’s Southern Oregon University Sunday night that print and TV media h ...

  • Hungering for a True Thanksgiving
    “In the next 60 seconds, 10 children will die of hunger,” says a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) online video. It continues, “For the first time in humanity, over 1 billion people are chronically hungry.” The WFP launched the Billion for a Billion campaign this week, urging the 1 ...

Farming Pathogens

  • Breeding Influenza: The Political Virology of Offs ...
    What better way to medicate against a holiday’s genocidal origins and the hunger now swelling worldwide in the wake of a related banker-brought recession than with a bellyful of turkey, stuffing, yams, and pumpkin pie? Despite its rotten ambiguities Thanksgiving remains my favorite American holida ...

  • A Visitation of the Influenza
    In seeping through the world’s every nook and cranny, pandemics have a way of forcing themselves into our lives as a lurking presence. Even the most insular of functionaries, who typically makes his living solving problems by ignoring them, straightens up and takes notice.    As an epidemic ...

  • 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 [... ...

Digg Green

  • Climate-cult con is hard to 'bear' - NYPOST.com
    When did global warming turn into a forced religion?

  • Feds Raid Gibson Guitars For Using Illegal Wood
    US Fish & Wildlife Services agents issued a search warrant on Gibson Guitars' manufacturing plant in Nashville, TN. At issue is whether Gibson violated the Lacey Act, which prohibits the importation of rosewood from Madagascar because it serves as a home for lemurs.

  • Global warming increases risk of civil war in Afri ...
    Climate change is likely to increase the number of civil wars raging in Africa, according to Stanford researchers. Historical records show that in warmer-than-average years, the number of conflicts rises. By 2030 Africa could see a greater than 50 percent increase in civil wars, which could mean an ...

  • TED: Turning dunes into architecture
    TED Talks Architecture student Magnus Larsson details his bold plan to transform the harsh Sahara desert using bacteria and a surprising construction material: the sand itself.

  • World's Water Demand Now Exceeds Supply
    According to a new report from McKinsey & Co., Global demand for water now exceeds supply -- about 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean water -- and the so-called water gap is increasing at an accelerating rate. But cost-effective, sustainable solutions may soon help close the gap.

Invisible Opportunity

  • Climategate: Have They No Shame?
    by Myron Ebell It is clear that the tip-top scientists implicated in the burgeoning Climategate scandal have no honor, but it is also becoming apparent that they have no sense of shame either. Their strategy is to brazen it out and rely on the great global warming alarmist establishment and the main ...

  • Yet More Stuff We Always Suspected But Its Nice To ...
    Many of us have argued for years that much of the measured surface temperature increase has actually been from manual adjustments made for opaque and largely undisclosed reasons by a few guys back in their offices. The US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) reports about a 0.6C temperature increase ...

  • CLIMATEGATE: A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
    By Michael Rivero The recent exposures of fraud coming from the Hadley Climate Research Unit, then followed by similar exposures at New Zealand’s NWIA, Australia’s climate center, and NOAA have only confirmed the doubts arising from the obviously NON-scientific methods employed by the Anthropoge ...

  • The great climate change science scandal
    By Jonathan Leake The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change. “RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to anot ...

  • Who’s to blame for Climategate?
    By Gordon Rayner The drab, drum-shaped home of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit is an anonymous little outpost, blending seamlessly with its chunky concrete neighbours on a windswept campus just outside Norwich. To the uninitiated, it has the look of a Seventies bus ...

    Care2 Picks


  • Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan
    Jeremy Scahill Reveals Private Military Firm Operating in Pakistan Under Covert Assassination and Kidnapping Program Submitted by John Farnham to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

  • Enlightenment - The Experience Festival
    The Global Oneness Commitment is an eight-year project with the goal of uniting people around the globe to mutual actions in order to transform the planet thru an increase in spiritual awareness synchronised with the twin Venus Transits 2004 and 2012 Submitted by John Farnham to Society & Culture ...

  • European Consumers Warned that Trade Deal with Can ...
    Thursday, October 22, Ottawa - An alliance of Canadian groups is warning European consumers that an economic partnership agreement with Canada could threaten Europe’s regulations of genetically modified (GM) foods and crops. Submitted by Elena P. to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

  • Victory: South Africa rejects GM potato
    New Victory for the Potato! October 2009: South Africa’s GM body, the Executive Council (EC), has rejected attempts by the Agriculture Research Council (ARC) to bring GM potatoes onto the market. Submitted by Elena P. to Health & Wellness  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

  • Judge Rules GMOs Violate Environmental Law
    White wrote, "The potential elimination of farmers` choice to grow nongenetically engineered crops, or consumers` choice to eat nongenetically engineered food ... has a significant effect on the human environment." Submitted by Elena P. to Health & Wellness  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

Insurgency Watch - Newswire

  • Obama, us leaders should contemplate future of Afg ...
    BBC News Obama, us leaders should contemplate future of Afghan women Chicago Tribune Would nuclear-armed Pakistan become even more vulnerable to its own Taliban insurgency ? Will a defeat embolden America's enemies? That line of thinking must ... Vietnam syndrome has begun in Afghanistan Sri Lanka ...

  • Officials: Campus blasts perplexing - United Press ...
    Officials: Campus blasts perplexing United Press International ISLAMABAD, Pakistan , Oct. 21 (UPI) -- The International Islamic University, where bomb blasts killed at least six people, is a unique Pakistani institution ... and more »

  • Schools closed in Pakistan after bombing - GMA new ...
    Schools closed in Pakistan after bombing GMA news.tv An Associated Press reporter met three Taliban fighters Tuesday traveling in a car with darkened windows at Shaktoi, a town close to the border between ... and more »

  • An Evolving Afghan Policy - American Chronicle
    An Evolving Afghan Policy American Chronicle ... triumph for the forces of Islamic extremism, al-Qaeda would once again gain a foothold, and the return of the Taliban would likely destabilize Pakistan . ...

  • Schools close in Pakistan following university bom ...
    Schools close in Pakistan following university bombings Emirates Business 24/7 ... in Pakistan after suspected militants bombed a university close to the capital, sowing fear across the country as the army presses a major anti- Taliban ... and more »

AlterNet - Rights and Liberties

Sideways News

  • Zoos unite over 350ppm carbon target
    Zoos from across the globe have united to take action against climate change. Over 200 members of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) have signed a petition calling world leaders to reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions to below 350 parts per million (ppm) in a bid to prevent creatures fro ...

  • Maitake mushrooms 'curb cancer growth'
    The maitake mushroom is more than a popular Chinese cooking ingredient, according to researchers at the Department of Urology at the New York Medical College, who claim that it could be potential weapon against cancer.

  • Action for World Aids Day in the UK
    There are over 33.4 million people living with HIV/Aids across the globe. Africa has 14 million Aids orphans and 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.

  • Twitter named top word of 2009
    Twitter has been voted the top word of 2009.

  • UK marine conservation sites planned
    Twelve new marine conservation sites around the coast have been proposed by Natural England , the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the Countryside Council for Wales .

Fabius Maximus

  • FM newswire for 1 December, hot articles for your ...
    Today’s broadsheet from the FM website pressroom with three sections of hot news. Links to interesting news and analysis Exciting but probably fake story for today:  the General says “No one can separate Islam and Pakistan” Feature article: another advocate of the war whitewashes him ...

  • Media madness #1 – their lies and ignorance ...
    Critics (like me) have railed about the flaws of the old media.  Media experts, such as Clay Shirky, have warned that the new news media might be worse.  Today we look at evidence supporting their fears. Here we see the essence of making us stupid Internet websites, 21st century propagan ...

  • We’re doomed unless we can learn – an ...
    Anyone paying attention knows that America shops too much and saves too little.  Fifty years of this has left a large fraction of households at the brink of bankruptcy, and the nation grossly indebted to foreign nations (e.g., Japan, China, members of OPEC).  Yet every month sees Wall Street cheer ...

  • We are withdrawing from Afghanistan (eventually, b ...
    A blast from the past for your weekend reading, a reminder from the FM archives (21 April 2008) of how the military dangles future toop withdrawals before us — like a peasant does before a mule.  Keep this in mind when listening to Obama’s specious promises this week.  A few more troops, t ...

  • The Trinity of modern war at work in Afghanistan ( ...
    Surprise!  We’re recruiting milita to help in Afghanistan.  It’s a new tactic, just as it was in Iraq and Vietnam.  It’s a direct violation of the COIN manual (FM 3-24), with its tiresome emphasis on building the legitimacy of the local puppet government.  But then that was just ...

sibeledmonds - tweets

WIRED Magazine | Science

  • There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Simple’ Organism
    What may be the most thorough study ever of a single organism has produced a beta code for life’s essential subroutines, and shown that even the simplest creatures are more complex than scientists suspected. The analysis combined information about gene regulation, protein production and cell stru ...

  • Kiwi Rocket Scares Sheep, Reaches Space
    A small, private company launched New Zealand’s first rocket into space to cheers from about 50 people gathered on a small island off the country’s coast. As the noise of the blastoff sent sheep running, the 18-foot rocket raced into the sky, reaching beyond the Kármán line, 100 kilomet ...

  • Naked Black Hole Builds Future Galactic Dream Home
    Astronomers have captured a distant black hole creating the galaxy that will eventually become its home. By sending a jet of gas and highly energetic particles into a neighboring galaxy, the black hole has touched off star formation at a rate 100 times the galactic average. “Our study suggests th ...

  • How to Mix Oil and Water
    Scientists in Belgium have uncovered a new way to shake things up. Violent bouncing of a water droplet coated with oil causes the oil layer to move inside and fracture into many oily globs. In a paper published in the December Chaos, researchers at the University of Liège in Belgium call this micr ...

  • Large Hadron Collider Sets New World Record
      CERN announced early Monday that the Large Hadron Collider has become the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. The LHC pushed protons to 1.18 TeV (trillion electron volts), surpassing the previous record of 0.98 TeV held by Fermilab’s Tevatron. The LHC has had a rough beginning, suf ...

The Progressive Realist

  • The Perils of Self-Delusion
    Thomas Friedman’s recent “green” turn sometimes makes me feel bad that I ever said anything mean about him, but then you go read something like this : Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyra ...

  • Study Reveals Many Ahmadinejad Supporters in Rural ...
    The following article is based on an ongoing study being conducted by Iranian scholars from Tehran, Qom, and Shiraz. These findings have not been made public, but the authors have chosen to share them with insideIRAN.org TEHRAN —Since the controversial re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June, d ...

  • Nothing Says “Peace” Like Foreign Mercenaries
    As I’ve  discussed   previously on numerous occasions , one of the oddest arguments for escalating/perpetuating our military presence in Afghanistan is the stated fear that our withdrawal would destabilize Pakistan.  Implicit in this formulation is the presumption that our ongoing militar ...

  • NSN Daily Update: November 30, 2009
    In lieu of our normal Daily Update, NSN has released a memo to the community regarding President Obama's speech on the way forward in Afghanistan. We encourage you to read it here . What We're Reading read more

  • The Interpolar World
    This Giovanni Grevi paper (via Sven Bishop ) from last June, titled, "The Interpolar World: A New Scenario" (.pdf), is a little gem worth reading in full. Grevi manages to distill quite a few of the contemporary interpretations of the changing geopolitical landscape into a thought-provoking argument ...

TAPPED - The American Prospect

  • Lightning Round: Our Grim Future Cometh.
    Despite a favorable new CBO score and independent analysis demonstrating the Senate health-care reform bill's costs savings, the debate over controversial elements of the legislation has finally begun in the hallowed upper house of Congress. In light of this, it's worth considering the implication ...

  • Superheroes Are Emo By Nature.
    I think Matthew Yglesias misses the point of "Super 'Emo' Friends" when he writes that he'd like to "see this expanded into a real comic book." That would be redundant. With the exception of Green Lantern (and the rather offensive Wonder Woman parody), the Super 'Emo' Friends listed identify emotion ...

  • Wall Street Meets Its Match.
    Robert Kuttner on Sen. Maria Cantwell 's approach to financial regulation: In the showdown over the regulation of potentially toxic securities like credit-default swaps, the savviest and toughest battler for effective legislation turns out to be not Barney Frank or Chris Dodd , who chair the key Ho ...

  • The "Race Card," Conveniently Defined.
    Lately, I've been fascinated by Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson 's blog . Although most of his posts are boilerplate wingnuttia -- health-care reform is tyranny, diplomacy is weakness, etc. -- there are a few gems here and there, most notably with his ongoing attempt to document li ...

  • Andrew Napolitano Gets Down To Basics.
    Andrew Napolitano is a former judge on the New Jersey Supreme Court who has his own Fox News show and generally offers the standard over the top fare that has come to be associated with Fox "coverage." But today in the LA Times , he offers a very good defense of the decision to try terrorists in civ ...

Andy Worthington

  • Andy Worthington Discusses “Outside the Law: Sto ...
    Last week I was delighted to talk to Linda Olson-Osterlund on KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon, for her show, “A Deeper Look,” which was broadcast on Wednesday. The show is available online here, and Linda and I discussed the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (dire ...

  • Andy Worthington Discusses “Outside the Law: Sto ...
    Last week I was delighted to talk to Linda Olson-Osterlund for KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon, for her show, “A Deeper Look,” which was broadcast on Wednesday. The show is available online here, and Linda and I discussed the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (dir ...

  • UK Judges Compare Binyam Mohamed’s Torture To Th ...
    Binyam Mohamed is a British resident, seized in Pakistan in April 2002, who was held in Pakistani custody, supervised by US agents, until July 2002, when he was sent by the CIA to be tortured for 18 months in Morocco, and was tied in with a “dirty bomb plot” that never even existed. After his [. ...

  • Iraq Inquiry: Sir Christopher Meyer Confirms That ...
    No matter how it ends up being spun, Sir Christopher Meyer’s testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry today demonstrated, without a shadow of a doubt, how “regime change” in Iraq was agreed between George W. Bush and Tony Blair in April 2002, and how the rush to war by the US meant that furious attemp ...

  • Andy Worthington Discusses Obama’s Failure To Cl ...
    Following up on my US tour promoting the new documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) and my appearance on ABC News, plus the slew of developments in recent weeks regarding Guantánamo — federal court trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohamm ...

Buzzflash

  • BuzzFlash Mailbag for November 25, 2009
    BUZZFLASH MAILBAG [BuzzFlash Mailbag goes on a Thanksgiving holiday. Back on Monday.] Want to join the conversation? Share your thoughts with other Mailbag readers by clicking here . You also may comment below; post articles yourself at BuzzFlash.net ; or send urls for BuzzFlash to post to: www.buzz ...

  • Bottom-up indifference
    Body I idled the better part of my week's vacation in the blissful remoteness of Southwest Missouri, trying my best, as they say, to forget it all. It was an unchallenging task. In that hilly -- hillbilly -- environ, the locals content themselves with shipping off the same congressman ev ...

  • A Special Message to Joe Lieberman from His Roomma ...
    A Special Message to Joe Lieberman From His College Roommate By David Wyles Over the past few years, we have published appeals to Joe Lieberman by his Yale undergraduate roommate, David Wyles. Today, we are posting David's holiday message to the man who you never want to get in between him and a cam ...

  • Christian PR Man Goes on 'The Road' With Movie Abo ...
    Larry Ross, a Christian PR man extraordinaire, has been working to take ‘The Road’ to a religious audience in search of buzz, box office and discussion By Bill Berkowitz   Two movies with doomsday scenarios highlight this year’s pre-holiday Cineplex fare.  “2012,” a special effects spectac ...

  • Jacqueline Marcus: Middle-East War Is Futile -- By ...
    BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY by Jacqueline Marcus Last night, I was shocked to hear that the U.S. plans on staying in the Middle East for at least another 10 more years, according to NBC Nightly News. AND they're planning on raising every kind of tax to pay for it. Obama failed us. Instead of firin ...

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

  • Obama's exceedingly familiar justifications for es ...
    (updated below) In order to prepare Americans for Obama's Afghanistan escalation speech tonight at West Point (at least he's not wearing a fighter pilot costume), White House officials have been dispatched to speak to the media (anonymously, of course) to preview all of the new and exciting a ...

  • The face of rotted Washington
    Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh -- who was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, talks excitedly about punishing , and even bombing , Iran, and is now demanding full-scale escalation in Afghanistan -- was on Fox News yesterday and highlighted what a fraud most so-called "fiscal conser ...

  • The crazy, irrational beliefs of Muslims
    (updated below) Tom Friedman, The New York Times , today : Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced -- I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. Tom Friedman, The Charlie Rose Show , May 30, 2003 :  ROSE: Now that the war is over, and there's some difficulty with the pea ...

  • Is Obama's civil liberties record understandable?
    Earlier this week, Kevin Drum said that "nine times out of ten" Obama's policies are "pretty much what [he] expected" but that "the biggest one-time-out-of-ten where he's not doing what [he] expected is in the area of detainee and civil liberties issues."  Similarly, Andrew Sullivan cited  "acc ...

  • A key British official reminds us of the forgotten ...
    Britain is currently engulfed by a probing, controversial investigation into how their Government came to support the invasion of Iraq, replete with evidence that much of what was said at the time by both British and American officials was knowingly false, particularly regarding the unequivocal in ...

The BiPartisan Report

Sciencebase

  • Twitter, Facebook and Sciencebase
    Regular readers will hopefully have spotted I’ve cleaned up the site a little recently and added a couple of new widgets to the Sciencebase sidebar menu just below the About section link to my Research Blogging posts. The first widget heralds the relaunch of the sciencebase.com Facebook fan page ...

  • Absolute chemical headlines
    A wide range of stories again in this week’s Alchemist column on ChemWeb.com Absolute configurations reveal themselves through NMR spectroscopy using residual dipolar couplings in small molecules, according to an international team who have put it to work on an anticancer compound. Discussed also ...

  • Recognisable scientists versus artists
    According to the promoters of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London aimed at UK Scientific Heritage: “Scientists are no longer unrecognisable boffins” thanks to the Science in Focus exhibition, which runs until 17 January 2010. Well…I take issue with that remark! Which o ...

  • Homeopathy really doesn’t work
    A couple of years ago, I re-posted an old article of mine about homeopathy discussing its ludicrous claims, its feeble attempts to provide a scientific explanation for those claims, and basically pointing out that no solid evidence has ever been found that infinitely diluted solutions of spurious in ...

  • Latest science headlines
    Time to bring you up to date on the latest science headlines I’ve put together for other sites this last couple of weeks, so here’s a quick round-up: On the SpectroscopyNOW site, this issue, I covered natural chemicals that can help sunflowers soak up toxic cadmium from the soil (another example ...

change: org.

  • Monsanto Draws Antitrust Investigation
    It is about time. An article in the Washington Post reveals that the Justice Department, which the Obama Administration has given expanded authority to investigate antitrust cases, is conducting an inquiry into whether Monsanto's activities run afoul of laws regulating dominance by a single corpora ...

  • Happy News in Tort Reform
    There’s good news on the tort reform front. No, Republicans didn’t decide to constructively contribute to the healthcare reform discussion and pledge votes to a bill that included tort reform provisions. But medical malpractice insurance premiums have eased for the fourth straight year. Tort re ...

  • Russia: The Elephant in the Climate Living Room
    When it comes to securing a global solution to climate change, we've got a big problem. Well, okay, there are a few big problems, one of which is the lack of commitment by my own old U S of A. But there's another one flying under the radar that threatens to scuttle the whole deal. This is the one th ...

  • Conversative Estimates Report Climate Change Could ...
    Up to $7.4 trillion in assets could be in jeopardy by 2050 if the global sea level rises 20 inches, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund and European insurance firm Allianz SE. Think 20 inches sounds high? Then consider the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research's (SCAR) major ...

  • Pledge to Join the Movement to Prevent Genocide
    This is a guest-post from Mark Hanis, the Founder and President of the Genocide Intervention Network. You’ve probably heard George Clooney speak about the genocide in Darfur. You might have seen the atrocities in Eastern Congo outlined on 60 Minutes a few nights ago. Those crises – some of the w ...

Common Dreams -News

  • Saddam Was Telling Truth in Missing Gulf War Pilot
    by Pamela Hess WASHINGTON -- Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, this time. The United States just didn't believe him. So it took the most powerful military in the world 18 years to find the remains of the only U.S. Navy pilot shot down in an aerial battle in the 1991 Gulf War. Michael "Scott" Spe ...

  • 'Nuclear Pope' ElBaradei Steps Down
    VIENNA - UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who once described himself as a "nuclear pope", quoted the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi in his farewell remarks at the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where ...

  • Democrats in Revolt Over Obama’s Troop Surge
    by Christina Lamb in Washington Barack Obama's much-vaunted eloquence faces the biggest test of his presidential career this week when he takes to the stage at West Point military academy to explain to a nation that thought it had elected an anti-war president why he is escalating the conflict in Af ...

  • Release of Secret Reports Delayed
    by Bryan Bender WASHINGTON - President Obama will maintain a lid of secrecy on millions of pages of military and intelligence documents that were scheduled to be declassified by the end of the year, according to administration officials. read more

  • Western Lifestyle Unsustainable, Says Climate Expe ...
    by James Randerson Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world's leading climate scientist has told the Observer .Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergov ...

Lifehacker

  • Mount Your Phone to Your Bike for $5 [DIY]
    Avid bicyclist Ethan wanted to mount his GPS-enabled phone to his handlebars, but found the retail solutions both unstable and far too accommodating to opportunistic thieves. His $5 solution turns a flashlight mount into a sturdy and convenient smartphone dashboard. The project might actually cost a ...

  • Download All of National Geographic's Wallpapers ...
    National Geographic offers some stunning, professional-quality wallpaper photos , but only as individual downloads. If you're a frequent wallpaper switcher, or like background variety, a simple command line script makes it easy to grab them all. In Linux (and, presumably, Mac's terminal), the two sc ...

  • Aviary Extension Brings Snappy Web Image Editing ...
    Chrome/Chromium: If you're running a daily build or development version of Chrome that can install extensions, online editing suite Aviary has a really handy one. It takes snapshots of web pages and transports them to its online editing tools. Aviary's online image editor, Phoenix , is a favorite of ...

  • Coffee Temporarily Assigns Primary, Secondary App ...
    Windows: Want to open certain files with the portable apps on your thumb drive when it's plugged in, but revert to default when it's not? Coffee (and, as we've learned, C.A.F.E. ) makes those options possible. Update: PortableApps.com developer John T. Haller noted in the comments that, according to ...

  • Sneak Preview Improves Multi-Guest Scheduling in ...
    If you've recently created an event in Google Calendar, you may have been asked to take part in a "Sneak Preview" of a new event interface. You probably should, as it could save you from reading lots of clarifying emails. Basically, the new interface grabs the public calendars, or private calendars ...

Newshoggers - AfPak

  • Quote Of The Day
    By Ron Beasley I'm with John Cole here: I have nothing but bad feelings about the addition of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Watching Michael O’Hanlon on the evening news was like a punch to the gut- we’ve been down this road before. At what point are O’Hanlon and Pollack every going to be ...

  • Brown & Obama Praying For Extra Allied Troops In A ...
    By Steve Hynd Today, the UK prime minister Gordon Brown pledged 500 extra British troops for Afghanistan. But as the Spectator's Peter Hoskin notes, Brown seems to be jumping the gun on his own promises to the British people. Brown seems to be using this announcement to tell a story of progress in A ...

  • Lugar: War More Important Than Uninsured
    By Steve Hynd While we're talking about Afghanistan and humanitarian considerations, how about this? Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he was wary of strict benchmarks that put both sides in an untenable situation if they're not met. But he sa ...

  • How Come Hawks Only Care About Human Rights When T ...
    By Steve Hynd Ben Smith at Politico is responsible for a piece that really ticked me off today. As President Barack Obama prepares to make the case for sending more troops to Afghanistan, some allies are urging him to return to a line of argument little heard since the Bush years: the United States ...

  • Still More bin Laden BS
    Commentary By Ron Beasley There are many things you can blame the Bush administration for but not capturing Osama bin Laden is not one of them. Senate Report Explores 2001 Escape by bin Laden From Afghan Mountains As President Obama vows to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending more troops, ...

Water Wars

  • Jill Project gives gift of life (The Sarasota Hera ...
    Meg Lowman Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill's still got the water. -- Quoted by Jaime, age 13, past secretary/historian of Dream Harbor, a micro-community of young women at Girls Inc. of Sarasota County (www.girlsinc.org)

  • Act now, before Mumbai, Kolkata drown! (rediff.com ...
    In India, there is a perception that the current ecological disaster is a responsibility of the developed world. If we want to play in the big league we must stop seeing ecological solutions as impositions, say Vikram Sood and Nandita Sood-Perret.

  • Water wars: Costly Lake Lanier options may pressur ...
    The task force created by Gov. Sonny Perdue found that it would take at least eight years and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring new reservoirs online. And aggressive new conservation measures would not alone make up for the 280 million gallons a day the Atlanta area would lose if its supply f ...

  • Tiger Bay Club debates oil drilling - The Observer ...
    The Sarasota Tiger Bay Club’s monthly meeting Nov. 19, which centered on the topic “Drilling for Oil,” fostered a heated debate among oil-drilling supporters and opponents — essentially economy versus the environment.

  • Georgia businesses could lose $26 billion annually ...
    Metro Atlanta would be hardest hit by water losses

WordPress | Economics

McClatchey

  • Seattle police kill suspect in Tacoma officers' sl ...
    Seattle Police shot and killed murder suspect Maurice Clemmons this morning, Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told The News Tribune. Pierce County Sheriffs had supplied Seattle and other police agencies information about possible acquaintances of Clemmons, and, acting upon that informatio ...

  • Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood discusses gas ...
    FORT WORTH — Congress should consider raising the federal gas tax for the first time since 1993, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Monday during a visit to Fort Worth.

  • Zelaya claims fraud in Honduras election, but some ...
    TEGUCIGALPA — Honduras woke up Monday with three presidents: one elected, one on vacation, and another hunkered down at the Brazilian Embassy.

  • New federal financial fraud group augments N.C. gr ...
    Two of Charlotte's top federal prosecutors say a new White House initiative targeting mortgage fraud and other financial crime formalizes partnerships that have been crucial to their work.

  • California oversight group may clamp down on gifts ...
    Free tickets to ball games, spa visits or other treats for California officials' spouses or children should be reported and counted toward annual gift limits, according to a new recommendation by staff at the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

BBC - Richard Black's Earth Watch

  • Copenhagen Countdown: 10 days
    This was the week that saw the heavyweights come to town. The EU had said it, UN climate convention chief Yvo de Boer had said it: without something firm on the table from China and US, together responsible for about 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, it would be very difficult to reach a ...

  • China completes the climate circle
    A fair bit of the doubt and confusion surrounding next month's UN climate summit has suddenly cleared, with the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters - the US and China - announcing pledges on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. As is set out in the Bali Action Plan - the agreement made at the ...

  • China completes the climate circle
    A fair bit of the doubt and confusion surrounding next month's UN climate summit has suddenly cleared, with the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters - the US and China - announcing pledges on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. As is set out in the Bali Action Plan - the agreement made at the ...

  • Copenhagen Countdown: 17 days
    If you've spent the week following every change of direction in the political winds about the likely outcome of the forthcoming UN climate summit, you'll have seen more twisting than the average Chubby Checker song. Extending borrowing from the arts and entertainment world: "To bind or not to bind" ...

  • Climate: A defining issue
    A couple of weeks ago, the cat came well and truly out of the bag: there would not be a legally binding treaty at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen next month. Or will there? During his meeting on Tuesday with China's President Hu Jintao, President Obama appeared to indicate that some sort of co ...

Afghanistan Sun

  • Obama to speak on Afghanistan troop numbers
    President Barack Obama is expected to announce on Tuesday that he will approve the sending of 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan.

  • Obama to outline Afghan strategy at West Point
    WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's day will be dominated by his speech on Afghanistan this evening, but he does have other things on tap. This afternoon he'll meet with Nobel laureates a...

  • Obama to make Afghan strategy speech
    US President Barack Obama is to make a globally-awaited address later on his new Afghan war plan and big troop surge strategy, shouldering the most perilous burden yet of a presidency defined by crise...

  • Obama To Detail Afghan Strategy At West Point
    December 1, 2009 In a speech at West Point Tuesday night, President Obama is expected to reveal how many more U.S. troops will be sent to Afghanistan. It is one of the most important decisions of his ...

  • Afghan officials fear talk of exit strategy
    Afghan officials hope President Barack Obama's address on Afghanistan won't be weighted too heavily on an exit strategy _ even though that's the message many Americans and Democrats in Congress want t...

Futurismic

  • Tax ‘em back into town?
    The UK iteration of Wired is doing a themed issue entitled “Rebooting Britain”, kicking around ideas for changing the face of an already-changing nation for the better. Many of them could be more broadly applied to any Western/developed nation, but a few of them address issues that are somewhat ...

  • Software that learns to recognise faces and voices ...
    A computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania has decided to mimic the way children learn to recognise faces and voices in order to speed up the artificial learning curve of intelligent systems: Using novel learning algorithms that combine audio, video, and text streams, Taskar and his rese ...

  • Charlie Stross: we’re probably never going to bu ...
    Here’s a second piece of punditry for your Monday morning, this time from the inimitable Charlie Stross. He’s been poking the traditional sf mythology of the starship with a sharp stick over the last few months, and the end result is a suggestion that – as far as realistic speculation about th ...

  • David Brin: is America’s loss the world’s gain ...
    Y’know, I really like David Brin, even though I don’t always agree with what he says; he’s got a contrary stripe a mile wide, and he’s one of the few self-identifying conservative thinkers in science fiction who’s willing to break ranks with populism and call out the failings of his own si ...

  • The Butterfly Effect
    Does Not Equal is a webcomic by Sarah Ennals – check out the pre-Futurismic archives, and the strips that have been published here previously. [ Be sure to check out the Does Not Equal Cafepress store for webcomic merchandise featuring Canadians with geometrically-shaped heads! ] Project Wonderf ...

geopolitics | geoeconomics

Whistleblowers Protection Blog

  • Indonesian activists suffer police investigation
    My counterpart in Indonesia, Emerson Yuntho, has been swept up in a flurry of police activity associated with the Third Conference of State Parties (CoSP) of the United Nation Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC).  I just met Emerson last month when he visited our offices at the National Whistlebl ...

  • International Whistleblower News (November 23, 200 ...
    [Canada] MacCharles, Tonda, Richard Colvin: Portrait of a whistleblower, theStar.com , November 21, 2009. Talk to people who know Richard Colvin and a few key traits emerge. Driven, committed to Canada's mission in Afghanistan. Knows his stuff. Takes copious notes. Sociable, yet discreet. Above all, ...

  • International Whistleblower News (November 16, 200 ...
    [UK] Develin, Kate, “NHS whistleblower ‘sacked for revealing dumped x-ray scans’,” Telegraph.co.uk, November 14, 2009. Dr Otto Chan, a consultant radiologist, believes that he was labelled a troublemaker after the revelations about the Royal London. He claims that hospital bosses decided to ...

  • CIA to pay $3 million so Horn will not oppose vaca ...
    The CIA has decided to pay Richard Horn $3 million for a unique settlement of a fifteen (15) year-old spying case. The government not only wants Horn to dismiss the case and release the CIA and State Department officials who spied on him, but the government also wants Horn to promise that he will no ...

  • Bad Apples in a Rotten Barrel
      In the United Kingdom, a former investigator of the Royal Military Police (RMP), speaking anonymously, alleges that Senior British army commanders in Iraq refused to investigate Iraqi civilian abuse claims. According to BBC News on October 11 th , the whistleblower claims that while he has seen d ...

Defense and the National Interest

  • On War #323: Milestone
    William S. Lind 23 November 2009 One of the ongoing themes of this column has been gangs and the role they play in a Fourth Generation world. Here in the United States they already serve as an alternative primary loyalty (alternative to the state) for many urban young men. Gangs will likely be a m ...

  • DNI to close — update
    23 November 2009 Many thanks to everyone who wrote in.  My wife and I are deeply touched. We’ll try to find someone to at least take over the site as it is and keep the links intact.  Several people have contacted me with ideas.  In the meantime, I’ll leave everything up unless we start ...

  • DNI to close
    Probably on Monday, November 23, depending on how my travels work out. Please go ahead and download any thing you’d like to keep — I’d particularly recommend Boyd’s briefings and the 4GW manuals. I have great faith in the growing number of bloggers and commentators who cover many of the s ...

  • On War #322: What Is “Political Correctness?”
    William S. Lind 18 November 2009 In response to the killing of 13 American soldiers at Ft. Hood by an Islamic U. S. Army major, a number of senior officials have expressed their fear, not of Islam, but of a possible threat to “diversity.” “Diversity” is one of the many false gods of “Poli ...

  • What should we do with terrorists?
    Security guru Bruce Schneier has the right idea: We should treat terrorists like common criminals and give them all the benefits of true and open justice — not merely because it demonstrates our indomitability, but because it makes us all safer. Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, th ...

Science Express

  • Sustained quantum information processing demonstra ...
    Raising prospects for building a practical quantum computer, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have demonstrated sustained, reliable information processing operations on electrically charged atoms (ions). The new work, described in the August 6 issue of Science Express ...

  • Researchers identify itch-specific neurons in mice ...
    Historically, many scientists have regarded itching as just a less intense version of pain. They have spent decades searching for itch-specific nerve cells to explain how the brain perceives itch differently from pain, but none have been found.

  • Colon cancer may yield to cellular sugar starvatio ...
    Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have discovered how two cancer-promoting genes enhance a tumor's capacity to grow and survive under conditions where normal cells die. The knowledge, they say, may offer new treatments that starve cancer cells of a key nutrient - sugar. However, ...

  • Dark Matter May be Easier to Detect than Previousl ...
    (PhysOrg.com) -- The Milky Way, like many other galaxies, is thought to be embedded in massive, lumpy amounts of dark matter that release gamma rays and other emissions. Although at first these emissions seem too faint to detect, recent observations have shown that they may be stronger than previous ...

  • Scientists develope optimal flu vaccine priorities ...
    (PhysOrg.com) -- Optimal control of the spread of the seasonal flu and H1N1 is achieved by prioritizing vaccinations for schoolchildren and for adults aged 30 to 39 in the United States. Those are the findings of a new study by Clemson University and Yale University School of Medicine mathematicians ...

TechDirt

  • If You're Looking For The Open Source Business Mod ...
    Every so often we see a similar article to the one penned recently by Ashlee Vance in the NY Times, bemoaning the lack of "open source business model" success stories . Now, Vance is a top notch reporter and does great work for the NY Times (as he did for The Register before), but these kinds of ar ...

  • Virgin Media Using Deep Packet Inspection To Spy O ...
    Last year, there were early reports that ISP Virgin Media in the UK would become a copyright cop for the entertainment industry and start kicking file sharers offline if they were accused of infringement. While Virgin later denied this , the company did send letters threatening to kick users offlin ...

  • That Was Fast: New Detroit Newspaper Lasted An Ent ...
    A few weeks ago, some publishing industry veterans announced plans to start a new daily newspaper in Detroit , a city that has seen its daily newspapers significantly scale back the production of the paper product. This resulted in some reasonable confusion over how the plan could possibly make sen ...

  • Local UK Newspaper Chain Tries A Paywall
    Slowly, but surely, we're seeing some regional newspapers try out a paywall. We've already seen Newsday, on Long Island, put up a paywall , but it's more about reducing churn than actually getting people to pay (and early reports are that not many are paying). Now, as a bunch of readers sent in, J ...

  • The Uselessness Of Amazon's Announcement That Kind ...
    A few folks have sent over some version of the story that the Kindle is outselling every other product on Amazon . Of course, that's somewhat meaningless, as the folks at Gizmodo smartly point out. Because you can only get the Kindle via Amazon , and that makes the number completely different than ...

VacTruth

BroadSnark

  • Ignoring Elites is so Elitist
    Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen at Politico wrote a story about how Obama’s White House is “working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party.” The Heritage Foundation quoted that story and then did a fascinating little maneuver where they tried to turn “ ...

  • Rewriting the Drug War News
    Ever read a news story and want to bang your head on the wall because of all the underlying assumptions written into it?  Me too. Stop the Drug War has a new project called the Drug Policy News Writing Demonstration Project. The Drug Policy News Demonstration Project seeks to raise awareness of the ...

  • The Danger of Good vs. Evil
    The Heritage Foundation put out a morning bell yesterday.  The gist of the message is that Obama slighted Reagan by not showing up for the Berlin wall ceremonies and for not mentioning Reagan in his speech.  Reagan is, of course, the savior who freed the world from the communists. My personal favo ...

  • Some Stuff You Might Have Missed
    I really liked this post over at Reconcile.  It’s time we start talking about higher education.  We shouldn’t just accept “get an education” as an answer to all our social ills. And speaking of school, sometimes (just for a moment) I forget the horror that it was to be a teenager.  ...

  • The Problem with Economics
    I came across a study this week that reminded me why I focused on history and not economics. Carl-Johan Daigaard and Ola Olsson, economists at the University of Copenhagen, published results of a study called Why are Rich Countries More Politically Cohesive?.  They conclude that there is a correlat ...

Executive Intelligence Review

  • Berlin Must Apply the Glass-Steagall Standard, To ...
    By Helga Zepp-LaRouche Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, November 27, 2009, Vol. 36, No. 46

  • Have We Got an (Underwater) Deal For You!
    By John Hoefle Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, November 27, 2009, Vol. 36, No. 46

  • Person & Pain: Brainwashed!
    By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, November 27, 2009, Vol. 36, No. 46

  • The Incredible Shrinking Obama Presidency
    By Our Special Correspondent Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, November 27, 2009, Vol. 36, No. 46

  • Shift to the Pacific: The Historic Mission of the ...
    By Nancy Spannaus Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, November 27, 2009, Vol. 36, No. 46

    Care2 Picks


  • Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan
    Jeremy Scahill Reveals Private Military Firm Operating in Pakistan Under Covert Assassination and Kidnapping Program Submitted by John Farnham to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

  • Enlightenment - The Experience Festival
    The Global Oneness Commitment is an eight-year project with the goal of uniting people around the globe to mutual actions in order to transform the planet thru an increase in spiritual awareness synchronised with the twin Venus Transits 2004 and 2012 Submitted by John Farnham to Society & Culture ...

  • European Consumers Warned that Trade Deal with Can ...
    Thursday, October 22, Ottawa - An alliance of Canadian groups is warning European consumers that an economic partnership agreement with Canada could threaten Europe’s regulations of genetically modified (GM) foods and crops. Submitted by Elena P. to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

  • Victory: South Africa rejects GM potato
    New Victory for the Potato! October 2009: South Africa’s GM body, the Executive Council (EC), has rejected attempts by the Agriculture Research Council (ARC) to bring GM potatoes onto the market. Submitted by Elena P. to Health & Wellness  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

  • Judge Rules GMOs Violate Environmental Law
    White wrote, "The potential elimination of farmers` choice to grow nongenetically engineered crops, or consumers` choice to eat nongenetically engineered food ... has a significant effect on the human environment." Submitted by Elena P. to Health & Wellness  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

Insurgency Watch - Newswire

  • Obama, us leaders should contemplate future of Afg ...
    BBC News Obama, us leaders should contemplate future of Afghan women Chicago Tribune Would nuclear-armed Pakistan become even more vulnerable to its own Taliban insurgency ? Will a defeat embolden America's enemies? That line of thinking must ... Vietnam syndrome has begun in Afghanistan Sri Lanka ...

  • Officials: Campus blasts perplexing - United Press ...
    Officials: Campus blasts perplexing United Press International ISLAMABAD, Pakistan , Oct. 21 (UPI) -- The International Islamic University, where bomb blasts killed at least six people, is a unique Pakistani institution ... and more »

  • Schools closed in Pakistan after bombing - GMA new ...
    Schools closed in Pakistan after bombing GMA news.tv An Associated Press reporter met three Taliban fighters Tuesday traveling in a car with darkened windows at Shaktoi, a town close to the border between ... and more »

  • An Evolving Afghan Policy - American Chronicle
    An Evolving Afghan Policy American Chronicle ... triumph for the forces of Islamic extremism, al-Qaeda would once again gain a foothold, and the return of the Taliban would likely destabilize Pakistan . ...

  • Schools close in Pakistan following university bom ...
    Schools close in Pakistan following university bombings Emirates Business 24/7 ... in Pakistan after suspected militants bombed a university close to the capital, sowing fear across the country as the army presses a major anti- Taliban ... and more »

AlterNet - Rights and Liberties

Sideways News

  • Zoos unite over 350ppm carbon target
    Zoos from across the globe have united to take action against climate change. Over 200 members of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) have signed a petition calling world leaders to reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions to below 350 parts per million (ppm) in a bid to prevent creatures fro ...

  • Maitake mushrooms 'curb cancer growth'
    The maitake mushroom is more than a popular Chinese cooking ingredient, according to researchers at the Department of Urology at the New York Medical College, who claim that it could be potential weapon against cancer.

  • Action for World Aids Day in the UK
    There are over 33.4 million people living with HIV/Aids across the globe. Africa has 14 million Aids orphans and 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.

  • Twitter named top word of 2009
    Twitter has been voted the top word of 2009.

  • UK marine conservation sites planned
    Twelve new marine conservation sites around the coast have been proposed by Natural England , the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the Countryside Council for Wales .

Fabius Maximus

  • FM newswire for 1 December, hot articles for your ...
    Today’s broadsheet from the FM website pressroom with three sections of hot news. Links to interesting news and analysis Exciting but probably fake story for today:  the General says “No one can separate Islam and Pakistan” Feature article: another advocate of the war whitewashes him ...

  • Media madness #1 – their lies and ignorance ...
    Critics (like me) have railed about the flaws of the old media.  Media experts, such as Clay Shirky, have warned that the new news media might be worse.  Today we look at evidence supporting their fears. Here we see the essence of making us stupid Internet websites, 21st century propagan ...

  • We’re doomed unless we can learn – an ...
    Anyone paying attention knows that America shops too much and saves too little.  Fifty years of this has left a large fraction of households at the brink of bankruptcy, and the nation grossly indebted to foreign nations (e.g., Japan, China, members of OPEC).  Yet every month sees Wall Street cheer ...

  • We are withdrawing from Afghanistan (eventually, b ...
    A blast from the past for your weekend reading, a reminder from the FM archives (21 April 2008) of how the military dangles future toop withdrawals before us — like a peasant does before a mule.  Keep this in mind when listening to Obama’s specious promises this week.  A few more troops, t ...

  • The Trinity of modern war at work in Afghanistan ( ...
    Surprise!  We’re recruiting milita to help in Afghanistan.  It’s a new tactic, just as it was in Iraq and Vietnam.  It’s a direct violation of the COIN manual (FM 3-24), with its tiresome emphasis on building the legitimacy of the local puppet government.  But then that was just ...

sibeledmonds - tweets

WIRED Magazine | Science

  • There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Simple’ Organism
    What may be the most thorough study ever of a single organism has produced a beta code for life’s essential subroutines, and shown that even the simplest creatures are more complex than scientists suspected. The analysis combined information about gene regulation, protein production and cell stru ...

  • Kiwi Rocket Scares Sheep, Reaches Space
    A small, private company launched New Zealand’s first rocket into space to cheers from about 50 people gathered on a small island off the country’s coast. As the noise of the blastoff sent sheep running, the 18-foot rocket raced into the sky, reaching beyond the Kármán line, 100 kilomet ...

  • Naked Black Hole Builds Future Galactic Dream Home
    Astronomers have captured a distant black hole creating the galaxy that will eventually become its home. By sending a jet of gas and highly energetic particles into a neighboring galaxy, the black hole has touched off star formation at a rate 100 times the galactic average. “Our study suggests th ...

  • How to Mix Oil and Water
    Scientists in Belgium have uncovered a new way to shake things up. Violent bouncing of a water droplet coated with oil causes the oil layer to move inside and fracture into many oily globs. In a paper published in the December Chaos, researchers at the University of Liège in Belgium call this micr ...

  • Large Hadron Collider Sets New World Record
      CERN announced early Monday that the Large Hadron Collider has become the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. The LHC pushed protons to 1.18 TeV (trillion electron volts), surpassing the previous record of 0.98 TeV held by Fermilab’s Tevatron. The LHC has had a rough beginning, suf ...

The Progressive Realist

  • The Perils of Self-Delusion
    Thomas Friedman’s recent “green” turn sometimes makes me feel bad that I ever said anything mean about him, but then you go read something like this : Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyra ...

  • Study Reveals Many Ahmadinejad Supporters in Rural ...
    The following article is based on an ongoing study being conducted by Iranian scholars from Tehran, Qom, and Shiraz. These findings have not been made public, but the authors have chosen to share them with insideIRAN.org TEHRAN —Since the controversial re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June, d ...

  • Nothing Says “Peace” Like Foreign Mercenaries
    As I’ve  discussed   previously on numerous occasions , one of the oddest arguments for escalating/perpetuating our military presence in Afghanistan is the stated fear that our withdrawal would destabilize Pakistan.  Implicit in this formulation is the presumption that our ongoing militar ...

  • NSN Daily Update: November 30, 2009
    In lieu of our normal Daily Update, NSN has released a memo to the community regarding President Obama's speech on the way forward in Afghanistan. We encourage you to read it here . What We're Reading read more

  • The Interpolar World
    This Giovanni Grevi paper (via Sven Bishop ) from last June, titled, "The Interpolar World: A New Scenario" (.pdf), is a little gem worth reading in full. Grevi manages to distill quite a few of the contemporary interpretations of the changing geopolitical landscape into a thought-provoking argument ...

TAPPED - The American Prospect

  • Lightning Round: Our Grim Future Cometh.
    Despite a favorable new CBO score and independent analysis demonstrating the Senate health-care reform bill's costs savings, the debate over controversial elements of the legislation has finally begun in the hallowed upper house of Congress. In light of this, it's worth considering the implication ...

  • Superheroes Are Emo By Nature.
    I think Matthew Yglesias misses the point of "Super 'Emo' Friends" when he writes that he'd like to "see this expanded into a real comic book." That would be redundant. With the exception of Green Lantern (and the rather offensive Wonder Woman parody), the Super 'Emo' Friends listed identify emotion ...

  • Wall Street Meets Its Match.
    Robert Kuttner on Sen. Maria Cantwell 's approach to financial regulation: In the showdown over the regulation of potentially toxic securities like credit-default swaps, the savviest and toughest battler for effective legislation turns out to be not Barney Frank or Chris Dodd , who chair the key Ho ...

  • The "Race Card," Conveniently Defined.
    Lately, I've been fascinated by Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson 's blog . Although most of his posts are boilerplate wingnuttia -- health-care reform is tyranny, diplomacy is weakness, etc. -- there are a few gems here and there, most notably with his ongoing attempt to document li ...

  • Andrew Napolitano Gets Down To Basics.
    Andrew Napolitano is a former judge on the New Jersey Supreme Court who has his own Fox News show and generally offers the standard over the top fare that has come to be associated with Fox "coverage." But today in the LA Times , he offers a very good defense of the decision to try terrorists in civ ...

Andy Worthington

  • Andy Worthington Discusses “Outside the Law: Sto ...
    Last week I was delighted to talk to Linda Olson-Osterlund on KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon, for her show, “A Deeper Look,” which was broadcast on Wednesday. The show is available online here, and Linda and I discussed the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (dire ...

  • Andy Worthington Discusses “Outside the Law: Sto ...
    Last week I was delighted to talk to Linda Olson-Osterlund for KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon, for her show, “A Deeper Look,” which was broadcast on Wednesday. The show is available online here, and Linda and I discussed the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (dir ...

  • UK Judges Compare Binyam Mohamed’s Torture To Th ...
    Binyam Mohamed is a British resident, seized in Pakistan in April 2002, who was held in Pakistani custody, supervised by US agents, until July 2002, when he was sent by the CIA to be tortured for 18 months in Morocco, and was tied in with a “dirty bomb plot” that never even existed. After his [. ...

  • Iraq Inquiry: Sir Christopher Meyer Confirms That ...
    No matter how it ends up being spun, Sir Christopher Meyer’s testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry today demonstrated, without a shadow of a doubt, how “regime change” in Iraq was agreed between George W. Bush and Tony Blair in April 2002, and how the rush to war by the US meant that furious attemp ...

  • Andy Worthington Discusses Obama’s Failure To Cl ...
    Following up on my US tour promoting the new documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) and my appearance on ABC News, plus the slew of developments in recent weeks regarding Guantánamo — federal court trials for Khalid Sheikh Mohamm ...

Buzzflash

  • BuzzFlash Mailbag for November 25, 2009
    BUZZFLASH MAILBAG [BuzzFlash Mailbag goes on a Thanksgiving holiday. Back on Monday.] Want to join the conversation? Share your thoughts with other Mailbag readers by clicking here . You also may comment below; post articles yourself at BuzzFlash.net ; or send urls for BuzzFlash to post to: www.buzz ...

  • Bottom-up indifference
    Body I idled the better part of my week's vacation in the blissful remoteness of Southwest Missouri, trying my best, as they say, to forget it all. It was an unchallenging task. In that hilly -- hillbilly -- environ, the locals content themselves with shipping off the same congressman ev ...

  • A Special Message to Joe Lieberman from His Roomma ...
    A Special Message to Joe Lieberman From His College Roommate By David Wyles Over the past few years, we have published appeals to Joe Lieberman by his Yale undergraduate roommate, David Wyles. Today, we are posting David's holiday message to the man who you never want to get in between him and a cam ...

  • Christian PR Man Goes on 'The Road' With Movie Abo ...
    Larry Ross, a Christian PR man extraordinaire, has been working to take ‘The Road’ to a religious audience in search of buzz, box office and discussion By Bill Berkowitz   Two movies with doomsday scenarios highlight this year’s pre-holiday Cineplex fare.  “2012,” a special effects spectac ...

  • Jacqueline Marcus: Middle-East War Is Futile -- By ...
    BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY by Jacqueline Marcus Last night, I was shocked to hear that the U.S. plans on staying in the Middle East for at least another 10 more years, according to NBC Nightly News. AND they're planning on raising every kind of tax to pay for it. Obama failed us. Instead of firin ...

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

  • Obama's exceedingly familiar justifications for es ...
    (updated below) In order to prepare Americans for Obama's Afghanistan escalation speech tonight at West Point (at least he's not wearing a fighter pilot costume), White House officials have been dispatched to speak to the media (anonymously, of course) to preview all of the new and exciting a ...

  • The face of rotted Washington
    Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh -- who was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, talks excitedly about punishing , and even bombing , Iran, and is now demanding full-scale escalation in Afghanistan -- was on Fox News yesterday and highlighted what a fraud most so-called "fiscal conser ...

  • The crazy, irrational beliefs of Muslims
    (updated below) Tom Friedman, The New York Times , today : Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced -- I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. Tom Friedman, The Charlie Rose Show , May 30, 2003 :  ROSE: Now that the war is over, and there's some difficulty with the pea ...

  • Is Obama's civil liberties record understandable?
    Earlier this week, Kevin Drum said that "nine times out of ten" Obama's policies are "pretty much what [he] expected" but that "the biggest one-time-out-of-ten where he's not doing what [he] expected is in the area of detainee and civil liberties issues."  Similarly, Andrew Sullivan cited  "acc ...

  • A key British official reminds us of the forgotten ...
    Britain is currently engulfed by a probing, controversial investigation into how their Government came to support the invasion of Iraq, replete with evidence that much of what was said at the time by both British and American officials was knowingly false, particularly regarding the unequivocal in ...

The BiPartisan Report

Sciencebase

  • Twitter, Facebook and Sciencebase
    Regular readers will hopefully have spotted I’ve cleaned up the site a little recently and added a couple of new widgets to the Sciencebase sidebar menu just below the About section link to my Research Blogging posts. The first widget heralds the relaunch of the sciencebase.com Facebook fan page ...

  • Absolute chemical headlines
    A wide range of stories again in this week’s Alchemist column on ChemWeb.com Absolute configurations reveal themselves through NMR spectroscopy using residual dipolar couplings in small molecules, according to an international team who have put it to work on an anticancer compound. Discussed also ...

  • Recognisable scientists versus artists
    According to the promoters of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London aimed at UK Scientific Heritage: “Scientists are no longer unrecognisable boffins” thanks to the Science in Focus exhibition, which runs until 17 January 2010. Well…I take issue with that remark! Which o ...

  • Homeopathy really doesn’t work
    A couple of years ago, I re-posted an old article of mine about homeopathy discussing its ludicrous claims, its feeble attempts to provide a scientific explanation for those claims, and basically pointing out that no solid evidence has ever been found that infinitely diluted solutions of spurious in ...

  • Latest science headlines
    Time to bring you up to date on the latest science headlines I’ve put together for other sites this last couple of weeks, so here’s a quick round-up: On the SpectroscopyNOW site, this issue, I covered natural chemicals that can help sunflowers soak up toxic cadmium from the soil (another example ...

change: org.

  • Monsanto Draws Antitrust Investigation
    It is about time. An article in the Washington Post reveals that the Justice Department, which the Obama Administration has given expanded authority to investigate antitrust cases, is conducting an inquiry into whether Monsanto's activities run afoul of laws regulating dominance by a single corpora ...

  • Happy News in Tort Reform
    There’s good news on the tort reform front. No, Republicans didn’t decide to constructively contribute to the healthcare reform discussion and pledge votes to a bill that included tort reform provisions. But medical malpractice insurance premiums have eased for the fourth straight year. Tort re ...

  • Russia: The Elephant in the Climate Living Room
    When it comes to securing a global solution to climate change, we've got a big problem. Well, okay, there are a few big problems, one of which is the lack of commitment by my own old U S of A. But there's another one flying under the radar that threatens to scuttle the whole deal. This is the one th ...

  • Conversative Estimates Report Climate Change Could ...
    Up to $7.4 trillion in assets could be in jeopardy by 2050 if the global sea level rises 20 inches, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund and European insurance firm Allianz SE. Think 20 inches sounds high? Then consider the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research's (SCAR) major ...

  • Pledge to Join the Movement to Prevent Genocide
    This is a guest-post from Mark Hanis, the Founder and President of the Genocide Intervention Network. You’ve probably heard George Clooney speak about the genocide in Darfur. You might have seen the atrocities in Eastern Congo outlined on 60 Minutes a few nights ago. Those crises – some of the w ...

Common Dreams -News

  • Saddam Was Telling Truth in Missing Gulf War Pilot
    by Pamela Hess WASHINGTON -- Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, this time. The United States just didn't believe him. So it took the most powerful military in the world 18 years to find the remains of the only U.S. Navy pilot shot down in an aerial battle in the 1991 Gulf War. Michael "Scott" Spe ...

  • 'Nuclear Pope' ElBaradei Steps Down
    VIENNA - UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who once described himself as a "nuclear pope", quoted the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi in his farewell remarks at the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where ...

  • Democrats in Revolt Over Obama’s Troop Surge
    by Christina Lamb in Washington Barack Obama's much-vaunted eloquence faces the biggest test of his presidential career this week when he takes to the stage at West Point military academy to explain to a nation that thought it had elected an anti-war president why he is escalating the conflict in Af ...

  • Release of Secret Reports Delayed
    by Bryan Bender WASHINGTON - President Obama will maintain a lid of secrecy on millions of pages of military and intelligence documents that were scheduled to be declassified by the end of the year, according to administration officials. read more

  • Western Lifestyle Unsustainable, Says Climate Expe ...
    by James Randerson Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world's leading climate scientist has told the Observer .Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergov ...

Lifehacker

  • Mount Your Phone to Your Bike for $5 [DIY]
    Avid bicyclist Ethan wanted to mount his GPS-enabled phone to his handlebars, but found the retail solutions both unstable and far too accommodating to opportunistic thieves. His $5 solution turns a flashlight mount into a sturdy and convenient smartphone dashboard. The project might actually cost a ...

  • Download All of National Geographic's Wallpapers ...
    National Geographic offers some stunning, professional-quality wallpaper photos , but only as individual downloads. If you're a frequent wallpaper switcher, or like background variety, a simple command line script makes it easy to grab them all. In Linux (and, presumably, Mac's terminal), the two sc ...

  • Aviary Extension Brings Snappy Web Image Editing ...
    Chrome/Chromium: If you're running a daily build or development version of Chrome that can install extensions, online editing suite Aviary has a really handy one. It takes snapshots of web pages and transports them to its online editing tools. Aviary's online image editor, Phoenix , is a favorite of ...

  • Coffee Temporarily Assigns Primary, Secondary App ...
    Windows: Want to open certain files with the portable apps on your thumb drive when it's plugged in, but revert to default when it's not? Coffee (and, as we've learned, C.A.F.E. ) makes those options possible. Update: PortableApps.com developer John T. Haller noted in the comments that, according to ...

  • Sneak Preview Improves Multi-Guest Scheduling in ...
    If you've recently created an event in Google Calendar, you may have been asked to take part in a "Sneak Preview" of a new event interface. You probably should, as it could save you from reading lots of clarifying emails. Basically, the new interface grabs the public calendars, or private calendars ...

Newshoggers - AfPak

  • Quote Of The Day
    By Ron Beasley I'm with John Cole here: I have nothing but bad feelings about the addition of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Watching Michael O’Hanlon on the evening news was like a punch to the gut- we’ve been down this road before. At what point are O’Hanlon and Pollack every going to be ...

  • Brown & Obama Praying For Extra Allied Troops In A ...
    By Steve Hynd Today, the UK prime minister Gordon Brown pledged 500 extra British troops for Afghanistan. But as the Spectator's Peter Hoskin notes, Brown seems to be jumping the gun on his own promises to the British people. Brown seems to be using this announcement to tell a story of progress in A ...

  • Lugar: War More Important Than Uninsured
    By Steve Hynd While we're talking about Afghanistan and humanitarian considerations, how about this? Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he was wary of strict benchmarks that put both sides in an untenable situation if they're not met. But he sa ...

  • How Come Hawks Only Care About Human Rights When T ...
    By Steve Hynd Ben Smith at Politico is responsible for a piece that really ticked me off today. As President Barack Obama prepares to make the case for sending more troops to Afghanistan, some allies are urging him to return to a line of argument little heard since the Bush years: the United States ...

  • Still More bin Laden BS
    Commentary By Ron Beasley There are many things you can blame the Bush administration for but not capturing Osama bin Laden is not one of them. Senate Report Explores 2001 Escape by bin Laden From Afghan Mountains As President Obama vows to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending more troops, ...

Water Wars

  • Jill Project gives gift of life (The Sarasota Hera ...
    Meg Lowman Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill's still got the water. -- Quoted by Jaime, age 13, past secretary/historian of Dream Harbor, a micro-community of young women at Girls Inc. of Sarasota County (www.girlsinc.org)

  • Act now, before Mumbai, Kolkata drown! (rediff.com ...
    In India, there is a perception that the current ecological disaster is a responsibility of the developed world. If we want to play in the big league we must stop seeing ecological solutions as impositions, say Vikram Sood and Nandita Sood-Perret.

  • Water wars: Costly Lake Lanier options may pressur ...
    The task force created by Gov. Sonny Perdue found that it would take at least eight years and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring new reservoirs online. And aggressive new conservation measures would not alone make up for the 280 million gallons a day the Atlanta area would lose if its supply f ...

  • Tiger Bay Club debates oil drilling - The Observer ...
    The Sarasota Tiger Bay Club’s monthly meeting Nov. 19, which centered on the topic “Drilling for Oil,” fostered a heated debate among oil-drilling supporters and opponents — essentially economy versus the environment.

  • Georgia businesses could lose $26 billion annually ...
    Metro Atlanta would be hardest hit by water losses

WordPress | Economics

McClatchey

  • Seattle police kill suspect in Tacoma officers' sl ...
    Seattle Police shot and killed murder suspect Maurice Clemmons this morning, Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told The News Tribune. Pierce County Sheriffs had supplied Seattle and other police agencies information about possible acquaintances of Clemmons, and, acting upon that informatio ...

  • Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood discusses gas ...
    FORT WORTH — Congress should consider raising the federal gas tax for the first time since 1993, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Monday during a visit to Fort Worth.

  • Zelaya claims fraud in Honduras election, but some ...
    TEGUCIGALPA — Honduras woke up Monday with three presidents: one elected, one on vacation, and another hunkered down at the Brazilian Embassy.

  • New federal financial fraud group augments N.C. gr ...
    Two of Charlotte's top federal prosecutors say a new White House initiative targeting mortgage fraud and other financial crime formalizes partnerships that have been crucial to their work.

  • California oversight group may clamp down on gifts ...
    Free tickets to ball games, spa visits or other treats for California officials' spouses or children should be reported and counted toward annual gift limits, according to a new recommendation by staff at the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

BBC - Richard Black's Earth Watch

  • Copenhagen Countdown: 10 days
    This was the week that saw the heavyweights come to town. The EU had said it, UN climate convention chief Yvo de Boer had said it: without something firm on the table from China and US, together responsible for about 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, it would be very difficult to reach a ...

  • China completes the climate circle
    A fair bit of the doubt and confusion surrounding next month's UN climate summit has suddenly cleared, with the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters - the US and China - announcing pledges on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. As is set out in the Bali Action Plan - the agreement made at the ...

  • China completes the climate circle
    A fair bit of the doubt and confusion surrounding next month's UN climate summit has suddenly cleared, with the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters - the US and China - announcing pledges on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. As is set out in the Bali Action Plan - the agreement made at the ...

  • Copenhagen Countdown: 17 days
    If you've spent the week following every change of direction in the political winds about the likely outcome of the forthcoming UN climate summit, you'll have seen more twisting than the average Chubby Checker song. Extending borrowing from the arts and entertainment world: "To bind or not to bind" ...

  • Climate: A defining issue
    A couple of weeks ago, the cat came well and truly out of the bag: there would not be a legally binding treaty at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen next month. Or will there? During his meeting on Tuesday with China's President Hu Jintao, President Obama appeared to indicate that some sort of co ...

Afghanistan Sun

  • Obama to speak on Afghanistan troop numbers
    President Barack Obama is expected to announce on Tuesday that he will approve the sending of 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan.

  • Obama to outline Afghan strategy at West Point
    WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's day will be dominated by his speech on Afghanistan this evening, but he does have other things on tap. This afternoon he'll meet with Nobel laureates a...

  • Obama to make Afghan strategy speech
    US President Barack Obama is to make a globally-awaited address later on his new Afghan war plan and big troop surge strategy, shouldering the most perilous burden yet of a presidency defined by crise...

  • Obama To Detail Afghan Strategy At West Point
    December 1, 2009 In a speech at West Point Tuesday night, President Obama is expected to reveal how many more U.S. troops will be sent to Afghanistan. It is one of the most important decisions of his ...

  • Afghan officials fear talk of exit strategy
    Afghan officials hope President Barack Obama's address on Afghanistan won't be weighted too heavily on an exit strategy _ even though that's the message many Americans and Democrats in Congress want t...

Futurismic

  • Tax ‘em back into town?
    The UK iteration of Wired is doing a themed issue entitled “Rebooting Britain”, kicking around ideas for changing the face of an already-changing nation for the better. Many of them could be more broadly applied to any Western/developed nation, but a few of them address issues that are somewhat ...

  • Software that learns to recognise faces and voices ...
    A computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania has decided to mimic the way children learn to recognise faces and voices in order to speed up the artificial learning curve of intelligent systems: Using novel learning algorithms that combine audio, video, and text streams, Taskar and his rese ...

  • Charlie Stross: we’re probably never going to bu ...
    Here’s a second piece of punditry for your Monday morning, this time from the inimitable Charlie Stross. He’s been poking the traditional sf mythology of the starship with a sharp stick over the last few months, and the end result is a suggestion that – as far as realistic speculation about th ...

  • David Brin: is America’s loss the world’s gain ...
    Y’know, I really like David Brin, even though I don’t always agree with what he says; he’s got a contrary stripe a mile wide, and he’s one of the few self-identifying conservative thinkers in science fiction who’s willing to break ranks with populism and call out the failings of his own si ...

  • The Butterfly Effect
    Does Not Equal is a webcomic by Sarah Ennals – check out the pre-Futurismic archives, and the strips that have been published here previously. [ Be sure to check out the Does Not Equal Cafepress store for webcomic merchandise featuring Canadians with geometrically-shaped heads! ] Project Wonderf ...

geopolitics | geoeconomics

Whistleblowers Protection Blog

  • Indonesian activists suffer police investigation
    My counterpart in Indonesia, Emerson Yuntho, has been swept up in a flurry of police activity associated with the Third Conference of State Parties (CoSP) of the United Nation Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC).  I just met Emerson last month when he visited our offices at the National Whistlebl ...

  • International Whistleblower News (November 23, 200 ...
    [Canada] MacCharles, Tonda, Richard Colvin: Portrait of a whistleblower, theStar.com , November 21, 2009. Talk to people who know Richard Colvin and a few key traits emerge. Driven, committed to Canada's mission in Afghanistan. Knows his stuff. Takes copious notes. Sociable, yet discreet. Above all, ...

  • International Whistleblower News (November 16, 200 ...
    [UK] Develin, Kate, “NHS whistleblower ‘sacked for revealing dumped x-ray scans’,” Telegraph.co.uk, November 14, 2009. Dr Otto Chan, a consultant radiologist, believes that he was labelled a troublemaker after the revelations about the Royal London. He claims that hospital bosses decided to ...

  • CIA to pay $3 million so Horn will not oppose vaca ...
    The CIA has decided to pay Richard Horn $3 million for a unique settlement of a fifteen (15) year-old spying case. The government not only wants Horn to dismiss the case and release the CIA and State Department officials who spied on him, but the government also wants Horn to promise that he will no ...

  • Bad Apples in a Rotten Barrel
      In the United Kingdom, a former investigator of the Royal Military Police (RMP), speaking anonymously, alleges that Senior British army commanders in Iraq refused to investigate Iraqi civilian abuse claims. According to BBC News on October 11 th , the whistleblower claims that while he has seen d ...

Defense and the National Interest

  • On War #323: Milestone
    William S. Lind 23 November 2009 One of the ongoing themes of this column has been gangs and the role they play in a Fourth Generation world. Here in the United States they already serve as an alternative primary loyalty (alternative to the state) for many urban young men. Gangs will likely be a m ...

  • DNI to close — update
    23 November 2009 Many thanks to everyone who wrote in.  My wife and I are deeply touched. We’ll try to find someone to at least take over the site as it is and keep the links intact.  Several people have contacted me with ideas.  In the meantime, I’ll leave everything up unless we start ...

  • DNI to close
    Probably on Monday, November 23, depending on how my travels work out. Please go ahead and download any thing you’d like to keep — I’d particularly recommend Boyd’s briefings and the 4GW manuals. I have great faith in the growing number of bloggers and commentators who cover many of the s ...

  • On War #322: What Is “Political Correctness?”
    William S. Lind 18 November 2009 In response to the killing of 13 American soldiers at Ft. Hood by an Islamic U. S. Army major, a number of senior officials have expressed their fear, not of Islam, but of a possible threat to “diversity.” “Diversity” is one of the many false gods of “Poli ...

  • What should we do with terrorists?
    Security guru Bruce Schneier has the right idea: We should treat terrorists like common criminals and give them all the benefits of true and open justice — not merely because it demonstrates our indomitability, but because it makes us all safer. Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, th ...

Science Express

  • Sustained quantum information processing demonstra ...
    Raising prospects for building a practical quantum computer, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have demonstrated sustained, reliable information processing operations on electrically charged atoms (ions). The new work, described in the August 6 issue of Science Express ...

  • Researchers identify itch-specific neurons in mice ...
    Historically, many scientists have regarded itching as just a less intense version of pain. They have spent decades searching for itch-specific nerve cells to explain how the brain perceives itch differently from pain, but none have been found.

  • Colon cancer may yield to cellular sugar starvatio ...
    Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have discovered how two cancer-promoting genes enhance a tumor's capacity to grow and survive under conditions where normal cells die. The knowledge, they say, may offer new treatments that starve cancer cells of a key nutrient - sugar. However, ...

  • Dark Matter May be Easier to Detect than Previousl ...
    (PhysOrg.com) -- The Milky Way, like many other galaxies, is thought to be embedded in massive, lumpy amounts of dark matter that release gamma rays and other emissions. Although at first these emissions seem too faint to detect, recent observations have shown that they may be stronger than previous ...

  • Scientists develope optimal flu vaccine priorities ...
    (PhysOrg.com) -- Optimal control of the spread of the seasonal flu and H1N1 is achieved by prioritizing vaccinations for schoolchildren and for adults aged 30 to 39 in the United States. Those are the findings of a new study by Clemson University and Yale University School of Medicine mathematicians ...

TechDirt

  • If You're Looking For The Open Source Business Mod ...
    Every so often we see a similar article to the one penned recently by Ashlee Vance in the NY Times, bemoaning the lack of "open source business model" success stories . Now, Vance is a top notch reporter and does great work for the NY Times (as he did for The Register before), but these kinds of ar ...

  • Virgin Media Using Deep Packet Inspection To Spy O ...
    Last year, there were early reports that ISP Virgin Media in the UK would become a copyright cop for the entertainment industry and start kicking file sharers offline if they were accused of infringement. While Virgin later denied this , the company did send letters threatening to kick users offlin ...

  • That Was Fast: New Detroit Newspaper Lasted An Ent ...
    A few weeks ago, some publishing industry veterans announced plans to start a new daily newspaper in Detroit , a city that has seen its daily newspapers significantly scale back the production of the paper product. This resulted in some reasonable confusion over how the plan could possibly make sen ...

  • Local UK Newspaper Chain Tries A Paywall
    Slowly, but surely, we're seeing some regional newspapers try out a paywall. We've already seen Newsday, on Long Island, put up a paywall , but it's more about reducing churn than actually getting people to pay (and early reports are that not many are paying). Now, as a bunch of readers sent in, J ...

  • The Uselessness Of Amazon's Announcement That Kind ...
    A few folks have sent over some version of the story that the Kindle is outselling every other product on Amazon . Of course, that's somewhat meaningless, as the folks at Gizmodo smartly point out. Because you can only get the Kindle via Amazon , and that makes the number completely different than ...

VacTruth

BroadSnark

  • Ignoring Elites is so Elitist
    Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen at Politico wrote a story about how Obama’s White House is “working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party.” The Heritage Foundation quoted that story and then did a fascinating little maneuver where they tried to turn “ ...

  • Rewriting the Drug War News
    Ever read a news story and want to bang your head on the wall because of all the underlying assumptions written into it?  Me too. Stop the Drug War has a new project called the Drug Policy News Writing Demonstration Project. The Drug Policy News Demonstration Project seeks to raise awareness of the ...

  • The Danger of Good vs. Evil
    The Heritage Foundation put out a morning bell yesterday.  The gist of the message is that Obama slighted Reagan by not showing up for the Berlin wall ceremonies and for not mentioning Reagan in his speech.  Reagan is, of course, the savior who freed the world from the communists. My personal favo ...

  • Some Stuff You Might Have Missed
    I really liked this post over at Reconcile.  It’s time we start talking about higher education.  We shouldn’t just accept “get an education” as an answer to all our social ills. And speaking of school, sometimes (just for a moment) I forget the horror that it was to be a teenager.  ...

  • The Problem with Economics
    I came across a study this week that reminded me why I focused on history and not economics. Carl-Johan Daigaard and Ola Olsson, economists at the University of Copenhagen, published results of a study called Why are Rich Countries More Politically Cohesive?.  They conclude that there is a correlat ...

Executive Intelligence Review

The Intelligence Daily

My AntiWar


Rogue Government.com

Innovation Canada

  • Green Growers
    Deborah Henderson likes to think about the Cuban capital of Havana when she goes in to work. Not the music or the beaches, per se, but the vegetables and the gardens. “Over 75 percent or more of the vegetables consumed in Havana are produced within the city,” claims Henderson. As the director of ...

  • Building better bridges
    (Reprinted with permission from ResearchLife, Summer 2009 issue, University of Manitoba, umanitoba.ca/research) It was 1952 when Aftab Mufti, a 12-year-old boy living in Karachi, Pakistan, began building bridges. His mother planted a vegetable garden that summer and to help her water it Aftab and hi ...

  • Viral control
    Depending on whom you ask, the H1N1 flu virus that is making its way around the globe could be anything from a particularly virulent form of influenza to the next worldwide pandemic. As virologists scramble to understand the virus and develop vaccines against it, a Halifax facility is already on the ...

  • Fear factor
    Let’s say you’re wandering through a deserted alley late one foggy October night. You turn a corner, and lo and behold, you’re surrounded by a crowd of brain-thirsty zombies. Your pulse quickens, your amygdala fires, your respiration is off the charts. You try to run, but you trip and fall. As ...

  • Fuels of the future?
    A recession-related dip in flight demand might actually be considered a green blessing. Just a small one, mind you. The David Suzuki Foundation estimates that aviation is responsible for up to nine percent of the total global climate-change  impact of human activity, so it would take a huge drop to ...

Signs of the times

  • Arming Goldman With Pistols Against Public
    "I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit," said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on fi ...

  • Cash-strapped UK council lavishes £100,000 on 'bi ...
    A cash-strapped council that recently made 30 staff redundant has spent almost £100,000 employing two 'bin police' to make sure residents are recycling. The so-called 'waste advisors' will visit households to check that all recyclable material is going in the right bins. Councillors and residents ...

  • How To Remove Your Most Embarrassing Moments from ...
    "Mighty" is the operative word, as these same search engines (usually the one that starts with a "G" and ends with an "oogle") can also curse us all. If you think about it, any schmuck can find out more about you than you'd like by typing only your first and last name. Different folks certainly hav ...

  • New facial recognition technology will be introduc ...
    New electronic border gates are set to be introduced at Heathrow to speed up the process of passing through border control. The new gates will allow travellers over 18 with biometric passports to come back into the UK using facial recognition technology, comparing the picture with that on their pas ...

  • UK: ID cards now available. Count me out
    People in Manchester can now sign up for an ID card. Let's use the occasion to say a firm no to the database state I will be making a trip to the Identity and Passport Service's registration centre in Manchester at 1pm today. I will not be registering for an identity card. Instead, I will be joinin ...

Threat Level

  • Restaurants Sue Vendor for Unsecured Card Processo ...
    Seven restaurants have sued the maker of a bank card-processing system for failing to secure the product from a Romanian hacker who breached their systems. The restaurants, located in Louisiana and Mississippi, have filed a class-action suit against Georgia-based Radiant Systems for producing a poin ...

  • Europe Worries U.S. Bowing to ‘Industry’ in AC ...
    The European Union is alarmed the Obama administration is lobbying on behalf of the entertainment industry as part of the United States’ negotiations for an new international copyright accord, according to a leaked EU document. The document, entitled European Union’s Comments to the US Proposal, ...

  • iPhone Virus-Writer’s New Job: Building iPhone A ...
    An Australian youth who created a worm that attacked iPhone users has been hired by a company that creates applications for the iPhone. At least one security professional expressed displeasure that the malware author has been rewarded for his hack attack. Ashley Towns, a 21-year-old student who goe ...

  • Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned
    The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a federal appeals court decision that dramatically narrowed the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Justice Department officials are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider it ...

  • Wikileaks Says It Has Half-a-Million 9/11 Pager Me ...
    The document-leaking site Wikileaks says it’s preparing to release 500,000 intercepted wireless pager messages from a 24-hour period encompassing the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Site operators say they plan to start rolling out the texts beginning at 3:00 a.m. New York time, paced to  ...

PERRspectives : Blog

  • Michael Moore's Afghanistan Letter Rewrites Histor ...
    Promoting his latest film earlier this year, Michael Moore ignored the achievements of the Progressive movement and the New Deal when he declared, "capitalism is evil and you can't regulate evil." Now on the eve of President Obama's address to...

  • Faith, Friends and Family: The Mike Huckabee Pardo ...
    As it turns out, Mike Huckabee yesterday chose the right day to declare that "it's less likely than more likely" that he'll run for President in 2012. The horrific news that Maurice Clemmons, the repeat felon granted clemency by then...

  • When George Met Jack at the White House
    When it comes to social events at the White House, the only thing worse for a President than self-serving gate crashers is when the miscreant has an invitation. And so while conservatives gloat over the Secret Service failure that allowed...

  • Republicans Give Thanks for Short Memories
    Former Bush press secretary Dana Perino's jaw-dropping statement Wednesday that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term" didn't merely serve to confirm President Obama's terrible judgment in appointing her to the Broadcasting Board...

  • Ari Fleischer Puts the BS in the BCS
    It's a crisis so serious that Republican Congressman from Utah and Texas have held hearings and called for investigations. Not into the Bush's administration's manipulation of Iraq intelligence, its detainee torture, the denial of global warming or the Katrina disaster....

Blackspot News Feed

  • US Vies for Turkey Missile-Defense Contract
    Istanbul, Turkey - American, Russian and Chinese companies vying to sell Turkey high-altitude anti-missile air defense systems will have to submit their best offers by Tuesday if they want a shot at this billion-dollar contract. The program — Turkey’s first long-range missile defense system — ...

  • Enjoyed the Health-Care Debate? We'll Keep Chasing ...
    The debates over health-care, financial reform and everything else ring hollow as long as we ignore what lies at the root of Washington's dysfunction.

  • Study: In Afghan Debate, Few Antiwar Op-Eds in Nat ...
    President Obama has issued orders for a major escalation of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan by sending 34,000 additional troops. Has the media helped beat the drum for war? A new study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting reveals pro-war voices outnumbered anti-war ones by a huge margin in the O ...

  • Birther Ad Claims Obama Is British 'Usurper'
    Wha?

  • In Third Week of Hunger Strike, Ailing Western Sah ...
    A Western Saharan human rights activist is in the third week of a hunger strike after being deported against her will by Moroccan authorities occupying her homeland. Aminatou Haidar, known as the "Sahrawi Gandhi," is at the airport on the Canary Islands and is demanding that she be allowed to return ...

Consortium News

  • How War Hawks Caged Obama
    President Obama's "team of rivals" -- especially Defense Secretary Gates -- ensured an Afghan escalation, says Robert Parry. November 30, 2009

  • Obama's Weak Report Card on the CIA
    By "looking forward, not backward," President Obama failed to reform the CIA's dysfunctional culture, notes Melvin A. Goodman. November 30, 2009

  • Prepare for the Obama-GOP Alliance
    On Afghanistan and health care, President Obama is "triangulating" against his base and toward Republicans, says Jeff Cohen. November 25, 2009

  • How Bugliosi Met the Bush Censors
    Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi was shocked that his book about prosecuting George W. Bush was ignored, says David Swanson. November 25, 2009

  • A Jane Goodall Thanksgiving
    Michael Winship gives thanks for anthropologist Jane Goodall and her groundbreaking studies of chimpanzees. November 25, 2009

CounterPunch

Institute for Middle East Understanding

Water - AlterNet

TruthHugger

  • furlough programs, commutations and pardons BACKLA ...
    Maurice Clemmons was a mentally unstable felon. Where was his follow up? Where was his parole officer? Where was the mental health infrastructure that could have defused this violent explosion?

  • Texas Progressive Alliance Weekly Round Up Nov 30, ...
    The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes everyone back from the Thanksgiving Holiday with these highlights from the blogs. TXsharon has arranged by area 60 TCEQ fugitive emission videos obtained via the Texas Public Information Act. The videos were taken throughout the Barnett Shale area using a GasF ...

  • How Serious is Road Rage Anyway?
    The psychological meltdown in America is becoming epidemic. Man Gets 120 Days for Shooting Cyclist in the Head   related articles: 6 Ways to Reduce Your Chances of Getting Doored CORONA, Calif.—Police say road rage may have led to a fatal shooting near a freeway in Corona.

  • Nobel Peace Prize Confiscated
    Iranian leaders are so insecure that the peace efforts of one of its own are a threat to their masculinity.  Robbing Shirin Ebadi of her internationally recognized Nobel Peace Prize, is really tacky.  This is not the first time Amadinejad, and the counsel that controls him, have acted out like the ...

  • Texas Progressive Alliance Weekly Round Up Nov 23, ...
    The Texas Progressive Alliance as Thanksgiving week begins brings you this week’s highlights from the blogs. The Texas Cloverleaf clues you in on why you can’t breathe in Denton County– gas drillers! WCNews at Eye On Williamson has some Thoughts on Straus’ Interim Charges – including topic ...

Dandelion Salad - Featured Writers' Posts

Unexplained Mysteries

Grassroots

  • Insights - Fall 2009
    Cooling the Earth with Food Sovereignty Agriculture ... will likely be a pivotal issue when the world’s leaders meet in Copenhagen this December to finish negotiating a global climate treaty. Grassroots International and our partners and allies are working hard to show that sustainable agriculture ...

  • Cooling the Earth with Food Sovereignty
    Agriculture ... will likely be a pivotal issue when the world’s leaders meet in Copenhagen this December to finish negotiating a global climate treaty. Grassroots International and our partners and allies are working hard to show that sustainable agriculture can play a big role in stopping climate ...

  • Why Food Sovereignty Is the New Food Security
    IMG_2759.JPG   read more

  • Resource Rights and the Right to Food at the World ...
    wfs-pic09.jpg In 1996 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) organized the first World Food Summit in Rome to, in their own words, “renew global commitment to the fight against hunger. The FAO called the Summit in respons ...

  • Grassroots Signs Call for U.S. Leadership at the W ...
    unitedstates200604-015.jpg As a founding member and part of the ad hoc steering committee, Grassroots International proudly announces the following Call from the US Working Group on the Food Crisis. The statement coincides with the World Food ...

Climate

  • December 1, 2009
    India Rejects Danish Climate Draft (AFP) India today rejected a Danish draft proposal on climate change which seeks to cap emissions, widening the gulf between rich and poor nations ahead of next week's Copenhagen talks. 'Mad Monk' Australia Opposition Head to Fight CO2 Laws (Reuters) Aus ...

  • November 30, 2009
    Copenhagen Draft Urges Emissions Peak by 2020 (Reuters) A Danish draft that could form the basis of a political climate deal suggests global emissions peak by 2020, and it calls for a global cut in greenhouse gas emissions of 50 percent from 1990 levels by 2050, with rich countries responsible ...

  • November 28-29, 2009
    Commonwealth Builds Momentum for Climate Deal (Reuters) Commonwealth nations representing one-third of the world's population threw their weight behind an "operationally binding" UN climate deal in Copenhagen next month, leaders said on Saturday. US and China to Reduce Emissions, But Not Enoug ...

  • November 27, 2009
    Pachauri: Hacked Emails Don’t Tarnish Climate Science (Reuters) The head of the UN's panel of climate experts rejected accusations of bias in IPCC final reports, citing the scientific process of peer review and saying the hacked emails and documents in no way undermined evidence of humans’ ro ...

  • November 26, 2009
    China Announces CO2 Targets Based on GDP (Guardian) China announced plans today to reduce the world’s biggest carbon footprint per unit of gross domestic product 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2020. Because of its economic growth rate, China's emissions will continue to rise rapidly, but the targ ...

TomDispatch

  • Tomgram: 'This Administration Ended, Rather Than ...
    [ Note for TomDispatch Readers: On Friday evening, TomDispatch will be switching to an updated version of this site. It's possible that you might not be able to reach TD for some hours. If so, we expect to be back up on Saturday morning. Tom ] The Afghan Speech Obama Should Give (But Won't) ...

  • Tomgram: Pratap Chatterjee, Afghanistan as a Patr ...
    It's now a commonplace of the Afghan War. Western leaders in London , Berlin, Amsterdam , and Washington , as well as on flying visits to Kabul or even Kandahar , excoriate Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the "corruption" of his government. In return for their ongoing support, they repeatedly ...

  • Tomgram: Max Blumenthal, How Palin Became a Rogue
    It can't get better than this, can it? A first printing of 1.5 million copies sent out into an otherwise dead book market. Possibly as much as $7 million dollars going to the author, who already has interviews lined up with Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters. A bus tour of the "real America" tha ...

  • Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Surveillance State, U.S.A.
    Wars come home in strange, unnerving ways -- as Americans have just discovered at Fort Hood. Even before Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on his killing spree, that base, a major military embarkation point for our war zones, was already experiencing the after-effects of eight years of war and repeate ...

  • Tomgram: Droning On
    [ Note for TomDispatch Readers : A number of you have recently written in for clarification on contributing to this site through your purchases at Amazon.com. Here's my best shot at a useful explanation: If you click on any book image at this site -- like the book-cover image of The End of Vict ...

Smirking Chimp

  • Hot or not?: What's actually happening in Iraq tod ...
    Every day for the past several years, I have been receiving press releases from the U.S. military in Iraq with regard to actions that our troops are taking there. And this morning it suddenly occurred to me that, strung together, all these releases may give me a more complete picture of what is actu ...

  • Gone but not forgotten - the bin Laden revival tou ...
    Dead man walking, with assistance "I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a ... kidney patient," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said on Friday in an interview with CNN. Musharraf said Pakistan knew bin Laden took two dialysis machines into Afghanistan. "One was specifically for his own perso ...

  • Barack Obama: Manchurian Candidate Version 2.0
    I once wrote an article about former President George W. Bush saying that he was a perfect Manchurian candidate. That is, if his missing year when he was supposed to have been flying fighter jets with the Texas Air National Guard was actually spent in the former Soviet Union being reprogrammed as a ...

  • Scrubbing Major Hasan: The Strange & Silly Media R ...
    What happened to all the initial reports that accused Fort Hood killer Maj. Nidal Hasan snapped because he was distraught over the Army’s refusal to grant him either a discharge or an exemption from being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, wars which the Muslim psychiatrist abhorred — and how it ...

  • Abort This Nonsense
    Thomas J. Tobin, Bob Kunst and Frank Cannon share political tactics that can drive any rational person to groan, or much worse. Kunst at least redeemed himself, and the two other chaps have time to do the same. Tobin, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence, R.I., lent his name to the long list of b ...

Ten Percent

  • Malalai Joya on Obama’s ’surge’
    After months of waiting, President Obama is about to announce the new US strategy for Afghanistan. His speech may be long awaited, but few are expecting any surprise: it seems clear he will herald a major escalation of the war. In doing so he will be making something worse than a mistake. It is a [. ...

  • Honduras, Fictional Election
    There is no attempt to make this believable, like a Disneyland management committee they don’t have to, they just imagineer the make believe for a captive audience and count the money. And any trouble, the guards take care of that and nice hacks pretend not to notice and write- Lobo Wins Peacef ...

  • War Criminal is Coward Shocker
    ‘Goldsmith threatened to resign at least once. He lost three stone in that period. He is an honourable man and it was a terribly stressful experience.’ Before not resigning and making up some spurious reasons why it might sort of be legal… um not understanding the definition of ‘honourable†...

  • Honduras ‘Election’
    A cool, sunny calm day, so internets work! Just in time to direct you to this primer (via Otto) on the sham about to be staged in Honduras, worth reading it all, the lowdown- Conclusion: This is the legacy of Sunday’s electoral exercise: We are left trying to figure out how low participation has t ...

  • Honduras ‘Election’
    A cool, sunny calm day, so internets work! Just in time to direct you to this primer (via Otto) on the sham about to be staged in Honduras, worth reading it all, the lowdown- Conclusion: This is the legacy of Sunday’s electoral exercise: We are left trying to figure out how low participation has t ...

Paul Krugman

No Quarter

  • The Reviled Baby Boomers who know nothing find tha ...
    The same generation that despises their parents’ generation because they are so smart and Baby Boomers are just so dumb, can’t seem to stay away from the old parental teat. As I have mentioned a number of times, many of them are pushing 30 and beyond — and have been in the habit of still [...]

  • Radioactive Bank Run
    Regime Hygiene.   Tehran’s aim is to goad and provoke the powerless propaganda of ElBaredi and the IAEA and its feckless sponsor the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5 + 1), and the plan is perfectly in place for a winter of POTUS blame-shifting, finger-pointing and pomposity.  Tehran uses ...

  • Jobs is Job #1
    “Kiss me!!” “What?” That’s right, I said, “Kiss me!!” Many a businessman is familiar with the basic principle of “kiss me,” that is “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Regrettably, Washington is not familiar with that simplest of business principles. Legislative bills that run into the t ...

  • Pres. Obama and the Intel Community: An Interim Re ...
    Reprinted from Consortium.com with the express permission of Mel Goodman, whose bio is at the end of this article. Consortium Editor’s Note: President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to rock Washington’s boat after he won Election 2008 — his desire to "look forward, not backward" — continues ...

  • We Are All Mourning
    You all are familiar with this horrific story. And so, we say, to the families of the slain officers, and to all of their law enforcement brethren, we extend to you our deepest condolences for this insane, senseless act. Via The Seattle Times, here are photos of the four who served and protected us ...

Environmental Graffiti

Foreign Policy in Focus

Global Elite

Al Jazeera

Green Inc. - NYT

Dot Earth News

Doug Feith : Hong Pong

  • Titanium nanoparticle pollution cancer link; Morge ...
    It was just another day in Switzerland during Late Capitalism. The beloved World Trade Organization, having already helped bring about a huge collapse in global trade, decided they should have a meeting somewhere widely thought of as really rich and white. It's been ten years since wily bad kids an ...

  • New for HongPong.com: Drupal 6 a win?
    It's been a long time in coming, but now we've got Drupal 6 running on hongpong.com . The database patching and everything else went perfectly. I've installed the 'Fusion' theme and have just started tweaking it up (please be patient for more tweaks... ) I whipped up a silly new banner featuring And ...

  • Drupal 6 a win?
    Andrew Jackson vs teh octopus is ok Still a mess At least it's not Wordpress Still Confusing :-P FTW!! Voting is implied consent - boo

  • PETA sucks, but Lady Gaga and Rihanna are pawns fo ...
    PETA is a deeply bad organization which attempts to vanguard around some edgy cultural iconography and save some animals, which all basically translates to trashy soft-core porn style imagery. Because what we all need is a certain "Girls Gone Wild" edge to social progress. This is a very good analys ...

  • Linktastic: more climate change email lolz, even F ...
    In this season of thanks, we can always give thanks for leaks and lols. I really hate Secret Treaties . Secret Treaties Suck!!! The FDIC Is Broke - The Market Ticker . Oh noes! A coverup is needed immediately says Mishkin ! A hell of a story: Noted FBI provocateur Brandon Darby and a bullshit Grand ...

Daily Censored

  • To Protect and To Unnerve: Portland Police Provoke ...
    It appears that "Going Rogue" is all the rage these days, and the police officers of Portland, Oregon, seem determined to get in on the fad. A burgeoning public relations fiasco in the City of Roses revolves around one particular officer. Earlier this month, Portland Police Officer Chris Humphreys ...

  • Cuban Five Birdman of Victorville
    We are posting this human interest story to alert readers about the continuing plight of the Cuban Five freedom fighters locked away in US Federal Prisons for conducting anti-terrorism actions to protect their homeland. On December 8, two of the Cuban five will be resentened in Miami Federal Court T ...

  • Obama’s Firing of Watchdog a Lesson for Canadian ...
    By Guest Blogger George Thompson It seems absurdly naïve to think that what is happening everywhere else in the world and especially in America is not going to affect the Canadian education system. For example Canadian provincial governments have imported high stakes testing, test-score and demogra ...

  • Junk bonds, charter schools and insider fraud
    Minnesota's charter school movement, which sparked a national rethinking of public schooling nearly two decades ago, has been infected by an out-of-control financing system fueled by junk bonds, insider fees and lax oversight.

  • National Default – Are we the next Dubai!
    Michael Collins Dubai was to be the next Switzerland, an enclave for anonymous banking, a play ground for the super rich, and the ultimate gated community for those with so much wealth, they felt an overriding need for protection. Well, that’s all over now.  Dubai declared a debt moratorium un ...

AlterNet's Breaking News

Institute for Policy Studies

Godspace

  • The First Tuesday of Advent – Waiting for a ...
    For many this season of the year is a struggling time.  Whether we get depressed because of the shortening days in the Northern Hemisphere or with the uncertainty of our economic times.  Today’s reflections focus on what many are struggling with at this time – the uncertainty of employment ...

  • First Monday of Advent – What Are We Waiting ...
    Advent has begun, and we have lit the first candle on our Advent wreath. As we move into this first week there are a number of thoughts I want to share as we ponder the question What Are We Waiting For This Advent Season? For those that have not yet started their Advent scripture readings [...]

  • The First Sunday of Advent
    Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the first day of the liturgical year when we begin that wonderful journey towards the celebration of the birth of Christ and that hoped for future world in which all of God’s creation will be reconciled, renew and made whole. Tomorrow I will begin sharing the p ...

  • Celebrating Advent with Kids
    The first Sunday of Advent is almost here.  Some of us have dusted off our Advent wreaths, bought new candles and prepared to begin the celebration.  Many of us however are new to this celebration and arn’t sure what to do.  Especially if you are celebrating with children you may be a li ...

  • Daily Bible Readings For Advent
    The beginning of Advent is only a few days away and I thought that it was a good time to post links to various forms of lectionary readings that you might like to read throughout Advent and Christmas.  The readings vary depending on our tradition but all of them are intended to prepare us for [... ...

Equality Trust

  • Plans to force banks to reveal millionaire staff
    Banks will be forced to reveal how many of their staff earn more than one million pounds a year, under recommended reforms of the financial sector to be released today. Read more

  • To tackle child poverty we must also address inequ ...
    Kate Green, Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group , writes for the TUC's Touchstone blog that "if we are to take seriously the issues of child poverty and child wellbeing then we need to tackle the high levels of inequality in this country." Read the rest of Kate's article

  • We need tax reform, not tax and spend
    Over the last year we have watched as a bank-induced credit crunch morphed into debate on public services cuts. While the public have bailed out the bankers, whose flawed system led us into this mess, it is those least able to afford it who are facing the reality of having their pay and benefits fro ...

  • Public sector incomes: what we pay them
    Six million people work for the state in Britain, in hundreds of professions. Find out how their incomes compare, from the top to the bottom. From the Guardian, Tuesday 17 November

  • Discussion on the Today programme of a fairer syst ...
    The main party leaders have been setting out their visions of how to restore growth to the economy after the recession. A report by the left leaning pressure group Compass, criticises the policy of cutting public spending to curtail the recession. The group says gaps in public finances should instea ...

IntelNews

  • London ex-official admits falling for Chinese hone ...
    London’s former deputy mayor, Ian Clement, has admitted he was lured by a female Chinese secret agent, who drugged him and ransacked his Beijing hotel room after having sex with him.

  • News you may have missed #0200
    New N. Ireland justice minister wants MI5 to share data. Prisoners remain in CIA black site.

  • Is Pakistani-American insurgent a rogue CIA agent?
    Earlier this month US authorities said they wouldn’t let an Indian intelligence team question Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, who was arrested by the FBI in October for plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The Indians said they wanted ...

  • News you may have missed #0199
    ACLU supports lawsuit against FBI by alleged informant. Author insists Sir Hollis was Soviet agent.

  • Documents show CIA had prior knowledge of 1989 Sal ...
    The CIA and the US State Department had advance knowledge of the 1989 murders of six Jesuit clerics and two women by troops of the US-supported Salvadoran regime of Alfredo Cristiani, according to declassified internal US government documents submitted at a Spanish court.

After Downing Street.org

  • David Obey Still Thinks You're an Idiot
    By David Swanson Two years ago, the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey, screamed at a friend of mine, Tina Richards, denouncing "idiot liberals" who are foolish enough to suggest that opposing a war should involve ceasing to fund it. In October of this year, Obey began speaki ...

  • Activists willing to go all the way!
    New Civil Resistance Coalition formed to End the War! In response to President Obama's pending announcement of a major troop escalation in Afghanistan, Peace Activist, Cindy Sheehan, and other major anti-war groups and activists are announcing the formation of a new Peace Coalition that will seek to ...

  • Kucinich and Santorum on Afghanistan


  • Govt. Investigation Confirms ABC News Report on Se ...
    Govt. Investigation Confirms ABC News Report on Secret CIA Prison Lithuanian Investigators Say State Security Helped Arrange "Black Site" For al-Qaeda Suspects By Matthew Cole and Marl Schone | ABC News A Lithuanian government investigation has confirmed an exclusive ABC News report that the CIA o ...

  • More than 25 Organizations Join BORDC’s Coalitio ...
    More than 25 Organizations Join BORDC’s Coalition Letter on Torture and Transparency By Amy E. Ferrer | Bill of Rights Defense Committee Today, November 24, 2009, a coalition of more than 25 national and regional organizations representing a diverse array of interests wrote to President Barack O ...

Grist - News

  • Europe places outcome of Copenhagen squarely on Ob ...
    by Brendan DeMelle The chief negotiator for the European Commission announced this afternoon in Barcelona that the failure of the U.S. Congress to pass legislation before December has doomed the chances for success in Copenhagen . A climate protest at the Barcelona talks: World leaders with \'big ...

  • Cash for Clunkers brought us ... more clunkers!
    by Jonathan Hiskes So how did Cash for Clunkers work out from an environmental standpoint? You don’t want to know. The $3 billion federal program was kinda sorta supposed to send inefficient, high-polluting, belchy vehicles to an early grave. Instead it put a lot of new large, inefficient vehicle ...

  • Senate Democrats push climate bill through committ ...
    by Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats on Thursday pushed through a sweeping climate change bill, maneuvering an end-run around opposition Republicans who continued their boycott of deliberations. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the Kerry-Boxer bill by a v ...

  • Why developing countries cannot afford failure in ...
    by Brendan DeMelle The African delegation insisted today in Barcelona that its decision to walk out on negotiations Tuesday was necessary in order to jolt the intransigent European Union and other developed nations to move forward with serious discussions, rather than obstruct progress by bringing ...

  • U.S. puts onus on China for climate deal
    by Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON - The United States will not agree to targets cutting greenhouse-gas emissions unless developing countries, particularly China, make similar moves, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern warned Wednesday. "No country holds the fate of the Earth in its hands more than China ...

Popular Bookmarks on Del.icio.us

Technorati - What's Hot in Blogs

Time - Top Stories

Washington Independent

  • Afghan Human Rights Official Criticizes McChrystal ...
    Nader Nadery, a member of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said that the plan "is indeed a mater of concern for us who works to promote the rule of law and protect human rights."

  • Conservatives Hit Huckabee for ‘Cop Killer&# ...
    "Huckabee is a Christian socialist. He's got a good heart and all that, but he's wrong on the important issues," Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative strategist. He's coming at them from a Christian perspective, trying to do the humanitarian thing, and it comes back to bite him."

  • McChrystal Envisions an End to the War
    Courtesy of a Republican congressman, quoted by The Associated Press’s Deb Reichmann: Even Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is giving hints, albeit privately, about a possible endgame. Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican congressman from Colorado, said this week that dur ...

  • Something for Everyone in the CBO’s Latest H ...
    One report. Two very different interpretations. The Congressional Budget Office stirred yet another hornet’s nest Monday when it released its latest analysis of the costs associated with the Democrats’ health care reform bill, with each side of the debate already leaning on the report to bolster ...

  • Prominent Illinois Lawyers Urge State Lawmakers to ...
    Former congressman and federal judge Abner J. Mikva and former Illinois U.S. Attorneys Thomas P. Sullivan and Dan K. Webb today sent a letter urging Illinois members of Congress and state officials to support the use of federal and state prisons, including the one in Thomson, Ill., to house Guantana ...

CowBoss' Brain Food

  • Tax those carbon gluttons
    LEMME TELL YOU about a carbon tax you’re gonna love. Two such taxes, actually. I tell you, kid, Stephane Dion had the right idea, but the wrong sales pitch. The fun starts with the government giving you maybe $2,000 as a carbon dividend. Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |  ...

  • Why do we hate? Academics seek answer in new field
    Hate is everywhere, but the fundamental question of why one person can hate another has never been adequately studied, contends Jim Mohr of Gonzaga University, who is developing a new academic field of hate studies. Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comm ...

  • 'Fat for cosmetics' murder suspects arrested in Pe ...
    Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe. Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment

  • 6 Ways Agriculture Impacts Global Warming
    Sure, agriculture provides us with the food we all eat every day. But do you know how those agricultural practices impact global warming? Turns out there's some pretty big impacts, on both the sustainable and industrial sides of the equation; employing su Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society ...

  • We love Butchers
    Former chef Josh Applestone and his wife, Jessica Applestone, are typical of the new butcher breed. He was a vegan, she was a one-time vegetarian when they founded Fleisher’s Grass-fed and Organic Meats in Kingston, N.Y., in 2004 Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-it! ...

Suzie-Q

  • Maurice Clemmons- From Prisoner To Alleged Cop Kil ...
      How Clemmons Went From Prisoner To Alleged Cop Killer — And Why It Matters For Mike Huckabee TPM Muckraker Justin Elliott | November 30, 2009, 5:17PM How did Maurice Clemmons, once sentenced to 100 years in prison in Arkansas, end up a free man and the prime suspect in the grisly killing of ...

  • Evening Jukebox- Peace On Earth / Walk On
    U2 – Peace On Earth / Walk On

  • Matthew Hoh Speaks Grim Truth To Power
    Roger Morris and George Kenney, The Huffington Post, Nov 27, 2009 The rare resignation on principle is always telling in American government. When Matthew Hoh recently left the State Department — a Marine Captain in Iraq who became a diplomat in Afghanistan — his act was significant far beyond ...

  • Living Up to Our Constitution — Part III
    Living Up to Our Constitution — Part III Firedoglake- By: Cynthia Kouril Saturday November 28, 2009 5:00 pm I recently attended the Second Annual “Living Constitution” Lecture at the Brennan Center for Justice. The keynote speaker this year was Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and his topic was “ ...

  • Afternoon Jukebox- So This Is Christmas
    John Lennon- So This Is Christmas

Solari

  • State Individual Income Tax Rates - 2009
    View the full document . . .

  • Short Selling American Lives
    By Anne Seith Two Deutsche Bank funds were designed to profit from premature deaths in the US by buying up life insurance policies. But investors have seen precious little return on their investment. Angry customers are accusing the bank of fraud. Gerhard Strate, a well-respected lawyer based in Ha ...

  • AIG in Kentucky
    By Yasha levine Thanks to AIG, some of the poorest residents of rural Kentucky learned you can always be made poorer by corporate villains. What are we getting in return for the bailout? So far, predatory credit card rates, exorbitant bank fees and obscene Wall Street bonuses. But we’re being rob ...

  • Judge Spinner, You Rock!
    By Kieran Crowley, Rich Wilner and Dan Mangan A Long Island couple is home free after an outraged judge gave them an amazing Thanksgiving present — canceling their debt to ruthless bankers trying to toss them out on the street. Suffolk Judge Jeffrey Spinner wiped out $525,000 in mortgage payments ...

  • Paulson Likes Gold
    By Joshua M Brown Continue reading John Paulson Likes Gold…More Than a Friend

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

  • InsurgencyWatch moving to True/Slant
    In the coming days, InsurgencyWatch will be moving to True/Slant, “an original content news network tailored to both the ‘Entrepreneurial Journalist’ and marketers who want a more effective way to engage with digital audiences.” (That’s what the official about page says.) It’s not a deci ...

  • Kerry-Lugar’s First Victim
    If true, this is total bullshit: After strong criticism on the Kerry-Lugar bill in Pakistan, the government has decided to replace Pakistan’s ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani and the announcement in this respect is expected within the next two days. There’s nothing in the bill reasonable Pa ...

  • Pakistan’s Civil War Heating Up
    In the aftermath of this weekend’s assault on the Pakistani General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, the Taliban hit again in Alpuri, in the Shangla district east of Mingora in Swat. According to military sources who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to talk to the press, a 1 ...

  • 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...

AlterNet - DrugReporter

Twilight Earth

  • Uncontacted Tribe Lands Bulldozed by Brazilian Ran ...
    A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in Paraguay, inhabited by an uncontacted tribe is being bulldozed by Brazilian cattle ranchers. Related posts: Brazilian Cattle Ranchers to Destroy Tribe’s Forest Lands Uncontacted Brazilian Awa Tribe Members Flee Loggers Bulldozers Colombian Oil Company to Drill on ...

  • Photo Sunday – Mt. Kilimanjaro
    Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, is an inactive volcano in north-eastern Tanzania. Related posts: Kilimanjaros Snows Melting at Accelerated Pace Photo Sunday – When its Raining on Sunday Morning Photo Sunday – The Truth of Clarity as Darkness Falls

  • Cell Phone v’s Brain Cell: who’s the loser?
    There has been a tremendous increase in the use of cell phones in the past decade.  By the end of 2008, worldwide use of mobile phones had increased to about 4.1 billion. (1) In Africa alone, mobile phone sales have grown by 550 percent in five years, according to The United Nations Conference on ...

  • Please! Not Another Green Thanksgiving Article!
    thanksgiving, green, videos, charlie brown, adam sandler, addams family, johnny cash Related posts: Green Wont Be The Norm, Until We Stop Calling Things Green EPA Helps God go Green with an Energy Star Label What’s Greener than Green? Brown.

  • Meet Peat. Third Largest Producer of Greenhouse Ga ...
    Peat Moss. It's drying out in Indonesia, making that country the third largest producer of Greenhouse Gasses behind the U.S. and China. Related posts: EPA Welcomes Public Comments – Do Greenhouse Gases Contribute to Air Pollution? Landmark Statement, EPA Finds Greenhouse Gases Pose Threat to Pu ...

Inhabitat

  • MAD Architects Unveil Urban Forest Skyscraper For ...
    Inspired by mountainous Chinese landscapes and the traditional villages built their hillsides, MAD Architects has unveiled plans to create a towering vertical Urban Forest. Designed for Chongqing, China, the projects consists of a stacked vertical forest set in the heart of the city, designed to bri ...

  • Inhabitatshop CYBER MONDAY SALE – Ends Midnight ...
    ATTENTION ALL HOLIDAY SHOPPERS! We’re having a huge Cyber Monday Sale at the Inhabitatshop right now where you can save up to 30% off all of our favorite eco-chic gift items! Discounted green gifts include Transglass recycled tumblers and pitchers, Ecoist pulltab purses and bags, recycled typewrit ...

  • WoodStation is a Clock and a Weather Station in a ...
    Green kids and their gadget loving parents will appreciate the time-telling WoodStation, designed by Sebastien Wallet for Inovaxion. Made from recycled wood, this innovative and intuitive clock displays a myriad of illuminated features through its wood face when it detects motion. Kids can excel pas ...

  • CONCRETE CLOTH: Flexible Material Makes Durable Di ...
    When a disaster strikes, it’s often difficult to get shelters up in time for displaced residents. Enter Concrete Canvas’s new Concrete Cloth, a durable waterproof building material made of cement sandwiched between fabric. The cloth, which won Material ConneXion’s Material of the Year 2009 awa ...

  • ANNOUNCING: The Inhabitat 2009 Green Gift Guide!
    ATTENTION HOLIDAY SHOPPERS! Tomorrow is the first day of December, which means that the holiday shopping season is in full effect! If you’re on the hunt for the perfect gift for the eco-conscious guy, girl, tot, or even pet on your list then fear not – Inhabitat has you covered with our 2009 Gre ...

Pogue's Posts

Open Your Eyes News

  • Exposure to Chemical may Feminize Boys’ Play
    Chicago Tribune – Preschool boys exposed in utero to high levels of certain chemicals called phthalates (prounounced “thal-lates”) may be less likely to play with male-typical toys and games, such as trucks and play fighting, according to a small pilot study published in the International Jour ...

  • Copenhagen Summit PR Build Up – Climate Scare St ...
    BBC – Sea levels are likely to rise by about 1.4m (4ft 6in) globally by 2100 as polar ice melts, according to a major review of climate change in Antarctica. Conducted by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), it says that warming seas are accelerating melting in the west of the co ...

  • Tempers Flare At Anti-War Rally At US Air Force Ba ...
    CBS13 – An unidentified military veteran was involved in a tense confrontation with anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and the group Code Pink at a rally at Travis Air Force Base on Saturday, November 28, 2009. A Saturday rally led by anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan at Travis Air Force Base nearly en ...

  • Court hears Vioxx lawsuit arguments
    AP — Lawyers for Merck & Co. told the Supreme Court Monday that investors waited too late and didn’t do all of the necessary investigations to sue the drug maker over whether it properly warned about the risks of its blockbuster painkiller Vioxx. Whether the high court agrees with the drug make ...

  • European Climate Exchange chief Patrick Birley def ...
    Daily Telegraph – People don’t trade carbon because they are good people,” exclaims Patrick Birley, the chief executive of the ICE European Climate Exchange, with characteristic bluntness. This totally invented $126bn (£76bn) market has the potential to flare into a $2 trillion green giant ...

Monkey Smashes Heaven

  • Polish reactionaries attack communist symbols
    Polish reactionaries attack communist symbols (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) Legislation to imprison and fine those who possess or buy communist symbols has been approved by Poland’s reactionary president Lech Kaczynski. Those who posses, purchase, or spread items or recordings containing co ...

  • Polish reactionaries attack communist symbols
    Polish reactionaries attack communist symbols (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) Legislation to imprison and fine those who possess or buy communist symbols has been approved by Poland’s reactionary president Lech Kaczynski. Those who posses, purchase, or spread items or recordings containing co ...

  • No thankkks… thankstaking
    Posted in ..Monkey and the Troublemakers, ..Shubel Morgan, Amerikkka, Communism, First Nations, Maoism, Maoism Third Worldism, Maoisme, Maoismo, North America

  • British mining company on trial for torture of Per ...
    British mining company on trial for torture of Peruvians (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) A British mining company, Monterrico Metals, is on trial in London, UK for torture of Peruvians that happened at the Rio Blanco mine in 2005. Protesters were detained and tortured at the outcast copper site ...

  • New poll: Capitalism not too hot
    New poll: Capitalism not too hot (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) A recent poll has people talking. The results of the poll are a sharp contrast to the free-market triumphalism of the 1990s. Intellectuals were declaring the victory of capitalism. In the 1989 book, the End of History and the Last ...

PakAlert

  • Half Of US Debt Is Owed Zionist Fed
    by Henry Makow Ph.D. Chelsea Clinton’s engagement today to Jewish banker  Marc Mezvinsky, who works for Goldman Sachs, is another reminder that America is ruled by the Illuminati clan, joined by marriage, money and love of Lucifer. The source of their power is the Fed which has pilfered the ...

  • Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan
    By JEREMY SCAHILL At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Q ...

  • The Secret History of Our Time: The Pope and Satan ...
    by Richard C. Cook Author’s Note: In order to come up with an accurate understanding of today’s world crisis it is necessary to start looking at it from the spiritual dimension. This essay attempts to do so, using sources acquired during many years of study. By the latter half of the 19th c ...

  • Obama Orders 1 Million US Troops To “Prepare For ...
    By: Sorcha Faal Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin today that US President Barack Obama has issued orders to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to “begin immediately” increasing his military forces to 1 millio ...

  • US Swine Flu Spray Plane Shot Down In China
    By: Sorcha Faal Reports circulating in the Kremlin today are stating that a US government contracted airplane piloted by American CIA agents and carrying a cargo of a ‘mutated’ swine flu virus intended for aerial spraying was shot down [photo top left] at China’s Shanghai Pudong airport by a ...

ecogeek

  • Data Center Underneath Cathedral Will Heat Finland ...
    Data centers generate a lot of heat.  In fact, over 50 percent of the energy used by data centers is for cooling the servers, not computing.  Almost all efforts to make them more efficient focus on keeping the equipment cool with less energy.  But what if all that heat could be used for good? We ...

  • Using Osmosis to Generate Clean Energy
    Solar. Wind power. Wave power. Geothermal. Tidal power. If you're a regular EcoGeek reader, you're probably pretty familiar with the different major power generating alternatives to the burning of non-renewable fossil materials. But still, osmotic power generation is likely something you haven ...

  • Waste Heat Could Power Computers, Cell Phones
    Close to 60 percent of the energy produced by burning fuels or generated by power plants is lost as excess heat.  Computers, cars and cell phones all have to get rid of excess heat to run properly, creating a significant energy waste.  Researchers at MIT believe they've developed a way to reclaim ...

  • Radar Absorbing Turbines Prevent Aircraft Confusio ...
    The U.S. Military has recently expressed concern about Maryland offshore wind projects because radar could identify spinning turbine blades as low-flying aircraft, potentially disrupting its training missions in the area.  Turns out the UK Military is blocking wind projects for similar reasons.  ...

  • Compressed Air Cars Less Efficient Than Electric C ...
    It has been assumed that compressed air cars are cleaner than battery electric cars,  but the reality is they are quite inefficient.  A new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters reveals that while in theory compressed air cars seem like a potential competitor to EVs, when ...

Times Online - Science

  • Carbon must be sucked from air, says IPCC chief Ra ...
    Drastic cuts in carbon emissions may not be sufficient to avoid the worst ravages of global warming and the world will need to suck carbon from the atmosphere to avert permanent damage to the climate, according to a leading world authority on climate science.

  • Physicists fear CERN costs are a threat to nuclear ...
    Britain’s entire programme of nuclear research is under threat from a budget crisis at the Government’s physics agency, which could leave the country incapable of training the technicians required for new nuclear plants to meet energy needs.

  • Large Hadron Collider sets particle accelerator en ...
    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has set a new world record for particle accelerators, confirming its status as the most powerful atom-smasher built.

  • Royal Society launches online archive, Trailblazin ...
    When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited London in 1764 at the age of 8, he was a musical sensation. Crowds flocked to see the harpsichord and organ recitals of the boy with two symphonies to his name.

  • Locked-in syndrome: Unlocking the cruellest prison
    The man who was a ghost for seven years is legendary at the Royal Hospital for Neurodisability in Putney, south London. Though the man — let’s call him John — could see, hear and think, nobody knew he was there.

Environment _ National Geographic

drinking liberally in new milford ( with beersphere feeds )

  • Valuable Lesson From Sarah Palin's Book
    TRex has extracted and documented the bulk of the knowledge that can be had from Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue. Trust me on this, there is a valuable lesson to be had from her book that every Blogger, journalist and pundit should be sharing with anyone that is truly interested in the politic ...

  • Valuable Lesson From Sarah Palin's Book
    TRex has extracted and documented the bulk of the knowledge that can be had from Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue. Trust me on this, there is a valuable lesson to be had from her book that every Blogger, journalist and pundit should be sharing with anyone that is truly interested in the politic ...

  • T-9 and Holding:
    About 8 minutes before the shuttle blasts off : At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space shuttle Atlantis and crew are nearing liftoff at Launch Pad 39A, prepared to begin the STS-129 cargo-delivery mission to the International Space Station. The countdown clock is holding at T-9 minutes. ...

  • The more things change, the more they stay the sam ...
    I woke up today to the news that it has been a whole year that gay and lesbian couples have been allowed to share the same rights as everyone else in our State. The right to settle down, get married and live as a family has changed a lot of people's lives in Connecticut . I did a quick inventory o ...

  • Windsock Joe
    We really want to know which way the wind blows, Joe? The other day you were dead set against the Public Option, much to the chagrin of Connecticut voters. And now? Sen. Joe Lieberman has reached a private understanding with Majority Leader Harry Reid that he will not block a final vote on healthca ...

SPL Center

  • Dutch Lawmaker Brings His Anti-Muslim Spiel to U.S ...
    A Dutch lawmaker notorious for his Muslim-bashing is scheduled to speak tonight at Temple University in Philadelphia. Geert Wilders, who has repeatedly compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, was for months banned from Britain because of concerns that his anti-Islamic views would trigger violen ...

  • Anti-Black Hate Crimes Rise, Data Remains Flawed
    The FBI yesterday released its 2008 Hate Crime Statistics report. Overall, the numbers were up slightly, by 2 percent. One of the biggest jumps was in the number of anti-black hate crimes, which went up from 2,658 in 2007 to 2,876 in 2008. That constitutes a rise of nearly 8 percent. The jump in an ...

  • Canadian Neo Nazi Wanted in Connection with Calgar ...
    A prominent member of a Canadian neo-Nazi group is wanted for attempted murder in connection with two bombings in Calgary. Police announced Monday that they’re looking for 24-year-old Kyle Robert McKee, along with a 17-year-old who cannot be publicly identified under Canadian law because he’s co ...

  • Westboro Baptist Attacks ‘Filthy Jews’ in New ...
    Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) has ratcheted up its recent campaign against Jews with the release of virulently anti-Semitic music videos. This latest gimmick is somewhat of a departure for the rabidly anti-gay group from Topeka, Kan. For years, Westboro has been notorious for disrupti ...

  • Hal Turner Trial Set to Begin Tomorrow
    The federal trial for white supremacist Hal Turner is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning. Turner, a neo-Nazi blogger and Internet radio host, is charged with threatening to assault and murder three federal judges in Chicago. Turner wrote on his blog that they “deserve to be killed” and posted t ...

Rio Times

  • Thanksgiving in Rio
    By Felicity Clarke, Contributing Reporter RIO DE JANEIRO - Carnival stands as Brazil’s great national holiday, but for all the music, dancing and dazzling spectacle it does fall short on one important holiday criteria: there’s no focus on food. In contrast, Thanksgiving, the major US national ho ...

  • De Menezes Family Compensation
    By Jaylan Boyle, Senior Reporter RIO DE JANEIRO - The family of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian national shot dead by London police in 2005, has settled ongoing litigation and been awarded damages, the sum of which is officially not being disclosed; some sources however are claiming the payme ...

  • Partnerships at +Unidos Workshop
    By Bruno De Nicola, Senior Reporter RIO DE JANEIRO - On November 17th, USAID and +UNIDOS (Mais Unidos) held a Workshop on Social Responsibility Partnerships with more than 30 U.S. companies presenting over 50 of their social projects. The event was held at the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) i ...

  • Expat Entrepreneur’s Fitness Business
    By Doug Gray, Senior Reporter RIO DE JANEIRO – It is an oft-discussed subject amongst the international community of Rio - how to make money in a city not known for its ease of business practice or its ready acceptance of overseas workers. In a country understandably protective of its workforce a ...

  • Smoke-Free Law Takes Effect
    By Jaylan Boyle, Senior Reporter RIO DE JANEIRO - Rio’s anti-smoking state law 5.517/09, which took effect on the 17th of this month, has survived an eleventh hour challenge from a syndicate of bars and hotels, and appears to have met with overall compliance, with one exception reported. The law, ...

Common Dreams-Progressive Newswire

  • President Obama to Attend International Climate Su ...
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 25, 2009 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) The White House announced today that President Obama will travel to Copenhagen on December  9 to participate in the United Nations climate change summit. His presence will help the international community as it works t ...

  • GOP Vision for America: “Shining City Upon a Hil ...
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 24, 2009 Americas Voice This week, news reports indicated that a group of Republicans may propose a resolution to the Republican National Committee that would impose a litmus test on candidates seeking party support.  Entitled “ Resolution on Reagan’s Unity Princi ...

  • AIDS Activists to President Obama, Mayor Fenty: Yo ...
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 24, 2009 Africa Action Following the recent announcement by the World Health Organization that HIV is the leading killer of women around the world, and reports that HIV infection rates in Washington D.C. have reached roughly one in 20 people, DC residents and AIDS acti ...

  • Seattle+10 People's Summit
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 27, 2009 Seattle+10 Organizing Committee More than 85 organizations are coming together in Seattle for a People's Summit, to show another world is possible: a world of economic fairness, environmental health, and justice for all. The weekend long People's Summit, runni ...

  • Response to News Obama Will Go to Copenhagen
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 25, 2009 Friends of The Earth Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica had the following response to news that U.S. President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen in December to participate in international climate negotiations: read more

Common Dreams-Views

  • The Poorest Immigrants Subsidize Healthcare for Ev ...
    by EunSook Lee Would it be acceptable if we were to make medical care out of reach for any segment of our nation’s population? For the 15.5 million Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders? Or for the 44.3 million Latinos? Let’s hope not. But, as it stands, our growing acceptanc ...

  • Social Status Has Measurable Effect on Health
    by Rick Wilson In recent years, a growing body of scientific research indicates that human health and longevity aren't just matters of genes and habits. Rather, they seem to have a lot to do with our relative status or position in society. read more

  • Afghan Scandal Sullies Canada
    by Eric Margolis Canada has long been admired around the globe as a nation of high ethics, human rights and respect for law. But Canada's sterling reputation is being seriously degraded by the spreading scandal over involvement in torture in the increasingly sordid Afghan conflict. All Canadians sho ...

  • Don’t Let Obama’s EPA Silence Critics
    by Louis Clark In late October, lawyers Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams exercised their First Amendment right of free speech when they posted a YouTube video criticizing the proposed cap-and-trade emissions program. But the Environmental Protection Agency, which has employed both Zabel and Williams ...

  • Is Obama's Civil Liberties Record Understandable?
    by Glenn Greenwald Earlier this week, Kevin Drum said that "nine times out of ten" Obama's policies are "pretty much what [he] expected" but that "the biggest one-time-out-of-ten where he's not doing what [he] expected is in the area of detainee and civil liberties issues."  Similarly, Andrew Sul ...

Karl Burkart

Water Privatization

Guardian

  • Obama to unveil Afghan strategy
    Barack Obama will end months of uncertainty over his Afghanistan policy when he announces tonight a "surge" of roughly 30,000 troops in an attempt to prevent the war being lost. We will report on developments throughout the day and have live coverage of his speech. 2.32pm: Professor Michael Clarke ...

  • 'Terror' pair win secret evidence fight
    High court judgment says suspects cannot be detained without being able to answer charges made against them Two men suspected of terrorism-related activities won a landmark high court battle today when judges ruled that a person could not be denied bail solely on the basis of secret evidence. Lord J ...

  • US police shooting suspect killed
    Maurice Clemmons shot and killed days after four officers died in execution-style ambush Police in Seattle have killed a man suspected of shooting four police officers at the weekend. The Pierce County sheriff's spokesman, Ed Troyer, said Maurice Clemmons was shot in a Seattle neighbourhood early th ...

  • Survivors weep at trial of 'Nazi killer'
    John Demjanjuk accused of being accessory to murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor, eastern Poland Survivors of the Sobibor death camp and relatives of the Jewish prisoners killed there wept in court today as the names of some of the victims were read out in the trial of the 89-year-old accused of being ...

  • Help us unravel former PM's finances
    Since Tony Blair stepped down, he has received millions of pounds from an unusual mixture of income streams. His financial affairs have been described as 'Byzantine' and 'opaque'. Can you shed any light on them? The former prime minister Tony Blair has received millions of pounds through an unusual ...

Diigo | Green Community

  • Green Credit Cards Committed to Environment
    Green Credit Cards Committed to Environment - Camden, New Jersey Comments: Green Credit Cards Committed to Environment - Camden, New Jersey - alexander hampp Tags: Green , Credit , Cards , Environment , sustainability , eco-friendly by: alexander hampp

  • Green Credit Cards Committed to Environment - Fina ...
    Green Credit Cards Committed to Environment, YatBo Atlantic City Classifieds - Local classifieds for Atlantic City - New Jersey, Posting a Classified Ad is FREE! - you can find almost everything on Yatbo.com Comments: Green Credit Cards Committed to Environment, YatBo Atlantic City Classifieds - Loc ...

  • Free classified Ads - beatyourprice.com
    Free classified Ads. buy and sell pets, computers, real estate, cars, business at beatyourprice.com Comments: Free classified Ads. buy and sell pets, computers, real estate, cars, business at beatyourprice.com - alexander hampp Tags: Green , Credit , Cards , Environment , sustainability , eco-friend ...

  • Free classified Ads - beatyourprice.com
    Free classified Ads. buy and sell pets, computers, real estate, cars, business at beatyourprice.com Comments: Free classified Ads. buy and sell pets, computers, real estate, cars, business at beatyourprice.com - alexander hampp Tags: green , investments , stocks , bond , mutual , funds , sustainable ...

  • Green Finance for Eco-Friendly Products and Servic ...
    Green Finance for Eco-Friendly Products and Services, YatBo Newark Classifieds - Local classifieds for Newark - New Jersey, Posting a Classified Ad is FREE! - you can find almost everything on Yatbo.com Comments: Green Finance for Eco-Friendly Products and Services, YatBo Newark Classifieds - Local ...

Electronic Intifada

  • Palestinians organize for the Gaza Freedom March
    "From the besieged Gaza Strip, we call upon all peace lovers around the globe to come here to participate in our Gaza Freedom March that is aimed at breaking a repressive Israeli blockade on Gaza's 1. ...

  • Discrimination keeps Palestinian women out of Isra ...
    Israel's finance minister was accused last week of trying to deflect attention from discriminatory policies keeping many of the country's Palestinian Arab families in poverty by blaming their e ...

  • Any given Friday
    After years of land appropriation and harassing Palestinian villagers, Efrat settlers have decided that they want to acquire more of Um Salomona's farmland separated from the village by the main road ...

  • Interview: Bilin activist continues to struggle de ...
    Earlier this year, Khamis Fathi Abu Rahmah, 27, was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister while participating in a nonviolent demonstration against Israel's wall in the occupied West ...

  • Interview with PA dissident: "I cannot just stay s ...
    Abdel Sattar Qassem, a professor and author of numerous publications on Palestinian history and Islamic thought, is well-known for his pungent critiques of Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). A ...

CS Monitor - News

  • October 16, 2009
    The UN Human Rights Council votes to adopt the Goldstone Report on Israel's military incursion into Gaza.

  • October 19, 2009
    Saudi Arabia is wary of terrorists, especially from neighboring states.

  • October 20, 2009
    How some TV insiders view parents and children on reality television.

  • October 21, 2009
    How African Anglicans might respond to the Vatican's offer.

  • October 23, 2009
    US-China economic relations, Microsoft and Wall Street, and September home sales.

The Wonk Room

  • After Introducing $1.3 Trillion In Cuts To Medicar ...
    This afternoon, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the first Republican amendment to the Senate’s health care reform bill. The so-called ‘motion to commit’ would send the legislation back to the Senate Finance Committee and instruct that committee to remove the $491 billion in proposed reducti ...

  • After Stalling The START Treaty Negotiations, Cons ...
    It looks quite clear that US-Russian negotiations over a new START treaty are proceeding smoothly. Yet while the START treaty reaches the finish line, conservative commentators have adopted the bizarre and hypocritical attack that not reaching an agreement before December 5th – the date at which t ...

  • Minuteman Leader Slams ‘Ron Paul Fanatics,&# ...
    Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, was caught on video last week slamming “Ron Paul fanatics” in the anti-immigration movement along with tea-bagger wannabe William Gheen who organized poorly attended “copycat” anti-immigration tea party protests: I used to support Ron Paul, ...

  • Treasury Set To Scold Banks (Again) For Lack Of Pr ...
    Back in August, the Treasury Department produced a list of mortgage servicers and their progress (or lack thereof) in successfully getting eligible borrowers into the administration’s signature mortgage modification effort — the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). As the Associated Pres ...

  • How To Create 17 Million Clean Energy Jobs
    The challenges facing President Obama and the U.S. Congress have not gone away. Paul Krugman worries that “unemployment is likely to stay near its current level for a year or more,” because “much of the political establishment now sees stimulus as having been discredited by events, so that ità ...

thwap's schoolyard

  • Hypocrisy and a Link
    First, harpercon house leader, Jay Hill : Hon. Jay Hill (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a question of privilege in regards to the disturbance in the public gallery yesterday during question period and charge the member for Toronto—Danforth with ...

  • RCMP-CSIS: Jockeying for glory
    I'm of mixed emotions about this National Post article [h/t C-C ]: OTTAWA -- The RCMP disrupted 14 suspected terrorist incidents in recent months, including several in which the alleged activities were interrupted without charges or publicity. The cases all involved suspected national security-relat ...

  • Ezra Levant and Alberto Gonzales
    Two doughy, pimply-voiced, stupid turds. I get the impression that Ezra Levant is trying to get sued by Maher Arar with his revolting assertions that Arar is a liar who was never tortured, and therefore stole 10 million dollars from Canadian taxpayers. He wants to get sued so that he can torture Ar ...

  • From That Link ...
    Earlier post today provide a link to the Special Committee on Canada's Mission in Afghanistan. I've just started reading it and thought I'd share Paul Dewar's grilling of Stockwell Day: Mr. Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre, NDP) : Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister. I want to start o ...

  • I Always Thought Christie Blatchford Was an Idiot
    (I changed the title, so that it says "Idiot" instead of my first choice "Moron" because that's what I call Blatchford's sister in stupidity, Rosie DiManno .) I haven't read you for years and years and years Christie. You used to appear in the Toronto Sun, writing brain-dead criticisms of left-win ...

Financial Sense Editorials

  • Market Observation: Honey, I Shrunk the Gold
    by Rob Kirby. "Interestingly, initial reports indicated that discrepancies involved silver and other precious metals. Those references have now been dropped"

  • If Stocks Tank, Shouldn't Gold Soar?
    by Elliott Wave. "Large banks and more recently pension funds have suddenly become infatuated with gold. They chant the mantras that gold bugs have known for years: gold is a store of value; owning gold is financial insurance"

  • Madmen, Gamblers, Alcoholics, the US Dollar and Go ...
    by Ron Hera. "If a lawless gang of madmen, gamblers and alcoholics seized control of a large company, how would you expect the business to perform? How would you expect the story to end?"

  • The Simple Math of CO2 Reduction
    by Ron Cooke. "Those who propose draconian measures to curb CO2 production need a math refresher course. Look at the projections. Assuming existing CO2 reduction policies are not changed, by 2030, human activity will account for about 3.3% of global CO2 production (NASA)."

  • This Week: Dump the Dow!
    by Peter Navarro, Ph.D. "My crusade this week is to get financial analysts to stop focusing on the Dow Jones Industrial Average is the most important symbol of the US stock market. In the ticker tape parade everyday on CNBC, I would much rather see the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, and the Russell 2000 rathe ...

on Government Oversight

  • Morning Smoke: House Kicks Off Investigation into ...
    House seeks records in contracting case [The Washington Post] Lobbyists pushed off advisory panels [The Washington Post] Release of secret reports delayed [The Boston Globe] Fed Tightens Rules on Regional Directors [The Wall Street Journal] Mark Pittman, Reporter Who Challenged...

  • Agencies Withhold Information from the GAO
    Last week, The Hill reported that federal agencies have not been completely forthcoming with information requested by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) as part of the congressional auditing group's investigations. In a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), acting GAO...

  • And This Year's Qui Tammy Award Goes To...
    Popular music has the Grammys, pro wrestling has the Slammies, and Bay Area Music magazine used to honor the California music scene with the Bammies. So when the Department of Justice makes its annual announcement of how much money the...

  • Morning Smoke: Do Wall Street Reformers Have the U ...
    Could Wall Street Actually Lose in Congress? [The Stash] Fed Said to Ask Banks to Submit Plans to Repay TARP [Bloomberg] AIG's Rescue Bedevils U.S. [The Wall Street Journal] Comeback for White House choppers? [Politico] Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan...

  • Morning Smoke: Stock Ownership in Congress Draws S ...
    Policy, portfolios and the investor lawmaker [The Washington Post] Republicans criticize dismissal of AmeriCorps watchdog [The Los Angeles Times] Lockheed Martin F-35 Fighter May Need More Money, Analyst Says [Bloomberg] Inquiries look into use of retired generals as advisers [Federal...


Digital Journal

  • Man wanted in Washington State cop shootings claim ...
    Documents made available to media paint a picture of cop shooting suspect Maurice Clemmons as someone living on the edge of sanity. His wife complained he had ordered everyone to be naked, that he was Jesus and had written to Obama. He's still at large.

  • Low air speed at take off may be cause of fatal B. ...
    A Vancouver doctor and her infant daughter were killed along with a couple from Huntington Beach and two others from the Vancouver area when a Beaver float plane sank into the water. Transportation Safety Board says low speed at take-off may be a cause.

  • RCMP in B.C. seize $1.5 million worth of fake Prad ...
    RCMP in B.C. have raided a store that sold Chinese-made fake high fashion goods such as Prada and Coach. They say the items were worth $1.5 million. Cops plan to lay charges against store owners under the Copyright Act.

  • CDC new figures: 14 to 34 million in U.S. infected ...
    The CDC says it grossly underestimated the number of people sick, hospitalized or dead from Swine Flu. New figures issued Monday are shocking. As many as 34 million may have been sick. Up to 153,000 hospitalized. It says figures show true burden of H1N1.

  • Jackson's 'This Is It' to be released on DVD Jan. ...
    It was announced Monday that the record breaking Michael Jackson concert documentary 'This Is It' will be released on DVD in January, 2010.

End Homelessness | Change.org

  • Are Jobs the New Homeless Prevention Strategy?
    Will connecting individuals with jobs prevent them from returning to the streets? You've heard of Housing First, a best practice for quickly moving homeless people into their own apartment. Now, a Boston organization is piloting another program that focuses on not wasting any time: Work First. As fa ...

  • Silent Homeless Display Speaks Volumes
    113 painted cardboard silhouettes might not seem like much. That is, until you learn that each silhouette represents a person in your community who sleeps on the streets or in shelter. Since the problem of homelessness is almost entirely invisible, public installations that expose the reality of th ...

  • Homeless in Portland
    While walking this morning in Portland, Oregon I met Nathan. Too me the weather In Pacific Northwest is nasty and I don't know how people survive on the streets. Nathan told me he has a sleeping back, a few jackets and uses storefront awnings when he can to stay dry. Nathan has been homeless off and ...

  • Dreaming of College from Skid Row
    Kenneth Chancy is 17 years old. He is a high school honors student, the starting quarterback on the football team, and student body president. Oh - and until recently, he was a resident of the Union Street Rescue Mission in the heart of Skid Row. CNN covered his inspiring story several weeks back. C ...

  • Why You Should Skip the Office Swap and Support th ...
    If you're looking for an excuse to can the office holiday party and inject a little activist energy into your cubicle maze this year, look no further. Here are five reasons your office should consider bucking its holiday traditions in favor of providing a healthy dose of goodwill towards the homeles ...

Ceasefire.ca

  • UN pulls half its staff out of Afghanistan
    On November 5, 2009 the United Nations pulled half of the staff it had in Afghanistan out of the country. A total of 600 of the 1,100 foreign UN workers currently in Afghanistan will now temporarily depart until the situation gets better. The UN also threatened to permanently remove all staff if th ...

  • Ethnic divisions in northern Iraq: bad news for mi ...
    Baghdad’s north is increasingly divided between Arabs and Kurds and, according to Human Rights Watch, is highly detrimental to the other minority populations living in Iraq. In a recent publication On Vulnerable Ground  the group explains that minorities remain vulnerable to attacks by Sunni ...

  • Brown chides Karzai as questions rise about the fu ...
    In the wake of the killing of five UK soldiers by an Afghan police trainee, PM Gordon Brown has called on Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to step up efforts to tackle rampant corruption in the Afghan government. Though he emphasized the point that Britain’s commitment to Afghanistan remained fi ...

  • Is the West capable of fixing Afghanistan?
       The highly-controversial election in Afghanistan has added to concerns that the international mission in that country is doomed to failure. It is indicative of the fact that, despite the perceived power of the United States, it has been unable to ensure that Afghanistan’s reconstru ...

  • And so it begins - Canada starts to plan for Afgha ...
      With the end date of 2011, Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Walter Natynczyk has ordered the beginning of the planning phase of Canada’s military pull out of Afghanistan. The move comes in light of the Harper government’s intent to stick to its end date on Canada’s military ...

Kevin Trudeau Show

  • Truth About Obama Health Care Plan
    November 30, 2009 In Solutions By John Rappoport We are at a defining and crucial moment in our history. A machine is in motion that will alter our future. If after you read this article, you agree with its main points, or at least feel they need to be heard, send it on to others. Find ways to [...]

  • The Fed to Face Hyperinflation
    November 30, 2009 International Forecaster The following information may be the most important we have ever published. One of our Intel sources, highly placed in banking circles, tells us that on 1/1/10 all banks that have received TARP funds have been informed by the Federal Reserve that they must ...

  • Search Engines Censoring Climate Hoax
    November 30, 2009 PrisonPlanet By Paul Joseph Watson A fantastic article written by Christopher Brooker of the London Telegraph exposing the climate change fraud rocketed to the very top of a Google News search for “global warming,” only to disappear hours later. “What is going on at Google? I ...

  • S&P Warns That Most Global Banks are Still Unsafe
    November 30, 2009 Telegraph.co.uk By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Every single bank in Japan, the US, Germany, Spain, and Italy included in S&P’s list of 45 global lenders fails the 8pc safety level under the agency’s risk-adjusted capital (RAC) ratio. Most fall woefully short. The most vulnerable ar ...

  • Gold is Quality, Stability, and Safety
    November 30, 2009 InfoWars By Bob Chapman Investors buy gold when there is inflation and when there is a flight to quality. They buy gold when they no longer trust currencies, due to government or central bank profligacy. Due to those and other reasons gold has broken out to new highs. It could well ...

Pambazuka News



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