19 Jan - RSS SnapShot!

Feeds Update From Opit's LinkFest!* at My Opera Community

IPS - Inter Press Services

• SRI LANKA: Amid Furore, Central Bank Drops Plan ...
  COLOMBO, Jan 19 (IPS) - Under pressure over accusations that ill-gotten money would be siphoned out, Sri Lanka’s Central Bank has put the lid on a plan to allow a free flow of foreign currency in and out of the country.
  
• MIDEAST: Harsher Gaza War Looming on Horizon?
  RAMALLAH, Jan 19 (IPS) - According to several prominent Palestinians and Israelis another major Israeli military assault on Gaza, even harsher than last year’s Operation Cast Lead, is imminent. But will this change anything and have the underlying causes behind the previous bloody war been addre ...
  
• INDIA: Patriarch's Death a Big Blow to Mainstr ...
  KOLKATA, Jan 19 (IPS) - On Sunday, when this eastern India metropolis of moderate winter experienced one of the chilliest days of the season, the weather was no deterrent for tens of thousands who lined up the streets to catch a glimpse of a 95-year-old communist leader’s body soon after a te ...
  
• CANADA: Hunt for Oil Patch Bomber Takes New Twis ...
  VANCOUVER, Jan 18 (IPS) - Looking increasingly desperate after a 15-month-long hunt for a saboteur who has blown up six natural gas installations in northern Canada, police arrested an outspoken oil industry critic and then set him free a day later without pressing charges.
  
• SOUTH SUDAN: Tension Builds as Peace Agreement M ...
  JUBA, South Sudan, Jan 19 (IPS) - Sudan is at a crossroads. Its future looks grim. "Only a miracle can save it from disintegrating. The signs are already on the wall," says Khamis Lako, a petty trader in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
  

Scoop - NZ

• Recession Batters US State Budgets
  The worst recession since the 1930s has caused the steepest decline in state tax receipts on record. As a result, even after making very deep cuts, states continue to face large budget gaps. New shortfalls have opened up in the budgets of at least 39 states for the current fiscal year (FY 2010, whic ...
  
• America Slides Deeper Into Depression as Wall Stre ...
  The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters.  »  PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews
  
• German economy contracted 5% in 09
  Germany's economy contracted 5 percent in 2009 amid the global economic downturn, by far its worst performance since World War II, official data showed Wednesday.The figure published by the German Federal Statistical Office was in line with government predictions but slightly worse than the 4.8 perc ...
  
• Roubini: The Coming Sovereign Debt Crisis
  In 2009, downgrades and debt auction failures in countries like the UK, Greece, Ireland and Spain were a stark reminder that unless advanced economies begin to put their fiscal houses in order, investors and rating agencies will likely turn from friends to foes. The severe recession, combined with a ...
  
• Did Tutankhamun discoverer steal from the tomb ?
  Howard Carter, the British explorer who opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, will forever be associated with the greatest trove of artifacts from ancient Egypt. But was he also a thief?Dawn was breaking as Howard Carter took up a crowbar to pry open the sealed tomb door in Egypt's Valley of the K ...
  

Independent ( London )

• France and Germany warn against Internet Explorer
  France and Germany have warned web users against using all versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer to protect security.
  
• Hacker shows porn on Moscow higway
  A hacker is being blamed for the display of a two-minute pornographic video of an electronic billboard in downtown Moscow that usually screens advertising clips.
  
• Adoption agencies warned off Haiti's orphans
  For newly orphaned children wandering the streets of Haiti's capital begging for food, it sounds like a dream come true. But agencies trying to evacuate children whose parents died in last week's earthquake have been criticised for bypassing proper adoption processes to rush them to families offer ...
  
• How can Haiti ever be rebuilt?
  
  
• Taliban storm Kabul with wave of suicide bombings
  Fighting raged across downtown Kabul yesterday after a group of Taliban militants equipped with suicide vests and automatic weapons attacked major buildings in the city centre, including the presidential palace, in one of their most ambitious assaults.
  

CASMII - Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

• Germany Pledges ‘Comprehensive Sanctions’ Against ...
  Summary: Even though it seems impossible that any significant sanctions against Iran can be pushed forward in the United Nations Security Council, German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed today that they would implement ‘comprehensive sanctions’ against the nation for its civilian nuclear program. ...
  
• No decision on new Iran sanctions
  Summary: Bushehr Nuclear Reactor NEW YORK: Six major powers considered new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear defiance here Saturday but reached no decision, a senior European Union official said. source: AFP read more
  
• Nuclear Deceit: The Times And Iran
  Summary: On December 14, The Times announced that it had obtained documents about Iran’s nuclear programme that revealed “a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator. This is the component of a nuclear weapon that triggers the explosion”. source: Media Lens read more
  
• Iran Not Committed to Building Nuclear Bomb, Penta ...
  Summary: Tehran Reactor The conclusion -- originally reached in a comprehensive 2007 intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear program -- remains valid despite uncertainties about the goals and stability of the nation's government, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess s ...
  
• China sending lower level rep to six-power meet on ...
  Summary: "We are aware that the representation will be below the level of political director," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said. "It will be a useful meeting to have regardless of the Chinese representation." US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Monday that the six power ...
  

The Daily Galaxy

• Do the Outer Planets Have Vast Oceans of Liquid Di ...
  A little over two years ago, like an episode out of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of a mass of crystallized carbon formerly known as star BPM 37093, now known as...
  
• World's Oceans in Crisis? New Research Shows Growi ...
  The Earth's oceans are growing less efficient at absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas produced by fossil-fuel burning, reports a study co-authored by Francois Primeau, UC Irvine Earth system science associate professor. The absorption rate has...
  
• Get Your Daily Dose of Awe @The New Daily Galaxy F ...
  Link & Share The Daily Galaxy Facebook Page
  
• Image of the Day: Zeppelin Foundry
   
  
• Most Astounding Nobel Prizes (Humor)
  Several 20th-century Noble Prizes stretch the boundaries of WTF, starting that Prince of Peace Yasser Arafat (we won't mention Henry Kissinger here, of course) to three wall street whiz kids, economists Myron Scholes, Fischer Black and Robert Merton, who came...
  

Natural News

• Despite FDA concern, American Chemistry Council in ...
  (NaturalNews) The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has never met a chemical it didn't like. The organization is a chemical advocacy group whose members include all the largest chemical producers such as Monsanto, Bayer, Merck, Chevron, DuPont and many more. It's like a Who's Who of companies whose p ...
  
• New study confirms bisphenol A found in plastic is ...
  (NaturalNews) According to the American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in the U.S. Various forms of the disease take the lives of over 80 million Americans a year. And while we've all heard about the risk factors for cardiovascular disease -- including smoking, be ...
  
• Broths Contain Mysterious Ingredients
  (NaturalNews) There's a company that dominates the soup business, but its products are at best bland and mushy. You probably know who I'm talking about. Some of the company's soups contain so much salt that they're the human equivalent of a salt lick. For example, its chicken noodle soup dishes up a ...
  
• Please help the Health Ranger win the Shorty Award ...
  (NaturalNews) I don't ask for your help very often, but right now, I could really use your vote to help win the Shorty Awards for the category of health. These are awards given to publishers of the internet's best short-form content , and these awards are recognized throughout the mainstream media. ...
  
• Drugs like Tylenol can be contaminated with mold a ...
  (NaturalNews) According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prescription drugs kill about 40,000 Americans each year and over the counter drugs (OTC) -- from pain relievers to cough medicines -- cause thousands of additional deaths. Drugs can sicken, and sometimes kill, through ...
  

TheGallopingBeaver

• "Democracy and Parliament not side-stepped, only s ...
  with a little help from their friends .... We would like to thank Con MP Brent Rathgeber for that lovely explanation of Steve's contempt for parliament - first ignoring its will and then proroguing it - and move on to how the media props up that contempt by ignoring it. As pointed out by POGGE her ...
  
• Holding the bully's coat in Haiti
  The Haitian government has signed a memorandum of understanding formally transferring control of the Port-au-Prince airport to the US. From the Guardian : "Flights seeking permission to land continuously circle the airport, which is small, damaged and with a single runway, rankling several governmen ...
  
• At the going down of the sun, and in the morning.. ...
  With condolences and respect to the family and friends of Sergeant John Faught, the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. Killed due to enemy action. Ric-A-Dam-Doo
  
• Default dictatorships...
  OK, aside from the fact Canadian tax dollars apparently went to former members of the Bush administration, I initially thought this was too funny . A former spokesman for George W. Bush received a second sole-source contract from the Prime Minister's Office for American communications advice, accor ...
  
• Facebook group FOR prorogue
  Goering wannabe, Adam Yoshida , has one up. They have 103 members . The first discussion thread is titled "Adam Toshida(sic) is Full of Shit" where a commenter pulls Yoshida quotes favouring prorogue and fascistic executive power, and then blows giant holes in them with large bore QWERTY rounds. Yep ...
  

Media Matters for America

• Newsmax cites Franken-Coleman race to baselessly ...
  In a January 18 Newsmax.com article, managing editor David A. Patten raises the prospect of a "stolen election" in the race for Massachusetts' open Senate seat by citing "fears that a close election could trigger the same type of recount process that saw former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman's lead over ...
  
• Wash. Times claims Obama is "killing the ...
  In a January 18 editorial entitled "Obama is Killing the Economy," The Washington Times claimed that "Barack Obama has the worst budget record of any president in American history" by comparing the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) projections of the FY 2009 deficit to the smaller FY 2008 deficit ...
  
• "I want to be fair here": Fox anchor Jarrett dist ...
  On the January 17 edition of America's News HQ , anchor Gregg Jarrett said that Massachusetts Attorney General and Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley might be "out of step when she says things like terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan, or in the debate saying, quote, 'We need to get ...
  
• Selective memory? Former Bush official Hughes igno ...
  On Meet the Press , public relations executive and former Bush administration official Karen Hughes argued that Northwest Airlines bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should not be tried in a criminal court -- as "shoe bomber" Richard Reid was -- because the "circumstances weren't similar. He [Reid] w ...
  
• Taranto's profile of fellow News Corp. employee Be ...
  In the January 17 Wall Street Journal , James Taranto -- a member of the paper's conservative editorial board and fellow News Corp. employee with a history of advancing conservative misinformation -- penned a profile of Glenn Beck, which, among other things, completely ignored Beck's histor ...
  

Global Research.ca

• OTTAWA: Public Lecture on "War and the Economic Cr ...
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  
• President Faced With Defeat in Ukraine Polls
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  
• VIDEO: Airport Security, Body Scans, Strip Search, ...
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  
• Haiti: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  
• Bush, Clinton and the Crimes of US Imperialism in ...
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  

TPM Cafe

• Dems Must Step Up to Majority Governance after the ...
  My husband Bill and I were at our Cambridge polling place at 7am this morning, as a steady stream of voters marked the simple ballot. People at this solidly Dem precinct had determination on their faces, but the mood was... Massachusetts - Cambridge Massachusetts - United States - Politics - S ...
  
• Presented By:
• Yes We Can
  "At this point Mr. Obama probably can't do much about job creation." That's a quote from Paul Krugman's article in New York Times today. Now I admire Dr. Krugman. And he was right that the stimulus package should have been... New York Times - Paul Krugman - United States - Energy - Treasury
  
• Weekly Roundup: What We Missed
  The week began with a 'game-changer,' so to speak, and a PR disaster for the Senate Majority Leader. This story, thankfully, fizzled out, but for the worst possible reason. The unspeakable tragedy in Haiti has, understandably, been the primary focus... Majority leader - United States Senate - S ...
  
• Whose To Blame?
  I am mostly living far from Massachusetts these day, but I've marinated in its politics for 25 years, and seen my share of reactionaries voted into office. The idea that the state's undecideds are breaking for Brown because of some... Massachusetts - Politics - United States - Howard Dean - Bro ...
  

TruthOut

• US Security Company Offers to Perform "High Threat ...
  We saw this type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about “looters.” After Katrina, ...
  
• E.J. Dionne Jr. | What Obama Can Learn From Reagan ...
  Washington - In June 2008, before the financial implosions that would come a few months later, I asked two smart financiers who happened to be Republicans about the future of the seemingly shaky American economy. Defying the moment's conventional predictions that we would somehow muddle through, one ...
  
• Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Working-Class Hero
  "I AM A MAN," the signs proclaimed in large, bold letters. They were held high, proudly and defiantly, by African-American men marching through the streets of Memphis, Tennessee, in the spring of 1968. The marchers were striking union members, sanitation workers demanding that the city of Memphis fo ...
  
• Truthout Daily Newsletter 1/18/2010
  Monday 18 January 2010 "The Dream" Remains a Dream Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, Truthout: "What many fail to realize is that Dr. King was no dreamer. He was a visionary, not some abstract thinker or philosopher. He was a prophet and a true revolutionary." Read the Article Which Dr. King Wi ...
  
• Ira Chernus | Martin Luther King's Legacy and Isra ...
  Every year, apologists for Israel’s occupation of Palestine eagerly await Martin Luther King Day. Then they trot out these words, spoken by Dr. King shortly before his death: “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews; you are talking anti-Semitism." read more
  

Planetsave

• Killer Whales Are Evolving Into Two Different Spec ...
  Scientists have found that Killer Whales in the North Atlantic Ocean differ in both diet and genetic makeup. In fact, they’re in the process of splitting into two different species all together. Researchers examined the teeth of 62 whale skeletons, some that were hundreds of years old. They found ...
  
• Japanese Whalers Strike, Sink Sea Shepherd’s $2 Mi ...
  All five crew aboard the Ady Gil, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s new intercepting vessel are safe, but the fate of the prized new boat is in doubt after a collision with a Japanese harpoon vessel left it disabled off the coast of Antarctica. Anti-whaling activists, the Sea Shepherd Conser ...
  
• Barn Owl’s Wisconsin Appearance A Rare Event
  The Common Barn Owl is not so common in Midwestern states where it’s considered vulnerable. A recent surprise appearance in Wisconsin highlighted the species’ fragile status in the region. A raptor listed as an endangered or threatened species in seven Midwestern states made a rare appearance in W ...
  
• Michigan Offshore Wind Proposal Stirs Waves
  A map prepared for Michigan’s Great  Lakes Offshore Wind Council shows areas of high wind power production potential in the state’s offshore waters. One of the first proposals for a major offshore wind project in America’s freshwater has surprised Michigan regulators and begun to stir oppositi ...
  
• Friendship between LION, TIGER and BEAR
  This post contains additional media. Click here to view the full post . . If we could all just get along like these three unusual friends, we would live in a much different world. In human society, people often do not like others simply because they are different. Humans kill over this matter. In ...
  

Water Quality - WordPress

• Boulder Neighborhoods
  In the next month I will be writing about different Boulder Neighborhoods.  Is there anything you wo
  
• Risk management: WRI, General Electric and Goldman ...
  The World Resources Institute (WRI), in partnership with General Electric and Goldman Sachs, has lau
  
• LID Ordinance Approved by Public Works Committee
  Permeable pavement sidewalk at L.A. Eco-Village. When LID passes we should see more of this kind of
  
• Frac In Depth
  http://www.energyindepth.org/in-depth/frac-in-depth/ Here’s a link to a site that is industry
  
• Oil persists in environment more than 20 years aft ...
  The Exxon Valdez after running aground; Source: NOAA A new study by engineering professor Michel C.
  

Public Citizen in Texas

• Denied a substantial rate increase to fund their c ...
  Two proposed nuclear reactors in Florida were put on hold this week after the Florida Public Service Commission denied the lion’s share of a rate increase necessary to fund the project’s construction. The utility Florida Power and Light (FPL) requested a record rate hike of $1.27 Billion, but was on ...
  
• Lisa Murkowski: The price to pollute
  Original post can be found at our sister blog, Citizen Vox. How much does a pro-pollution amendment cost? From the looks of recent reports about the relationship between Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and a big energy lobbyist, at least about $35,000. That’s how much Duke Energy, Southern Co. and th ...
  
• Public Citizen Welcomes Opportunity for Senate to ...
  Statement of Tom “Smitty” Smith, Director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office The latest interim charge of the state Senate Business and Commerce Committee provides a welcome opportunity for Texas to rein in rogue utilities like CPS Energy of San Antonio. Now tasked with studying the costs of municipal ...
  
• Attention: Green businesses and Austinites!
  If you were as frustrated as I was watching world leaders dither in Copenhagen while the Earth heats up and island nations continue making evacuation plans, there is good news on the horizon for Austin. Austin Energy has developed a consensus plan that would establish our own CO2 cap and reduction p ...
  
• Baby It’s Cold Outside
  So put on a sweater and crank up the thermostat! That was the major trend late last week and over the weekend, when arctic weather led Texas to set another winter power usage record.  According to the Abilene Reporter News, The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator for mos ...
  

Press TV

• JAL files for bankruptcy
  Japan Airlines' (JAL) management has formally announced it will file for bankruptcy protection, a move described as one of the country's largest bankruptcies.
  
• Gunmen kill 5 humanitarian activists in Baghdad
  At least five Iraqi civilians have died in Baghdad when unidentified assailants opened fire on them at a non-government organization engaged in humanitarian assistance activities.
  
• Baghdad to lodge complaint against Blackwater/Xe
  Iraq is considering lodging a complaint against the US Blackwater/Xe security firm after a judge dismissed charges that the firm's guards killed Iraqi civilians in an act of wanton aggression.
  
• Larijani: US powered Israel's war on Gaza
  Iran's parliament speaker says the US and its European allies provided Israel with behind-the-scenes support during its 22-day war on Gaza.
  
• Fresh row erupts over UK Falkland claims
  A fresh diplomatic row has erupted between Britain and Argentina over the disputed Falkland Islands which is claimed as an overseas territory by both London and Buenos Aires.
  

Axis of Logic

• 2050: The Re-Birth of a New Just Nation
  
  
• Letter from a PIH Doctor in Haiti: “The city is ch ...
  
  
• Before the Earthquake
  
  
• Afghanistan and the U.S. Withdrawal
  
  
• U.S. Mourns the Loss of Lebanon
  
  

They Gave Us a Republic

• The Nightowl Newswrap
  No more "lack of security" excuses. "More than 2,000 US marines are set to join 1,000 US troops on the ground in Haiti, as aid efforts gather pace almost a week after the earthquake. Their arrival comes amid reports of violence and looting and as UN and US forces pushed back an angry crowd at the ai ...
  
• Pass it. Pass it now.
  Regardless of what happens in Massachusetts tomorrow, pass the Senate bill now and have it signed by the time the Massachusetts election is certified and the new Senator seated. The healthcare debate has dragged on for nearly a year, it has been obstructed and watered down and the people are getting ...
  
• Limbaugh's Sponsors
  If you want to use Puerco's own site to tell his sponsors what you think go Here: But since that might not be a reliable way of reaching the individual companies, especially since I would assume that his staff will be vetting censoring any messages sent by that route, Blog Me No Blogs has published ...
  
• Filibuster Promotes Radicalism
  Abuse of the Senate's filibuster rule has been criticized for the way it institutionalizes minority rule. But little remarked on is the way that it also encourages political radicalism. The filibuster is often defended as a tool to prevent the tyranny of a radical and impassioned majority.  Yet, tod ...
  
• More of this, please
  Vice President Biden appeared to lay the groundwork last night for a retooling, if not a flat-out elimination of the filibuster at a fundraiser in south Florida where he openly derided the supermajority rule that the minority republicans in the Senate have imposed this session of Congress, character ...
  

Care 2

• Silent Carbon Footprint: Top Ten Sources You’d Nev ...
  Global warming is loud - from science labs to Presidential debates, everyone is talking about what to do about it. More than any weapon of war crafted by man, global warming, if unchecked, stands poised to threaten the well being of mankind. Submitted by Daphna Yanez to Environment  |   Note-it!  | ...
  
• 50 Cool Search Engines for Serious Readers
  Whether it’s a book review, a book by a certain author, or a digitized anthology for your online courses, you’ll want to use sophisticated tools that direct you to quality resources. Here are 50 cool search engines for serious readers and students. Submitted by Nancy Bridget to Green Lifestyle  |  ...
  
• On the Trail of the Urban Fox
  Alone in a crowd or on your own in a deserted road, the city can be an isolating place for people. Not so for the urban fox; this maverick likes it that way. Always on the move, ever alert, the red fox walks the lonely streets, a solitary hunter and scave Submitted by Daphna Yanez to Animals  |   N ...
  
• Criminal gangs blamed for rise in poaching
  Criminal gangs could be responsible for a big increase in the amount of deer poaching in Scotland, police have said. Reported poaching incidents rose by 47% last year with some estates losing up to 50 deer, according to the National Wildlife Crime Unit... Submitted by Katie Miller to World  |   Not ...
  
• Oregon Biologists Start DNA Study On Rare Weasel
  Biologists are tracking a rare and elusive weasel called the Pacific fisher to determine if native animals have bred with other weasels introduced to Oregon from Minnesota Submitted by Cher C. to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  

GreenBiz

• Certification Program Launched for Sustainable Win ...
  The California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance has created a third-party certification program for wineries and vineyards in the state that follow sustainable practices.
  
• Sustainable Forestry Initiative Releases New Stand ...
  After an 18-month review process, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative has released its new standard, with expanded and updated principles, objectives and performance indicators.
  
• A Blueprint for Greening New York City's Buildings
  New York City's buildings are responsible for 66 percent of energy use and 77 percent of the metropolis' greenhouse gas emissions. This report looks at the challenge posed by green buildings and strategies to address it.
  
• California's Building Code Turns a Deeper Shade of ...
  California's Green Building Standards Code, the first of its kind when placed on the books 18 months ago, moved toward a new phase this week with the adoption of mandatory measures that are aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, water use and other environmental impacts of n ...
  
• Strong Forecasts for Green Business and Building i ...
  What's in store for green business, building and sustainable sites in 2010? Here are my predictions for the year's emerging trends in retrofits, energy efficiency, alternative energy and more.
  

Reuters Global

• Haitian hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean defends his cha ...
  Grammy Award-winning musician Wyclef Jean, a native of Haiti, holds up his U.S. "Green Card" and his Haitian passport as he recounts his experiences after returning from Haiti at a news conference in New York, January 18, 2010. REUTERS/Ray Stubblebine
  
• EU catches up in race to help Haiti
  In the days since Haiti was struck by a powerful earthquake, killing as many as 200,000 people, the world has responded with generous promises of aid and long-term assistance. The European Union, which must coordinate among 27 member states, took longer than many to respond, but when it did finally ...
  
• Haiti’s “Wizard-of-Oz” president ...
  Haiti's President Rene Preval hardly shows his face in a quake-hit country in dire need of leadership.
  
• Haiti’s forgotten bodies
  Looters squeezed in to steal all the office computers and cell phone stocks well before anybody tried to free the victims.
  
• Haiti – shutting out the cries
  Journalists become immune to the pain and death left by Haiti's earthquake.
  

Paul Krugman

• Destructive creativity
  Smart people have been devising ingenious ways to concentrate risk and direct capital to the wrong uses.
  
• Texas Textbooks
  Guess who's writing our textbooks?
  
• Can We Make Chutzpah A Crime?
  Because if we can, we can send a bunch of bankers to jail right away.
  
• Reagan, Taxes, Jobs
  The long lag between tax cuts and morning in America.
  
• Brown, Coakley, And the Outrage Gap
  What does it take to make a Republican scandal?
  

No Quarter

• Ed Schultz: Immediate Induction into Sense on Cent ...
  With this post, I am immediately inducting Ed Schultz, TV host on MSNBC, into the Sense on Cents Hall of Shame. Why? What could Ed Schultz have done to deserve this “honor?” The pursuit of truth, transparency, and integrity on our economic landscape is forever challenging. The true challenge of this ...
  
• Join Us Tonight For Election Coverage
  We’re going to have two ways for you to have fun here while the election results come in. We’ll set these up @ 4 p.m. ET: (1) We’ll have a live chat — it’s very easy to use, no registration is required, and you just drop in and start chatting or read others’ live chat comments. [...]
  
• Insane Deja Vu Dems
  * Bumped up * Who do the voodoo dat you do Nancy, Harry and Barack? The dems, especially their dear leader, Barack “Golden Child” Obama, are getting kicked in the balls in Massachusetts. The Senate seat deeded to the Kennedy family by Henry the Eighth or something looks like it is going back to [. ...
  
• A Twitter from ABC News
  I get Jake Tapper’s Twitters & Facebook feeds. Here’s one from Karen Tumulty that he passed along just now: “Jake Tapper RT @ktumulty coakley rally, set to start in five minutes in middle school gym, is 3/4 empty. they’ve pulled curtain across middle of gym.” Somebody should have offered free hotdo ...
  
• “The Backlash Is Coming…”
  One of the worst things about the 2008 election – aside from the obvious of Hillary Clinton being unceremoniously pushed aside in favor of a disingenuous, inexperienced candidate with elastic policies – is that her supporters were likewise treated with horrid disrespect. We were told our concerns d ...
  

Environmental Graffiti

• 20 Incredible Crepuscular Rays
• On the Trail of the Urban Fox
• Cloud-to-Cloud Lightning
• Drawing With Fire
• Insects Poke Fun at Photographers

Foreign Policy in Focus

• Obama's Surge and Pakistan
  U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan is built on two coups, one in Kabul and the other in Islamabad.
  
• Honduran Elections a Parody of Democracy
  The recent elections are the latest act in the Honduran theater of the absurd, reports columnist Laura Carlsen.
  
• Crapshoot in Copenhagen
  FPIF's weekly update.
  
• The AfPak Train Wreck
  The president's goals in escalating the war in Afghanistan are deeply flawed. Just ask the Russians.
  
• Africa and the Economic Crisis
  While the world focuses on Afghanistan, Africa is addressing the global economic crisis in new ways.
  

Global Elite

• Fear, Intimidation & Media Disinformation: U.K Gov ...
  Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, August 20, 2009 An official UK government report –quoted extensively in Britain’s tabloid media– is warning the British public that there will be c ...
  
• President European Commission Advocated World Gove ...
  Jurriaan Maessen. Infowars. July 24th, 2009 On September 7, 1992, two term President of the European Commission Jacques Delors gave a speech to the Royal Institute of International Affa ...
  
• Billions of People Expected to Die Under Current C ...
  Barbara Minton, Natural News, July 21st, 2009 Your right to eat healthy food and use supplements of your choice is rapidly vanishing, but every effort has been made to keep you in the d ...
  
• Bioweapons, Dangerous Vaccines, and Threats of a G ...
  Stephen Lendman, Global Research, July 7th, 2009 Although international law prohibits the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, America has had an active biological warfare progr ...
  
• Today we’re all prisoners in the USA
  Papers, Please! June 2, 2009 As of today, June 1, 2009, even U.S. citizens are officially prisoners in the USA, or exiles barred from entering our own country without the government’s p ...
  

Al Jazeera

• Kabul on alert after attacks
  Security forces step up patrols day after fighters infiltrated Afghanistan's capital.
  
• Japan Airlines files for bankruptcy
  Carrier files for court protection after struggling with billions of dollars in debt.
  
• China judge jailed for corruption
  Chinese court hands down life sentence to senior judge accused of taking bribes.
  
• Cadbury accepts Kraft takeover bid
  British confectioner agrees to "improved" $19.5bn offer from US food conglomerate.
  
• Google China staff 'investigated'
  Report says some employees have had access cut during probe into cyber attacks.
  

Green Inc. - NYT

• A Boost for LED Lighting Development
  The government is awarding $37 million for more research into LED lighting development.
  
• Cap-and-Trade Proceeds for Residents?
  A California family of four could receive more than $1,000 every year if a proposal on the state's emerging cap-and-trade system is approved.
  
• Funding for Biofuels Research
  The United States Department of Energy announced more than $80 million in funding for research into biofuels that use existing fuel infrastructure.
  
• Europe's Growing Offshore Wind Capacity
  Europe's fledgling offshore wind industry will grow this year by 1,000 megawatts, or 75 percent, according to a forecast published Monday.
  
• Fossil Fuel Use 2034? Not Much Different.
  A quarter century from now, the United States' reliance on fossil fuels will have declined only marginally, a consulting firm projected.
  

Dot Earth News

• Hansen and Watts Agree: Cold Weather, Warm Climate
  The difference between cold weather and a warm climate is spelled out by very different voices in the climate debate.
  
• Gaining a Minute in the Race Against Time
  The Doomsday Clock is adjusted -- positively.
  
• Is Pentagon's Haiti Mission a Model for a New Secu ...
  The Pentagon's missions in Haiti and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami could be a model for much more to come.
  
• Whiplash in the Greenhouse
  Do the media, scientists and advocates have a tendency to distort science pointing to the impacts of global warming?
  
• Haiti's Agony
  A potent earthquake is the latest hard knock to hit one of the world's poorest countries.
  

Doug Feith : Hong Pong

• Pearl Harbor: Evidence of shady biz or just a lett ...
  Remember the Maine, while you're at it! :-D
  
• Controlling 9/11 "crippled epistemology" via fake ...
  ".... we will suggest below that if the hard core arises for certain identifiable reasons, it can be broken up or at least muted by government action." .... " We suggest a role for government efforts, and agents, in introducing such diversity.  Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat ...
  
• 'Civil support' apparatus appears, Oh noes: Obama ...
  Article I Section 10 Clause 3.... No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State , or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such immine ...
  
• TSA goon loses notebook tracing blogger leaks; hon ...
  Next time at the airport: "resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand"..... But first, Crush the Bloggers with Fake Tweets!!! "Sent Blog Message to entice M... [?] to respond" --Randomly found TSA investigator notebook re manipulating Twitt ...
  
• New TSA leak PDF; False Flag ops for Detroit Chris ...
  An interesting confluence of events as Obama suddenly grants INTERPOL diplomatic immunity of sorts, while an apparent airport false flag operation or at least 'shady biz as usual' unravels pretty quickly. Good times in the shadow state for 2010. We found some snippets on the case from two noted jo ...
  

Daily Censored

• Detroit Teachers Rebel against decades of degradat ...
  The Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) has not been much of a leader in working people’s organizations but this might be about to change. The main concern of the union over the years has been to basically protect the bloated salaries and privileges of the trade union executives, like Keith Johns ...
  
• Massive Immigrant Rights March In Phoenix
  U.S.: Anti-Arpaio March Reignites Pro-Immigrant Movement Valeria Fernández PHOENIX, Arizona, Jan 17 (IPS) – Over 20,000 people marched in the streets of Phoenix Saturday in the first mass mobilisation of the year, calling for an end to the criminalisation of undocumented immigrants and the passage ...
  
• America’s in Decline, Can We Do Anything About It?
  By guest blogger Terry Morrone I’ve heard a lot of gloom and doom about the United States lately. We have so much debt we’ll have to go into default or inflate the currency. The dollar is falling in value. The middle class is disappearing. We’re doing nothing substantial about global warming. We’re ...
  
• U.S. airport security is a failure
  We are told that airport security is here to protect us. We don’t mind taking off our shoes or waiting in an hour-long line because we know that it’s to keep us safe. But are these expensive measures really effective? Many in the Department of Homeland Security say post-9/11 measures have been succe ...
  
• Haiti Then and Now
  World capitalism has never forgiven Haiti for being the home to the only fully successful slave revolt nor for becoming the first independent nation of African peoples (1804). At the point of a gun (12 French warships with 200 cannons, to be exact) they forced Haiti to pay today’s equivalent of $23 ...
  

AlterNet's Breaking News

• Kraft swallows Cadbury in $18.9 takeover
• Google postpones launch of mobiles in China
• Senate vote puts Obama refom plans on cliff edge
• Kraft clinches Cadbury takeover for $18.9 billion
• Cadbury agrees to £11.5 bln takeover ...

Institute for Policy Studies

• Trade Policy: B
• Eight Years of Guantanamo: What's Changed?
• The State of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream in 201 ...
• Barely Making the Grade: Obama's First Year
• Barely Making the Grade: Obama's First Year

Pine River World News

• Christianity vs. Islam: U.S. military in Iraq and ...
  [ Blogmaster note : Muslims throughout the Middle East and Central Asia have long accused the West of engaging in a religious war against Islam. In contrast, the West has explained the 'War on Terror' as 'Good vs Evil'. But is this really the case?] The following article is from the USA's ABC News ...
  
• Under Barack Obama, U.S. is obsessed with race but ...
  The following article is from the Daily Telegraph, U.K. Under Barack Obama, U.S. is obsessed with race but can't talk about it ©   Telegraph Media Group Ltd By Toby Harnden January 16, 2010 Barack Obama's election did not usher in a post-racial America. Instead, speaking honesty about race is tabo ...
  
• Why is the American press silent on the Israeli ro ...
  The following commentary is reprinted with permission from World Socialist Web Site. Why is the American press silent on the Israeli role in NW Flight 253? ©   World Socialist Web Site By Patrick Martin January 16, 2010 Nearly a week ago, on January 10, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz carried a new ...
  
• While America Drowns, Obama and the Elites Party
  The following column is reprinted with permission from Stanislav Mishin, a frequent contributor to Russian newspaper Pravda. While America Drowns, Obama and the Elites Party ©  Stanislav Mishin Source:   Mat Rodina January 16, 2010 There is, yet again, something very Romanesque about the state of ...
  
• Europeans flock to buy Dutch novel about Israel's ...
  The following article is from Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Europeans flock to buy Dutch novel about Israel's dystopian future ©   Haaretz By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent January 15, 2010 Western European readers are snatching up copies of a novel that shows Israel's fiery destruction throug ...
  

PDA AMERICA

• IOT: Accountability and Justice
  "bmaz," a frequent and extremely knowledgeable blogger on Firedoglake and Emptywheel joined us on this call
  
• Waxman Attacks Winograd On Israel; Ignites A Polit ...
  By Linda Milazzo | PDA Blog Contributor At the behest of his congressional ally, Jane Harman (CA-36), Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman (CA-30) has launched a mean-spirited ideological assault on Harman’s Democratic primary challenger, Marcy Winograd, that ...
  
• Sing It If You Understand
  Cross-posted from Docudharma When Obama needed the votes of progressives to get elected, his message was Change We Can Believe In.  But now that he no longer needs us, now that he has power, he has ...
  
• Looking into the Continuing Financial Crisis – Wha ...
  by Randy Shannon | Treasurer, PA 4th CD Chapter Progressive Democrats of America December 30, 2009 The chart at the right from the St. Louis Federal Reserve shows that banks have record low liquid assets, and that ...
  
• Tax on Health Care Will Erode Coverage for Middle ...
  Cross-posted from the ALF-CIO Blog A new year brings with it lots of hope. Let’s hope 2010 brings a health care reform bill that does not penalize working families with a tax on their coverage. Because right ...
  

Marler Blog

• Children Seriously Sick with E. coli in Belgium Wi ...
  According to Fox 6 News in Milwuakee, an investigation is underway in the Village of Belgium in Ozaukee County. They're trying to find out what's making children in one area seriously sick. FOX 6 Reporter Myra Sanchick brings you the latest on an E. coli scare in Ozaukee County:
  
• IF there was an USDA Undersecretary for Food Safet ...
  Marler's Baker’s Dozen 1. Tattoo on a body part that you use everyday FSIS’s Mission Statement: The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation's commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg produ ...
  
• Another Holiday - Another FSIS E. coli O157:H7 Mea ...
  I need to hand it to the FSIS, I am beginning to loose track how often its recall notices go out on either a Friday night or on a holiday.  They sure have learned to get bad news out when no one is watching.  Kudos to press manipulation 101.  I used to know the FSIS press officer, my guess is that s ...
  
• FSIS Steps-up to test ammoniated beef products for ...
  According to Meatingplace.com: The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service has issued a new directive for inspection program personnel on how to do routine sampling of ammoniated beef products for E. coli O157:H7. The agency did so in the wake of a Dec. 30, 2009, story in The New York Times , exa ...
  
• Is it time to give the Meat Industry the treatment ...
  E. coli O157:H7 is blamed for 73,000 illnesses and 61 deaths in the United States annually (not all from red meat). In the last two years, about 44 million pounds of beef has been recalled for E. coli O157:H7 contamination.  Thousands of our friends and neighbors have been sickened and dozens have d ...
  

AutoblogGreen

• AutoblogGreen for 01.19.10
  Is the Obama Administration calling the shots in Detroit? Newsweek says yes But they don't make a convincing argument. Toyota's Koei Saga: "I think we will never abandon the internal-combustion engine" ...
  
• AutoblogGreen for 01.18.10
  Official prediction: gas will hit $3 this summer in U.S. Still low compared to the rest of the world (and 2008), but higher than 2009. Mitsubishi says it will increase i-MiEV production this ...
  
• Tata Nano makes North American debut in Detroit, b ...
  Tata Nano - Click above for high-res image gallery The Tata Nano has power windows for the driver and front passenger. Anyone sitting in the rear seats, though, will have to make do with manual controls. Of all the things we learned about the world's cheapest car during its official North America ...
  
• AutoblogGreen for 01.15.10
  Report: GM to build battery-only Volt, Lutz acknowledges range drops when cold Well, duh. Detroit 2010: Toyota's 2011 plug-in Prius release date is "aggressive" target So just hold on. ...
  
• AutoblogGreen for 01.14.10
  Detroit 2010: 1,000 Tesla Roadsters have been built, Model S still over two years away Let's look forward, not backward. Detroit 2010: Smart USA's Jill Lajdziak says lifestyle message can boost sales ...
  

Rafe's Radar

• Reporters' Roundtable Podcast: 3D TV debunked
  CES overloaded the industry with 3D TV hype, and it's time to bust it. This week on the Roundtable, I interview CNET's own John Falcone and HDNation's Robert Heron on the practical realities, and likely future, of 3D TV. See also: CNET's FAQ on 3D TV , and TV industry turns blind eye to non-3D v ...
  
• TV industry turns blind eye to non-3D viewers
  A small but significant proportion of TV buyers can't see the sets' 3D effects. How is the industry addressing them?
  
• VigLink monetizes your pages quietly
  New service turns any link to a commerce site into an affiliate link.
  
• CES: Decipher your car's idiot light with CarMD
  Updated automobile diagnostic tool also gets a refreshed Web service
  
• Reporters' Roundtable podcast: Elements of tech de ...
  This week, the Roundtable is live from CES in Las Vegas. Topic: Design. My two guests, Gregor Berkowitz of MOTO Development (and author of the Design Review blog), and Max Burton of Frog Design, talk with me about design vs. engineering, why Apple's designs are so successful, and how companies ba ...
  

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!

• Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! Reporting From Hait ...
  Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Elizabeth Press from Democracy Now are in Haiti reporting on the devastating earthquake. Tune in Tuesday for a report from Amy. For the latest updates visit the Democracy Now! Twitter page and Sharif’s Twitter page.
  
• Video: On the ground Reports from Jacmel, Haiti
  The epicenter of Tuesday’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti was located halfway between the capital city of Port-au-Prince and the port city of Jacmel, 25 miles away, on the southern coast of the country. The city was heavily damaged in the quake but the extent of the loss of life or destruction is ...
  
• Medical Worker Outside of Port-Au-Prince: We Are W ...
  Democracy Now! just received this email from a medical worker at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, 75 miles north of Port-Au-Prince. From Tim Traynor at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot: I am sitting at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti, 75 miles north of PAP waiting for patients that have yet to arriv ...
  
• Bill Quigley: "Ten Things the U.S. Can and Should ...
  One. Allow all Haitians in the US to work. The number one source of money for poor people in Haiti is the money sent from family and workers in the US back home. Haitians will continue to help themselves if given a chance. Haitians in the US will continue to help when the world community moves ...
  
• "The Haitian People Have Mobilized, While Foreign ...
  Port-Au-Prince-based independent journalist Ansel Herz is filing video and written reports from Haiti on his website Mediahacker.org Ansel was interviewed on Democracy Now on Thursday . Ansel’s latest dispatch: Millions of dollars in aid are pouring into Haiti. Another head of sta ...
  

Farming Pathogens

• Do Pathogens Time Travel?
  Evolution arises from a wealth of failure: 1) natural selection requires large and variable populations comprised largely of organisms that fail because their designs do not match their present problems and 2) chance destruction occurs at all spatiotemporal scales. So clearly strict optimization doe ...
  
• We Are All Astronauts Now
  Five years ago I gave copies of this essay to a few friends and family as a year-end holiday gift. As a first stab I think it’s aged well, despite its ignorance of the work of Berger, Harvey, Reichenbach, among others. I offer it now to everyone else in a similar spirit–all in good fun, [...]
  
• Pigs Do Fly! Implications for Influenza
  The influenza genome is segmented. Eight pieces of single-stranded RNA encode for 11 proteins: PB2, PB1, PB1-F2, PA, HA, NP, NA, M1, M2, NS1, and NS2. The segmentation allows influenza of different subtypes infecting the same host to trade segments like card players on a Friday night. Most of the re ...
  
• 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 holiday. ...
  
• 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 wave a ...
  

Digg Green

• Scientists: Tsunami-Generating Quake Possible Off ...
  A huge wave-generating quake capable of killing as many people as in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami could strike off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and the city of Padang is in the firing line, a team of seismologists said on Sunday.
  
• Green sea slug: Half-animal, Half-plant makes chlo ...
  Scientists from the University of South Florida in Tampa have found a green sea slug is able to synthesize chlorophyll like a plant, which makes it the first animal known to be capable of the feat.
  
• 42 Tons of Poison Dropped on Inhabited Island to K ...
  To protect local wildlife, entire populations of native birds will be caught and kept in cages for 100 days for their own protection. All cows and chickens will be slaughtered or shipped to the mainland, while dog owners will be offered muzzles for their pets, and parents will be advised to keep a c ...
  
• Reactive nitrogen identified as key global polluta ...
  It helps feed a hungry world, but it's worse than CO2 - too much of a good thing can have a downside for the environment. The world is awash in man-made “reactive” nitrogen (the chemically active form), and “The problem is how to maximize nitrogen’s benefits while diminishing its negatives – especia ...
  
• Big Surprise at the End of the Rainbow (PIC)
  I was expecting a pot of gold...
  

Invisible Opportunity

• Living in the Light at the Center of the Wheel
  By Les Visible I saw this quote at the S&MSM this morning, “Policymakers are grappling with how a destitute, corrupt and now devastated country might be transformed”. I thought, “Hmmm that sounds like America”. They were talking about Haiti of course but it was an eerie moment. The American slide se ...
  
• Thousands of Americans died from H1N1 even after r ...
  By Mike Adams The CDC is engaged in a very clever, statistically devious spin campaign, and nearly every journalist in the mainstream media has fallen for its ploy. No one has yet reported what I’m about to reveal here. It all started with the CDC’s recent release of new statistics about swine flu f ...
  
• The Weird Factor
  The panty bomber mystery deepens by Justin Raimondo, January 11, 2010 What I call the Weird Factor, for lack of a better name, seems to have become a permanent feature of our post-9/11 world, a dark and sinister leitmotif that plays in the background. On 9/11, of course, the Factor [...]
  
• Ortega warns of US deployment in Haiti
  Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega says that the United States has taken advantage of the massive quake in Haiti and deployed troops in the country. “What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as US troops have already taken control of the airport,” Ortega said on Saturday. The Pentagon says i ...
  
• The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is i ...
  by Michel Chossudovsky The military component of the US mission, however, tends to overshadow the civilian functions of rescuing a desperate and impoverished population. The overall humanitarian operation is not being led by civilian governmental agencies such as FEMA or USAID, but by the Pentagon. ...
  

Cognitive Research - Sciences

• Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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 decision I’ve ma ...
  
• 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 Pakist ...
  
• 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 13- or ...
  
• 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

• False Claims on Rockefeller Drug Law Reform Lead t ...
  New report takes down the claims that disaster will result from drug law reform, and that judges are incapable of making sound decisions.
  
• Sewage as a Measure of Society's Drug Use
  Testing municipal wastewater for drugs may be the next big thing in public health research. The methodology will likely confirm the universality of drug use.
  
• NJ Allows Medical Marijuana for a Fraction of the ...
  NJ restricts doctors from prescribing marijuana for anything less than a terminal illness or debilitating condition, such as cancer, AIDS or multiple sclerosis.
  
• Dorm Room Dealers: A Peek into the Drug World of t ...
  Fascinating new book explores why college kids on the path to success would peddle pot or pills. Answer: They're not much at risk -- they're rich and white.
  
• Fear Mongers Attack a NYC Harm Reduction Pamphlet ...
  Arguments by top level city and federal law enforcement agents against harm redution pamphlet have little scientific merit.
  

Twilight Earth

• Web Organization Teaches Kids How to Grow Algae
  In response to the growing interest in algae cultures on the part of teachers, educators and students, a website set up to promote algae has released an educational kit Related posts: Cultivate Some Green Life with a Homemade Algae Photobioreactor Algae to Oil – Cop15 Interview with Solazyme CTO H ...
  
• Wendys Restaurant Chain Supports Mountaintop Remov ...
  While surfing Facebook today, I ran across "Boycott Mountaintop Removal Supporters," who state that Wendy's Supports Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. Related posts: Ending Streamlined Mountaintop Coal Removal Permits Is Not Enough West Virginians Come to DC to Protest Mountaintop Removal at the EP ...
  
• Monsanto News Roundup – A Frankenfood Extravaganza ...
  In it's efforts to place patents on life and control the global food market, Monsanto is not only feared by farmers, but by consumers as well. Related posts: Monsanto Bets on the Hungry to Double its Profits by 2012 The World According to Monsanto – Full Documentary Genetically Engineered Seed Com ...
  
• Report: Monsanto Corn Causes Organ Damage in Mamma ...
  A report released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences states that three types of Monsanto corn, cause cancer and organ damage in mammals. Related posts: Monsanto Bets on the Hungry to Double its Profits by 2012 USDA: No Environmental Impact Study Needed to Deregulate Genetically Mo ...
  
• Interior Secretary Tells Big Oil – Public Lands ar ...
  Last week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that big oil will no longer be "the kings of the world" like they were under the Bush administration. Related posts: Wind Could Replace Most if Not All Coal Plants, says Interior Secretary President Bush Opening Public Lands Near Parks for Drilling S ...
  

Inhabitat

• Green Roofed Suncheon Wetlands Center Flows With t ...
  Each year over 2.8 million people visit the Suncheon wetlands in Korea, which comprise world’s 5th largest tidal flat. To host them, Gansam Architects’ G.lab* have designed a visitor’s center that works to both enhance and protect the wetland that it is built on. It’s no easy feat, but the architec ...
  
• Watch Emily Pilloton of Project H Design on the Co ...
  We’re excited to announce that Emily Pilloton, the founder of Project H Design and Inhabitat team member is going to be sitting in the hot seat across from Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report TONIGHT! Project H Design is a non-profit humanitarian design initiative that brings design to the places ...
  
• Makedo Connector System Turns Trash into Treasures
  Are you in need of some cool new décor for your barren apartment? For us more fiscally challenged individuals it seems like the easiest and cheapest thing to do is to tack up a poster of our favorite movie or painting. Boring! But don’t let the 2D world get you down, because the clever Aussies [... ...
  
• Borders Plans to Trash Tens of Thousands of Unsold ...
  Ok, now we’re really mad. The news about trashed merchandise keeps getting worse. In the wake of last week’s story that H&M and Walmart have been ditching unsold clothing in trash cans behind their stores, some employees from the Borders Group have outed their company for plans to trash tens of thou ...
  
• Gigantic Mexican Megacrystals Created by Climate C ...
  We spend a lot of time covering man-made designs, but everyone once in awhile it’s nice to remember that nature isn’t such a bad designer either. Case in point: these 11 meter-long gypsum megacrystals discovered in caves near Chihuahua, Mexico. The massive crystals were formed over the last 200,000 ...
  

Pogue's Posts

• Information on Haiti is Getting Siloed
  Christopher P. Csikszentmihalyi. director of the M.I.T. Center for Future Civic Media, urges Web sites to standardize on a Google widget to gather information on Haiti.
  
• The Fine Print Behind Google's Nexus One
  Google was not at all prepared for its moment to become a hardware company overnight. You call HTC for hardware questions, Google for software questions, T-Mobile for cell-service questions.
  
• From the Mailbag
  It doesn't seem to occur to electronics companies that C.E.S. is the absolute WORST time of year to make an announcement.
  
• Dragon Breathes Fire Into Touch
  A new version of Dragon Dictation works on the iPod Touch (over Wi-Fi).
  
• How About the Koob?
  Makers of e-readers are trying to come up with unique names to beat the Kindle.
  

Open Your Eyes News

• Surveillance sets off civil liberty alarms
  The Boston Globe – Privacy advocates are criticizing a new surveillance system used by South Portland police that reads license plates, a system police defend as a tool to help solve crimes, find wanted individuals, and locate missing people. Read article
  
• Task force: Screen kids, obesity treatment works
  Washington Post — An influential advisory panel says school-aged youngsters and teens should be screened for obesity and sent to intensive behavior treatment if they need to lose weight – a move that could transform how doctors deal with overweight children. Treating obese kids can help them lose we ...
  
• Met Office computer accused of ‘warm bias’ by BBC ...
  Daily Mail – A BBC weather forecaster has suggested that the Met Office’s super-computer has a ‘warm bias’ which has stopped it predicting bitterly cold spells like the one we have just endured. Paul Hudson said the error may have crept into the computer’s climate model as a result of successive ye ...
  
• Cord Blood Stem Cell Transplant Hopes Lifted
  BBC – A technique which may eventually remove the need for matched bone marrow transplants has been used in humans for the first time. It is hoped that “master cells” taken from umbilical cords could be used on any patient without rejection. The latest advance, published in the journal Nature Medici ...
  
• Chavez says U.S. occupying Haiti in name of aid
  Reuters – Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused the United States of using the earthquake in Haiti as a pretext to occupy the devastated Caribbean country and offered to send fuel from his OPEC nation. Read article
  

Monkey Smashes Heaven

• Review of Patel and McMichael’s “Third Worldism an ...
  Review of Patel and McMichael’s “Third Worldism and the Lineages of global fascism” (jacobinternationalism.wordpress.com) The Internationalist Jacobin Club has taken an interest in the conversation started by a couple articles from RAIM late last year.  One was RAIM-Denver’s review of Arun Gupta an ...
  
• Przybliżona ocena wartości pracy
  Przybliżona ocena wartości pracy (pierwotnie opublikowało 30 czerwca 2005) (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) Spróbujmy obliczyć wartość przeciętnej średniej społecznie koniecznej praca. Przedstawi nam to jasny obraz tego, jak wielu ludzi produkuje i kto jest wyzyskiwany. Teraz, gdy praktycznie ca ...
  
• Prachanda proposes the Dengist path for Nepal, typ ...
  Prachanda proposes the Dengist path for Nepal, typical (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is a party that emerged out of the now defunct  revisionist cesspool known as the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). The party waged a people’s war fo ...
  
• Imperialism Kills Up To 100,000 in Haiti
  Imperialism Kills Up To 100,000 in Haiti (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) Yesterday on 14 January, 2010, up to 100,000 Haitians died after homes and buildings collapsed on them during and after a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake. The Maoist-Third Worldist movement wishes to extend its deepest sym ...
  
• Dear Maoist-Third Worldist… Many roads to so ...
  Many roads to socialism? (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) Dear Maoist-Third Worldist, There is no First World Proletariat. Only blockheads fantasize about First World revolutions. First Worldists are a joke. I get it. What I am not sure about is the Maoism side of Maoism-Third Worldism. Isn’t ...
  

PakAlert

• Will Globalists Trigger Yet Another World War?
  By Giordano Bruno |  Neithercorp Press World War III is the most iconic event in American culture that never happened. Since the early 1950’s, generations have been preparing for it, writing books about it, producing films and fictional accounts on it, and even playing video games based on it. The ...
  
• Deadly and Destructive: Haiti Earthquake Aftermath ...
  Haitians are piling bodies along the devastated streets of their capital after a powerful earthquake flattened the president’s palace and the main prison, the cathedral, hospitals, schools and thousands of homes. Untold numbers are still trapped. President Rene Preval says he believes thousands of p ...
  
• 11 Clear Signs That The U.S. Economy Is Headed Int ...
  The Economic Collapse The vast majority of the talking heads on television are still speaking of the current economic collapse as if it is a temporary “recession” that will soon be over.  So far, the vast majority of the American people seem to believe this as well, although for many Americans ther ...
  
• “Up in the Air” – Another Hollywood Mindf**k
  Clooney  “hooks up” with “Alex”, then falls for her, only to learn that she is married and has a family. That’s sacrosanct and he crossed the “no strings attached” line when he showed up at her door with flowers. But her infidelity, that’s not an issue. That doesn’t cross any line. The rules have t ...
  
• What You’re Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be ...
  by Carl Lindskoog In the hours following Haiti’s devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated and ...
  

ecogeek

• Three Cool Concepts For Urban Biking
  We've seen several bike-related concepts in the past few weeks. If, in fact, alternative transportation is on the rise , bikes will become a larger part of our transportation mix. To be really effective and to find wide acceptance, these three may help make bikes more of an option. Copenhagen Whe ...
  
• Recycle Your Old Phones and Help Haiti Quake Victi ...
  Like me, you've probably been watching the coverage of the earthquake in Haiti with a big knot in your stomach and maybe you've already donated $10 by texting HAITI to 90999 , but if you want to do more (and help out the environment while you're at it), there's an easy way to do so. ReCellular has ...
  
• Fight Over Cape Wind's Fate Will End Soon
  The Cape Wind offshore wind power project has been the most contested renewable energy project in the country to date.  It seems every couple of weeks brings a new objection to the project which would install 130 turbines off the coast of Cape Cod in Nantucket Sound.  But Secretary of the Interior ...
  
• Ford Moves Battery Production to Michigan
  At the Detroit Auto Show on Monday, Ford Chairman William Clay Ford announced that the company was going to be investing an additional $450 million in facilities for the production of batteries and electric vehicles. Ford spoke of bringing battery technology back "in house," and returning resea ...
  
• Report Says NYC Will be Home to 70,000 EVs by 2015
  The Detroit Auto Show has showcased a slew of EVs this year.  When it comes time for automakers to start looking for potential markets for these new vehicles, may I suggest New York City?  According to Cleantech Group, New Yorkers will buy 70,000 EVs by 2015. Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. conducte ...
  

Times Online - Science

• Royal Society of Chemistry extends invitation to c ...
  A Party Seven beer can is required by the Royal Society of Chemistry. And they want it unopened.
  
• Weather is stunning for Florida turtles sent into ...
  A mass rescue was continuing yesterday for more than 2,000 endangered sea turtles that were shocked into a coma by freezing weather in Florida.
  
• Organic farmers must embrace GM crops if we are to ...
  The organic movement should overcome its hostility to genetically modified crops and embrace the contribution that they can make to sustainable farming, one of the world’s leading agricultural scientists has told The Times.
  
• Sexy science: So, punks, do you feel lucky?
  Last week, when bookmakers announced that they were considering replacing traditional odds-based betting in the UK with a decimal system, the television racing pundit John McCririck told The Times that change was inevitible. “I love the old tic-tac prices and the ‘top of the head, 9-4’ and all ...
  
• Royal Institution ‘risks future by making Ba ...
  The Royal Institution of Great Britain has put its future at risk by abolishing the job of its director, Baroness Greenfield, two former trustees of the venerable scientific body said.
  

Environment _ National Geographic

• North America's Cooling Due to Natural Causes in 2 ...
  An unusually long cooling of the Pacific Ocean lowered temperatures across North America—but it's not proof that global warming has slowed down, scientists say.
  
• "Lost" Amazon Complex Found; Shapes Seen by Satell ...
  Hundreds of circles, squares, and other geometric shapes once hidden by forest hint at a previously unknown ancient society that flourished in the Amazon, a new study says.
  
• Melting Glaciers Nourishing Oceans With Ancient Ca ...
  Alaska's marine animals have an unexpected nutrient in their diets: ancient carbon from glacier melt, a new study says.
  
• Giant Salamanders Helped to Spawn
  A new program in Japan is helping giant salamanders get past dams built to control flooding so the rare amphibians can lay their eggs upstream. Video.
  
• PHOTOS: Dolphin "Drive Hunts" Continue in Japan, E ...
  Dolphin "drive" hunts, a bloody tradition denounced in the recent documentary The Cove, continue in Japan and Denmark's Faroe Islands.
  

drinking liberally in new milford ( with beersphere feeds )

• When it comes to Joe Lieberman...
  If Joe Lieberman... Originally uploaded by msgeek93 Nothing to add.
  
• Rep. Anthony Weiner Teaches Lieberman To Spell
  In his own special way : Sharp-eyed Ben was reading my story when he noticed something I had missed: Lieberman managed to misspell the name of Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who, I swear, has uttered the phrase "As long as you spell my name right" in my presence. Wrote Lieberman: "I fear the people who ...
  
• After waiting 6 months for Franken to join the Sen ...
  Months and months of obstruction that the Democratic party had to sit through waiting for Norm Coleman to give up what he had lost in the elections, a reality of election law that the Dem party had to deal with in Minnesota and in the Senate waiting for a 60th vote. And Scotty Brown is out there mak ...
  
• Some things are worth crowing about:
  Via Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors : Our own Cassie is now a published author! Read Cassie’s article in Mother Jones, and be sure to leave a comment for her there . Go Cassie! And the article is worth the read... The Parent Trap — Flickr/kapungo (Creative Commons) We love seeing bad parents ...
  
• Just a short note to Harold Ford:
  A short note to Harold Ford, who is brutally trying to flip-flop his way into New York's Senate race: "Fugghedaboudit" That is all...
  

SPL Center

• Lew Rockwell’s Website Warns of Coming U.S. Civil ...
  You thought President Obama had his hands full sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan? That’s small potatoes compared to the other big military plan on his agenda: returning 200,000 troops from other countries to the U. S. Northern Command in preparation for an imminent civil war at home. At leas ...
  
• Dropping Academic Veneer, Cal State Prof Starts Hi ...
  It’s official. Cal State Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald has made the leap from academia to racist activism, signing on with the American Third Position (ATP), a white supremacist political party established in October “to represent the unique political interests of White Americans.” ...
  
• A Confident Defense Rests Unexpectedly in Turner T ...
  BROOKLYN, N.Y. — In a surprise move, both the defense and prosecution rested their cases early this afternoon at the trial of white supremacist Hal Turner, clearing the way for the case to go to a jury tomorrow. After presenting evidence for less than a day and a half, the prosecution announced shor ...
  
• Judge Denies Scott Roeder’s ‘Necessity ...
  A Wichita, Kan., judge has denied Scott Roeder’s bid to use a “necessity defense” when he is tried for the murder of late-term abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller. Sedgwick County Judge Warren Wilbert pointed out Tuesday that the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in a previous case regarding blocking an e ...
  
• Pacifica Forum Speaker Celebrates National Sociali ...
  The speaker blamed “Jewish lies” for the Iraq War, praised the swastika as a symbol of white people, showed a neo-Nazi propaganda video, and led several audience members in an enthusiastic Nazi salute. No, this wasn’t an assembly of America’s largest neo-Nazi organization, the National Socialist Mov ...
  

change: org.

• Tell the Washington Times: No Such Thing as an "Il ...
  If most people in the United States read about an undocumented American immigrant in another country referred to as an "illegal American," they'd do a double take. So why let "illegal Haitian" pass without a bat of the eye? The fact is, "illegal American" doesn't mean anything. Neither does "illega ...
  
• Sexist Men's Website Complains Haitian Men Need Ta ...
  In general, I try not to write/read/recall the existence of sites like Men's News Daily. In its world, the women's rights movement has only trampled men; instead of, you know, creating a more gender-equal society where everybody has a better chance pursuing the life they want without being pigeonhol ...
  
• Massive Beef Recall
  Can we talk? It's about ground beef, which isn't just of significantly lower quality than any other kind of beef; it's also got an exceptionally lousy safety record . Today, that record got a little bit worse: Huntington Meat Packers of Montebello, California, recalled 864,000 pounds of ground bee ...
  
• Rep. Ike Skelton's Serious Problem With Gay and Le ...
  Perhaps the best thing about Rep. Ike Skelton is that with each passing day the man gets closer to retiring. Skelton, not necessarily known as being a beacon of tolerance, popped up on C-SPAN this past weekend with a rather impolite message to America's LGBT population: y'all are serious trouble for ...
  
• Injustice Anywhere: MLK and Criminal Justice
  Today we mark the 81st birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and pause to consider a nation and world that has made great progress toward racial, economic and social justice in eight decades. But we still have a long way to go, and nowhere is that more evident than in our criminal justice policy. Mo ...
  

Common Dreams -News

• Afghan, US Forces Shoot, Wound Five Civilians: NAT ...
  KABUL - Five Afghan civilians were shot and wounded by US and Afghan troops outside a military base in a restive area of the war-torn country, NATO said Friday, also reporting the death of an American soldier. The incident involving the civilians took place in the Garmsir district of Helmand provinc ...
  
• US Waves White Flag in Disastrous 'War on Drugs'
  by Hugh O'Shaughnessy After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born - amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a n ...
  
• US Accused of 'Occupying' Haiti as Troops Flood In
  by Aislinn Laing, and Tom Leonard in Port-au-Prince The French minister in charge of humanitarian relief called on the UN to "clarify" the American role amid claims the military build up was hampering aid efforts. Alain Joyandet admitted he had been involved in a scuffle with a US commander in the a ...
  
• Gun Control Group Gives Obama Failing Grade; Says ...
  by Michael O'Brien President Barack Obama received a failing grade this year from The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence on Monday. The Brady Campaign blasted the president, whom the group endorsed in 2008, for not having taken significant steps to advance gun control laws. "It's been a very dis ...
  
• Haitians in Mass Exodus from Shattered Port-au-Pri ...
  PORT-AU-PRINCE - Thousands of Haitians flocked out of Port-au-Prince on Saturday in a swelling exodus from the earthquake-shattered city where aid is not reaching the streets fast enough for the homeless, hurt and hungry. Heading out for the provinces to seek shelter with friends or relatives, m ...
  

Lifehacker

• Install Boxee Beta on Apple TV [Boxee Beta]
  The shiny new Boxee Beta is out for every platform except Apple TV, the platform we first used to cut out a cable bill . Some intrepid hackers have, however, created an unofficial installation method for that shiny, slim box. Following the guide isn't a beginner's task—you'll need SFTP access to you ...
  
• Five Best Photo-Printing Sites [Hive Five]
  Digital cameras are fantastic for letting us experiment, take tons of photos, and search for the perfect shot. Digital picture frames and at-home prints are often poor substitutes for real photos. Get a great print at one of these five photo-printing sites. Photo by Shermeee . Once upon a time peopl ...
  
• Add Some Rumble-Action to Your Mouse [DIY]
  If you like the vibration feedback found in gaming console controllers and want to add a little rumble-action to your mouse, all-things-DIY magazine Make offers a tutorial that may be right up your alley. The rumble mouse is an electronics project from Make Magazine Vol. 06, put together by Greg Lip ...
  
• Build a Lego Router [DIY]
  We love the Linksys WRT54GL router for its extreme hackability (it's what we used to turn our $60 router into a $600 router with DD-WRT or with Tomato ), so we couldn't help but appreciate this fun WRT54GL Lego mod. Clever DIYer Luke Anderson got an urge to do some building, and realized that his ...
  
• How to Revitalize Near-Dead Plants [Plants]
  If your plants have become a casualty of the recent cold weather snap, or are simply showing signs of neglect, here's a few useful steps for reviving them. Image by vetcw3 . According to web site Gardening Know How, just because your plant is limp and brown doesn't mean it's necessarily dead. If the ...
  

Newshoggers - AfPak

• Rory Stewart Channels Lawrence Of Arabia
  By Steve Hynd Rory Stewart, at a special screening of his documentary on Lawrence of Arabia in Penrith, where he hopes to become the Member of Parliament, told the audience: “We need to acknowledge our limitations, our lack of power and lack of legitimacy. ...“Looking at Iraq and Afghanistan today, ...
  
• But By All Means, Continue the Afghanistan Happy T ...
  By Derrick Crowe By a variety of measures, U.S. military policies in the Afghanistan war are failing. You probably haven't heard much about this, in part because of the justified media focus on Haiti, but a confluence of very bad indicators point to failure even by the military's avowed yardsticks. ...
  
• President Obama to Request Another $33 Billion for ...
  By Derrick Crowe The Associated Press reports that President Obama "plans to ask Congress for an additional $33 billion" to fight the unpopular Iraq and Afghanistan wars, "on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year." This request comes in the middle of the worst ...
  
• Pentagon Decides To Increase Size Of Afghan Army
  By Steve Hynd I'm unsure why the Pentagon gets to decide this. I mean, one assumes that the Afghan government OK'd it but you never know. The Pentagon has authorized a substantial increase in the number of Afghan security forces it plans to train by next year, in time for President Obama’s deadline ...
  
• US Is Checking CIA Bomber's Drone Strike Intel
  By Steve Last week I wondered what the fallout would be from the revelation that Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the spy-cum-suicide bomber who blew up himself and a bunch of CIA agents, had provided key intelligence for the CIA's program of drone strikes against Al Qaeda's leadership. It raised t ...
  

Water Wars

• Tri-Rivers briefs county on ACF issues (Jackson Co ...
  The U.S. Corps of Engineers is seeking input from a number of advocacy groups as it prepares to update its management manual for the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river system.
  
• Foothills were place of origin for California's wa ...
  Editor's note: This is the first in a four-part series. For roots of today's biggest statewide issue - the diversion of flowing water - look locally. California water was once a public resource. It was through the ungoverned California Gold Rush that water became divertable for private interests.
  
• Gwinnett water use continues to decline (AccessNor ...
  LAWRENCEVILLE - Gwinnett countians continued to do their part last year to keep more water in Lake Lanier even after the drought ended.
  
• Northeast Ohio 2010 enviro-news year: big changes, ...
  Plain Dealer File PhotoFast moving clouds blur overhead in a 30-second time exposure from Edgewater Park near Cleveland, Ohio, in this photo taken in February 2009. One of the big envirornmental stories for 2010 is likely to be following...
  
• WATER: Judge voids landmark California water agree ...
  A California judge has tentatively overturned a landmarkwater-use pact that was supposed to help the state make better useof its supply. The decision brings even more long-term uncertaintyabout California's water supply.
  

WordPress | Economics

• Naomi Klein Comments on Haiti
  Naomi Klein’s’ excellent book The Shock Doctrine explores the relationship between the victims of na
  
• 5 reasons why financial services are socially dest ...
  If you’ve been following British politics at all, you’ll know that we’re on the ho
  
• The black-market pickles of Vermont
  Here’s an excerpt from a story on the subject from the Daily Progress, from Charlotteville, Ve
  
• "Food Control is People Control"
  When I was back there in agriculture school, writing for Farm and Country, I wrote an article with t
  
• Inflation figures
  Most worrying paragraph of the day so far: ‘Core CPI grew at 2.8 percent, the fastest rate sin
  

Electronic Intifada

• Fighting our way to Gaza
  I should have known that my trip to al-Arish was not going to be straightforward. The last time I set foot in the usually sleepy Sinai tourist town, just 40 kilometers away from the Egypt-Gaza border ...
  
• Nahr al-Bared's economic recovery hampered by mili ...
  More than two years after the end of the fighting, the war-torn Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, located in northern Lebanon, is far from the model the Lebanese government has promised the c ...
  
• Marriage under siege close to impossible
  GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - "If we had money we'd get married right away," says Samir, 23. He has found his bride, but not the money to hold the wedding. The Israeli siege imposed shortly a ...
  
• In Lebanon refugee camp, "hip-hop is a school"
  Hip-hop has got hold of the Burj al-Barajne camp in Beirut. As the music from a small but nascent rap-scene reverberates around the streets of this crowded community, its rappers are acutely aware of ...
  
• "This is life:" remembering earlier massacres in G ...
  "This is the first time I've returned here since my friends were killed," Ahmad Hammad says. He stands at the edge of a vacant plot and gestures to its far end which lies over 1 km from the border sep ...
  

CS Monitor - News

• podcast091204
  Fewer US jobs lost in November and impact on economy.
  
• 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.
  

The Wonk Room

• Health Reform May Prevent Cheaper ‘Wonder Dr ...
  Time’s Karen Tumulty is surprised by President Obama’s decision to lower the biologics’ 12-year exclusivity deal to 10 years. “My sources tell me that the first inkling the industry and its allies got to the contrary came in a private meeting in recent days,” Tumulty reports. “In that session, Calif ...
  
• New Iran NIE Coming Soon?
  As as been strongly hinted at elsewhere in recent months, Newsweek reports that U.S. intelligence agencies are “revising their widely disputed assertion that Iran has no active program to design or build a nuclear bomb.” Three U.S. and two foreign counterproliferation officials tell NEWSWEEK that, ...
  
• Why Dodd Should Not Abandon An Independent Consume ...
  ultiple media outlets are reporting that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) is considering dropping the proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) from his regulatory reform bill. The CFPA has been the target of intense lobbying on the part of the banking i ...
  
• Debunking The ‘Marriage Penalty Myth’: ...
  Since discovering the federal poverty guidelines, conservative lawmakers and commentators have accused the Democrat-sponsored health care bill — which pegs affordability credits to the federal poverty standards and offers higher credits to unmarried individuals — of discriminating against married c ...
  
• Conservatives’ ‘Team B’ Revision ...
  I think Yglesias did a good job knocking back David Frum’s bizarre claim the Team B hawks were right about the Soviet threat, but the fact that Frum thinks he can get away with such an assertion helps explain why some conservatives have been calling for a Team B revival, this time “to reassess the [ ...
  

thwap's schoolyard

• Mandatory Minimum Sentences, War Crimes, and steph ...
  First of all, I've made a lot of hay about "the Rule of Law" with regards to stephen harper's war crimes in Afghanistan. I think I've also been careful to point out that I regard some crimes as worse than others, and that there's actually some leeway in law enforcement that's possible without smash ...
  
• David Brooks Weighs in on Haiti
  The NYT's David Brooks is not one of the towering intellects of our times. If you go to that link you'll find that Glenn Greenwald has assembled a cornucopia of David Brooks' errors, including such gems as: EITHER SADDAM HUSSEIN will remain in power or he will be deposed. President Bush has suggeste ...
  
• "Hearts and Minds" and Torturing Innocent Bystande ...
  There is a world where the scribblings of someone like Christie Belchforth Blatchford are meaningful. (It isn't my world. I haven't read her in like, forever. She's an idiot and a waste of my time.) That's probably the same world where sending Canadian soldiers to fight and die for a corrupt pup ...
  
• Torture Apologists Show Why the Mission Failed
  For all their bluster about how this is a partisan witch hunt about an issue that doesn't matter, the harpercons and their drooling nit-wit supporters are providing ample evidence for why "the mission" in Afghanistan failed . You see, if a sane, intelligent person had committed soldiers to a countr ...
  
• A Coalition Could Get Us a Public Inquiry on Tortu ...
  There are countries that pretty blatantly torture people and there are countries that at least make the effort to say that they do not torture people. And then, of course, there are countries that don't torture people period. Canada, thanks to the harpercons, is now in the first of those categories. ...
  

Financial Sense Editorials

• Market Observation: Commodity Secular Bull Market ...
  by Chris Puplava. "From 2008 to 2009 it was a real gut check for commodity bulls in terms of reevaluating the secular bull market thesis, but from my vantage point the fundamentals behind commodities have not changed. What 2008 to early 2009 is likely to represent in hindsight is a bump along the ro ...
  
• What the Deflationists Are Missing
  by David Galland. "The Democrats’ reinvigorated focus on jobs – the single most important factor in this November’s elections – will soon translate into a flurry of new initiatives designed to put people back to work, most of it funded at taxpayer expense."
  
• Shipping Chokepoints of the Arabian Peninsula
  by Ghassan Abdallah, Ph.D. "The Arabian subcontinent located in Southwest Asia is, evidently, geopolitically very critical due to its vast oil and natural gas reserves. Three easily blocked straits, commonly known as "chokepoints," may hamper ships from entering or exiting this area or the Red Sea ...
  
• Market Observation: Clear Thought in Confusing Tim ...
  by Rob Kirby. "How often have you heard a talking-head or pundit from the print media try to “explain” how the U.S. led global economy faltered the way it has? We’ve been dazzled and fed explanations regarding root-cause, ranging from sub-prime mortgages to credit-default swaps to lack of regulatory ...
  
• Th*nk*ng (Gadgets)
  by Fred Cederholm. "I’ve been thinking about gadgets. Actually I’ve been thinking about CES 2010, phones, drones, stereo-3D- flat screen TV, programming, BETAs/ VCRs/ DVDs/ BlueTeeth (or is it Bluetooth’s?), PDAs, and communicating. The quality of our lives does not seem to be a function of the love ...
  

on Government Oversight

• A Tracking Number for Every FOIA Request?
  As reported by Max Cacas over at Federal News Radio, the new Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) is implementing a system to provide a tracking number for each Freedom Of Information Act request under review by the office, allowing...
  
• Morning Smoke: Navy Ponders the Eject Button in JS ...
  JSF - Navy Ready To Abandon Ship? [Ares] Database used to track contractor fraud poorly managed, filled with inaccuracies [Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group] Lockheed says leaked F-35 study "not definitive" [The DEW Line] (link includes the Naval Air Systems Command...
  
• Morning Smoke: Is $740 Billion in Defense Funding ...
  Obama's promise for honest war budgeting not kept [The Cable] Obama to Announce Fee on Some Large Banks to Help Recoup Funds [Bloomberg] SEC Proposes Banning 'Naked Access' [The Wall Street Journal] Just What We Need: More Pentagon Spending [Huffington...
  
• Feds Convene at Open Government Workshop Event
  As part of an event in the Open Government Directive Workshop Series, agency employees from around the executive branch had a chance to convene Monday at the Department of Transportation and discuss their plans to implement the new Open Government...
  
• Morning Smoke: Did OMB Threaten an Inspector Gener ...
  Lawmakers offer warning to OMB [The Hill] JSF Jumping, but How High? [Defense Tech] Derivatives Exemption Helps Big Wall Street Banks, Gensler Says [Bloomberg] Obama to Announce TARP Fee on Banks on Thursday [Reuters] Obama wants additional $33B for wars...
  

Science Express

• Milky Way's super-efficient particle accelerators ...
  Thanks to a unique "ballistic study" that combines data from ESO's Very Large Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have now solved a long-standing mystery of the Milky Way's particle accelerators. They show in a paper published today on Science Express that cosmic rays from ou ...
  
• New mechanisms of action found for drugs used to t ...
  (PhysOrg.com) -- In the course of his or her life, every seventh German will develop an anxiety disorder that will require treatment. Standard anti-anxiety medications (anxiolytics) are based on the benzodiazepine class of drugs. These calm the patient and quickly diminish feelings of anxiety.
  
• Research may hold key to maintaining embryonic ste ...
  In a new study that could transform embryonic stem cell (ES cell) research, scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered why mouse ES cells can be easily grown in a laboratory while other mammalian ES cells are difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.
  
• Physical reality of string theory demonstrated
  String theory has come under fire in recent years. Promises have been made that have not been lived up to. Leiden (The Netherlands) theoretical physicists have now for the first time used string theory to describe a physical phenomenon. Their discovery has been reported in Science Express.
  
• Bcl6 gene sculpts helper T cell to boost antibody ...
  Expression of a single gene programs an immune system helper T cell that fuels rapid growth and diversification of antibodies in a cellular structure implicated in autoimmune diseases and development of B cell lymphoma, scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reported toda ...
  

TechDirt

• Sometimes Protecting Free Speech Means Protecting ...
  I'm a big fan of Vivek Wadhwa, who I think has done some excellent research showing the importance of skilled immigration and how it helps the US economy and helps expand jobs, rather than take them away. I've also been an outspoken supporter of encouraging greater skilled worker immigration into t ...
  
• Do You Have Any Legal Right To Privacy For Informa ...
  A year and a half ago, we had an interesting discussion here about whether or not the Fourth Amendment and your right to privacy extended to information you stored online via any sort of "cloud" service. The arguments basically fell into two camps, with some citing the "third party doctrine," which ...
  
• Asking Citizens What They Want Out Of Copyright La ...
  One of the more stunning realities that has become clear in watching the entertainment industry, as it responds to people who are actually impacted by ever more draconian copyright laws, is the fact that the industry doesn't view other positions as worth hearing at all. To the industry, copyright l ...
  
• UK ISPs Get Tiny Safe Harbor For Hate Speech... Wh ...
  We've spent plenty of time discussing the importance of Section 230 in properly applying liability, and avoiding situations where angry individuals or organizations sue a third party service provider because they have deeper pockets and are easier to sue. However, most countries don't have similar ...
  
• More TV Shows Offering Reasons To Buy; Castle's Su ...
  We always hear from people that certain types of digital content can't come up with scarce "reasons to buy," and yet we always seem to hear of new and creative ways that it's being done anyway. Back in December we wrote about how the TV sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had turned ridiculous ...
  

VacTruth

• Website Documents Over 300 Gardasil Horror Stories
  . . . Christina England vactruth.com 1/13/2010 The numbers of people who have suffered from Gardasil side effects mount daily, Medications.com – Gardasil side effects now has a total of 300 side effects posted for Gardasil. Over 300 children and parents tell their harrowing stories how their liv ...
  
• Will Dr. Tim O’Shea’s Prediction of th ...
  . . . Dr. Tim O’Shea The Doctor Within November 2009 Although the H1N1 panic is at a fever pitch at this time, it’s a safe bet that by summer 2010 the swine flu issue will have faded off into the boneyard of vaccine memorabilia. Remember you read that here. Policymakers have well discerned that t ...
  
• Drug firms made ‘false H1N1 claims’
  
  
• The British Government refuse to compensate health ...
  . . . Christina England American Chronicle 1/11/2010 Yesterday a story broke in Great Britain where hundreds of front line workers had had routine vaccines as a condition of employment and had become vaccine damaged as a result. These workers, which included doctors, nurses, firefighters, prison of ...
  
• Interview of Jeffry John Aufderheide on the Robert ...
  
  

BroadSnark

• Preparing for Peace
  Many people believe that some injustices are so heinous that violence is not only necessary, it is obligatory.  But they rarely take the next step.  They rarely imagine what would happen after the violence stops, assuming it can be stopped.  Who among them is going to create a better, more just worl ...
  
• Haiti Donations and How Nonprofits Work
  There has been a lot of internet chatter on what organizations to donate to in order to best help the Haitian people.  Naturally, you want the maximum amount of your dollars to go to the people who need it.  So you read articles like this one about Yele or you go to charity navigator and [...]
  
• Why Haiti?!
  Could things get any worse for Haiti?  Of all places in the world for something like this to happen.  It’s beyond words. I’m from Miami and so have had the privilege of getting to know many Haitian immigrants.  In fact, I had a peak at my ideal world while riding a bus in Miami with Haitian [...]
  
• Christianity and False Forgiveness
  By now you have probably heard about Brit Hume’s on air proselytizing directed at Tiger Woods. If not, you can watch the video below where Hume suggests that Christianity offers a forgiveness that Buddhism does not and recommends that Tiger Woods convert. Really Brit Hume? Christianity offers a sp ...
  
• Things You Might Have Missed
  Great post by Jason Laning In Defense of Anarchism.  In response to the idea that anarchists wouldn’t be able to “resist power-seekers who want to dominate and control others” he says, That is, his hypothetical scenario of an anarchist society doesn’t seem to have many anarchists in it. Instead, ...
  

Executive Intelligence Review

• Shut Down `Londonistan's' Terrorist Operations Now ...
  By Michele Steinberg Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  
• Next Comes Hyperinflation
  By John Hoefle Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  
• Russia Seeks To Develop Far East; Invites U.S. Rol ...
  By Rachel Douglas Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  
• The Case for Impeachment of President Barack Obama
  By Nancy Spannaus Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  
• The Case of Obama: Tantamount to Treason
  By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  

Armies of Liberation

• US Sanctions Iran Based al Qaeda, Zawahiri Promise ...
  The US Treasury Department placed financial sanctions on Saad bin Laden, thought to be in Pakistan, and three alleged al Qaeda operatives in Iran including a Yemeni. The terrorist designation Friday froze their assets within US jurisdictions and prohibits Americans from financial dealings with the ...
  
• Arabian Peninsula al Qaeda groups merge
  In the face of Saudi Arabia’s success against the al Qaeda organization, many Saudi operatives have fled to the more hospitable climate in Yemen, joining others who recently arrived from Iraq, Somalia, and Pakistan. Al Qaeda in Yemen announced its merger with Saudi Arabia’s al Qaeda organization to ...
  
• Yemen strikes multi-faceted deals with al Qaeda
  Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh recently struck a deal with Ayman Zawahiri, and Yemen is in the process of emptying its jails of known jihadists. The Yemeni government is recruiting these established jihadists to attack its domestic enemies as it refrains from serious counter-terror measures aga ...
  
• Yemen’s Multi Faceted Deals with Al Qaeda (A ...
  اليمن تعقد صفقات متعددة الوجوه مع القاعدة كتبت: جين نوفاك – فبراير/ 2009 عبدالله عبدالوهاب ناجي- ترجمة خاصة بالمستقلة عقد الرئيس اليمني علي عبدا لله صالح مؤخرا صفقة مع ...
  
• Yemen’s three terror fronts
  By Jane Novak March 28, 2009 3:18 PM Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula took credit in an internet statement Friday for a pair of suicide attacks that targeted South Koreans in Yemen. A teen-aged suicide bomber killed four South Korean tourists in Shibam, Hadramout on March 15. A second terror att ...
  

Dark Politricks

• Twitter Updates for 2010-01-19
  How the Patriot Act has led to a government crackdown on financial freedom in America http://strurl.com/kg #Liberty #Money #911 #gov #DEM # How the #government monitors every aspect of your life from bedroom to kitchen to the toilet http://strurl.com/lg #privacy #liberal #liberty # Wayne Ma ...
  
• Bush’s Shocking Biblical Prophecy Emerges: G ...
  Bush explained to French Pres. Chirac that the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Mid-East and must be defeated. The revelation this month in GQ Magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a questio ...
  
• The Crusade Continues in Iraq
  ABC News is reporting that U.S. military weapons are inscribed with secret ‘Jesus’ Bible codes: Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation ha ...
  
• BATF Notice Bans Private Gun Sales In Texas
  There is no law to prevent private sales without a license, police issue “direction” on orders of Feds Steve Watson Infowars.net Monday, Jan 18, 2010 The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is actively issuing directions banning private sales of guns without licenses at gun shows in ...
  
• Airport scanner companies queue for business after ...
  The alleged “underpants bomber” who tried to blow up flight 253 to Detroit on Christmas Day has triggered a vigorous commercial race to cash in on a $600m (£370m) opportunity to fit airports with full-body scanners detecting concealed explosives. Unnerved by terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab ...
  

food and water watch

• Contaminated Fountain Beverages
  My name is Daniel Cooper and I have recently joined the Food & Water Watch food team as an intern. I will be posting weekly blogs on pertinent food issues that affect us all. One such issue involves serious food safety concerns with fast food restaurants (as if you needed another reason to stay aw ...
  
• Private Water Investments Awash in Controversy
  At the start of each new year, investment advisors are busy telling clients where to invest their money.  Despite the weak economy, this year is no different. Morgan Stanley just released it’s global investment “10 Investment Ideas for 2010”.  Number five on that list?  Water. For years we’ve been h ...
  
• Melamine in Chinese milk…here we go again
  The recent revelation that China has once again hidden a major food safety incident involving melamine in dairy products for over a year clearly demonstrates that its food safety system cannot be trusted. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintains a staff in China to monitor the safety of food, ...
  
• Briscoe vs. Environmentalists
  As an intern for Food and Water Watch, I attended a meeting in November titled  “Water and Agriculture: Developing Word Solutions” sponsored by Johns Hopkins University. The guest of honor was John Briscoe, a former World Bank Senior Water Advisor, and a current professor at Harvard. He discussed th ...
  
• ‘Why we took to the streets’
  I would like to share this op-ed with you, co-written by our Board member Maude Barlow, about the situation in Copenhagen.  Thank you for reading and Happy New Year! –Wenonah Hauter Why we took to the streets Inaction from business interests and political leaders in Copenhagen has forced the rebirth ...
  

treehugger

• We Win Yet Again. Australia Amongst the World's Mo ...
  Image: Steve Keen's DebtWatch Look out America! Australia wants to beat you at the dubious record awards. First we stole the title of world's best per capita greenhouse emitters , then we robbed you of the biggest new homes trophy. Then last month we surpassed the USA in household debt relative to ...
  
• Ask Pablo: How Do Pellet Stoves Compare?
  Image Source: etgeek (Eric) Dear Pablo: We are looking into buying a pellet stove to supplement the heat in a house we are renovating. I know that pellet stoves are cleaner burning than wood stoves but I read that making the pellets themselves is extremely CO 2-intensive. Just how bad is it, and h ...
  
• Let Sleeping Babies Lie - Chilly Temps Build Tough ...
  A gaggle of baby strollers in suburban Iceland. Scandinavia, as much of the East Coast and Northern Europe, has experienced an especially cold and snow-filled winter. Yet chilly temperatures and massive snow won't stop Scandinavian and Icelandic moms from their age-old practice of parking baby pr ...
  
• Interview with Bahar Tafti About Reusable KeepCup ...
  At the London Design Festival last year this TreeHugger was invited to join the DeTnk TV team at Tent London to showcase the best in sustainable design at the festival. Last week we showed you my interview with bamboo furniture designer Jair Straschnow , this week it's the turn of the
  
• Slow Down London's 8 Week Course to Slow Down Your ...
  Gallery from Slow Down London Slow Dow... Read the full story on TreeHugger
  

Biosingularity

• Fat in Rear Is Good for You
  Pear trumps apple when it comes to body shape and your health.A new review suggests that having body fat stored in your thighs and backside may actually be good for you. Especially compared with the risks of storing excess fat around the mid-section.Researchers reviewed recent studies on the health ...
  
• Pomegranates May Stall Breast Cancer
  Eating pomegranates or drinking pomegranate juice may help prevent and slow the growth of some types of breast cancer. A new study shows a group of phytochemicals called ellagitannins found in abundance in pomegranates inhibited the growth of estrogen-responsive breast cancer in laboratory tests. vi ...
  
• Nervy Repair Job
  In a lab at the University of Pennsylvania, a plastic dish holds two rows of tiny black dots, pairs of them connected by dozens of thin, hairlike filaments. Each dot is a cluster of thousands of neurons, explains Douglas Smith, who is a professor of neurosurgery and the director of Penns Center for ...
  
• Artificial Platelets Catalyze Clotting
  Platelets can quickly stanch the bleeding from a cut in your finger, but the hemorrhaging caused by a car crash or a battlefield injury might overwhelm the blood-clotting abilities of these cell fragments. Now, researchers report that they have designed a potential helper for such situations, a synt ...
  
• Epigenetics research takes aim at cancer, Alzheime ...
  Two mice. One weighs 20 grams and has brown fur. The other is a hefty 60 grams with yellow fur and is prone to diabetes and cancer. They’re identical twins, with identical DNA So what accounts for the differences? It turns out that their varying traits are controlled by a mediator between nature and ...
  

CFACT

• Taxpayer Robbery Gate
  Senator Boxer is compounding the Climategate scandal with cover-up and obstruction
  
• Economics, not pollution, greater minority concern
• Not a hair of truth to dioxin claims
• Cruising down the road on a paper mill sludge
• RFK, Jr. Looking to make bacon on hog lawsuits

Ria Novosti Online News

• Do-it-yourself Jordan hole
  You can make an Epiphany ice-water baptism font by yourself. You will need only a small frozen pool and a gasoline-powered saw.
  
• Gazprom sure of continued timely gas payment after ...
  Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on Tuesday he could foresee no problems with gas payments by Ukraine after the presidential elections in the former Soviet republic.
  
• U.S. should respect Russian norms to continue poul ...
  Russia will only allow poultry imports from the U.S. if it adheres to Russia's sanitary regulations regarding poultry processing, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said on Tuesday.
  
• What the Russian papers
  New Ukrainian president will have to find a compromise with Russia / Russian president trying to drive Karabakh conflict out of deadlock / Putin calls for new military telecommunications systems / Government gives go-ahead for dumping waste into Lake Baikal
  
• Goldman predicts higher oil prices over crude shor ...
  Global oil markets will face a shortage of oil as the global economy exits recession and supply fails to keep pace with recovery in demand, a Russian business daily reported on Tuesday, citing Goldman Sachs' analysts.
  

Ria Novosti - Science & Technology

• Russia to orbit 2 satellites, ISS freighter from B ...
  Russia will launch two international satellites as well as a freighter to the International Space Station (ISS) next month from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, the Federal Space Agency said Monday.
  
• China orbits third navigation satellite
  China has successfully launched its third navigation satellite as part of a project to develop its own global satellite navigation system.
  
• Customer takes control of 3 new Glonass satellites
  The operator of the Glonass satellite navigation project has taken control of three newly orbited satellites, Russia's leading satellite manufacturer said on Tuesday.
  
• Contractor takes control of 3 new Glonass satellit ...
  The operator of the Glonass satellite navigation project has taken control of three newly orbited satellites, Russia's leading satellite manufacturer said on Tuesday.
  
• Scientist addresses global 'swine flu conspiracy'
  A British epidemiologist said on Tuesday he was worried by close links between World Health Organization (WHO) officials and pharmaceutical companies over swine flu.
  

Pruning Shears

• This Week In Tyranny
  No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post Among the problems with torturing detainees is that your choices afterwards are 1) imprison them until they die 2) kill them 3) release them. If you can’t do #1 and you won’t do #2, #3 implies that all the horrific details will be a ...
  
• Deficit Chickenhawks
  No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post Here is a one paragraph summary of our fiscal policy since 1980: A Republican president cheerfully dismisses probity when lobbying for increased defense spending and tax cuts, with the memorably irresponsible quip “I believe the def ...
  
• This Week In Tyranny
  No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post I listen to a technology podcast from CNET called Buzz Out Loud, and on Friday’s show they reported that one Bob Burbach won the Consumer Electronics Association’s “Innovation Movement’s Apps for Innovation ” with a site called GovPu ...
  
• The OLC Does Not Have a Head. Does It Need a Body?
  No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post According to its web site , the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) “provides authoritative legal advice to the President and all the Executive Branch agencies.” Its home page gives a brief, readable description of its functions, which ba ...
  
• This Week In Tyranny
  No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post The TSA subpoenaed a blogger who posted a new screening directive, then backed down . This doesn’t have as much to do with procedures at the TSA (though it has something to do with that) as the outsized sense of authority that feder ...
  

Natural Health News

• Will Canada Ignore the Crucial Vitamin D Deficienc ...
  The Ontario government is considering an end to provincial health payments for routine vitamin D tests, even while examining a report that 5 percent of the population is so deficient as to be at risk of bone disease. A flurry of studies have suggested that low blood levels of the vitamin could be a ...
  
• Johnson & Johnson Paid Kickbacks to Sell More Dead ...
  U.S. Federal prosecutors say that health care giant Johnson & Johnson paid tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks so nursing homes would put more patients on its blockbuster schizophrenia medicine and other drugs. Johnson & Johnson paid rebates and other forms of kickbacks to Omnicare, the country ...
  
• How to Feel Better When You're Depressed
  Here are some tips on how to make yourself feel better when you’re depressed: 1. Calm down Before anything else, calm yourself down. Don’t panic. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. 2. Feed your mind with positive thoughts When you’re depressed, it’s easy to fall into a vicious cycle of negativ ...
  
• Warning: Processed Foods Calorie Counts Frequentl ...
  According to a new study, prepared foods may contain an average of 8 percent more calories than their package labels show -- and restaurant meals may contain a whopping 18 percent more. And as far as the FDA is concerned, that's not even considered a problem. Researchers looked at 29 restaurants and ...
  
• The Hidden Life of Garbage
  Check out this short documentary about recycling and waste in the U.S. It exposes the often false feeling of accomplishment people often get from recycling, and points out the real problems -- overproduction and industrial pollution. It explains corporate greenwashing and the economic system of 'bui ...
  

Antemedius

• Want To Make A Difference In the 2010 Elections? C ...
  There is a lot of despair about the state of the Democrats who are in control of the Congress these days. To be fair there is a lot to despair about given the performance of many of the old guard in the party. On the flip side, there is a realization that we are indeed better off with Democrats in c ...
  
• What If The President Was Black?
  The Real News Network's Paul Jay talks with Glen Ford, Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report , "The Journal of African American Political Thought and Action" , who evaluates the first year of Barack Obama's presidency, and observes, for a variety of good reasons, that the first US black president ...
  
• Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières ( ...
  http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/allcontent.cfm?id=208
  
• Boston Globe reports: "Nearly half polled say Obam ...
  According to the Boston Globe , nearly half of Americans polled believe that U.S. dictator Barack Obama is not living up to his campaign promises. Nearly half of the Americans surveyed said Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises, and a narrow majority had some or no confidence that h ...
  
• Haiti Humanitarian Aid: Bullets and Worms?
  Amid accusations that the US Government is using the disaster in Haiti as a pretext to militarily occupy and control the country, and while the deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command, Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, has said that he thinks the eventual Haitian death toll from the earthquake will be ...
  

Son of Alex Constantine's Blacklist

• UnderpantsGate: Big Oil, the CIA and the Attempted ...
  Also see: American Sponsorship of Global Terrorism By Alex Constantine (Supplementary revisions, 12-30-09, 1:29 pm) It’s All, Once Again, About Big Oil and a Pipeline … Abdulmutallab’s exploding unmentionables “Why Was Umar AbdulMutallab in Houston in August 2008? Whom Did He Visit There? What Did H ...
  
• Celebrities Lead Charge against Scientology
  Hollywood figures quit ‘rip-off’ church as Australian prime minister threatens parliamentary inquiry into its activities Peter Beaumont in London, Toni O’Loughlin in Sydney, and Paul Harris in New York The Observer | 22 November 2009 The security at the red-brick and glass-walled horseshoe of the Jo ...
  
• Baltimore: Cultist Withdraws Guilty Plea in Baby&# ...
  BALTIMORE — A former member of a defunct religious cult has backed out of a plea deal and will face trial on charges he and others starved a toddler to death. Marcus Cobbs had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of accessory after the fact. But his attorney abruptly withdrew the plea Friday mo ...
  
• What’s Wrong with this RFID Chip?
  RFID chip brought to you by the Carlyle Group and Matrics, Inc.
  
• Will Donor Scandals Doom Crist’s Senate bid?
  ” … Three of Crist’s top fund-raisers have been hamstrung by federal investigations in the past nine months, and a fourth, Jupiter sports agent and real estate investor Marc Roberts, is facing a federal lawsuit alleging he defrauded a business partner out of $100 million to support his own ‘lavish p ...
  

Climategate

• Michael Mann on government funding, intellectual p ...
  The climategate emails show what penn State University's Professor Michael Mann thinks about intellectual Property and transparency, regarding his government paid research. Related posts: Step-by-Step: How to build your own Hockey Stick Mark Steyn: The emperor’s new carbon credits Economic stimulu ...
  
• Media ignores Himalayan glaciers melt correction
  You won't find the story on CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, AP, New York Times, LA Times or any other major network. You need to go to more courageous papers in the UK and Australia, smaller conservative new sources, and of course blogs like this one. Related posts: Can’t Hide the Decline of Google “Climate ...
  
• We pause a moment to feel the love of Al Gore
  We want to take a break from the bashing we give poor ol' Al Gore, forget about policy, and instead just feel the love that he himself feels for planet earth, and all of us for that matter. Nothing shows the tenderness of this man more than this clip of him reading the poem found in his new book, Ou ...
  
• An open letter to Australian Members of Parliament
  We wish to share with you a fine Open Letter by Australian lawyer, Val Majkus who has written to all of her nation’s Members of Parliament to object to policy decisions being implemented on ‘junk’ climate science. Related posts: 3-part interview with S. Fred Singer on Global Warming and Clim ...
  
• First book on climategate is now out
  Well that didn't take long. The first book on climategate is out now. You won't find it in your local bookstore, as it's in electronic form only. Climategate: The Crutape Letters is written by Steven Mosher and Thomas W. Fuller. Related posts: WaPo: Global warming deniers are just like those dam ...
  

Opinio Juris

• Trial Chamber Grants Certification to Appeal
  by Kevin Jon Heller by Kevin Jon Heller The Trial Chamber has granted certification to appeal its decision upholding the Registry’s selection of Richard Harvey as stand-by counsel. Here are the relevant paragraphs: 10. With regard to the first limb that must be met before certification to appeal ...
  
• Welcome to Guest Blogger Jan Klabbers
  by Duncan Hollis by Duncan Hollis We here at Opinio Juris are thrilled to welcome Jan Klabbers as our latest guest blogger.  Professor Klabbers is professor of international organizations law at the University of Helsinki, and Director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Global G ...
  
• Welcome to Guest Blogger Jan Klabbers
  by Duncan Hollis by Duncan Hollis We here at Opinio Juris are thrilled to welcome Jan Klabbers as our latest guest blogger.  Professor Klabbers is professor of international organizations law at the University of Helsinki, and Director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Global G ...
  
• Trial Chamber Grants Certification to Appeal
  by Kevin Jon Heller by Kevin Jon Heller The Trial Chamber has granted certification to appeal its decision upholding the Registry’s selection of Richard Harvey as stand-by counsel. Here are the relevant paragraphs: 10. With regard to the first limb that must be met before certification to appeal ...
  
• More Oral Histories of International Lawyers
  by Duncan Hollis by Duncan Hollis Back in 2008, I flagged the great service being done by the Squire Law Library at the University of Cambridge in compiling oral histories from some of the more eminent figures in international law. At the time, I focused on the recorded interviews with Sir Elihu ...
  

Investigate - Breaking News

• Pachauri must resign: he’s too conflicted
  UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri must resign his post this week, or risk bringing the UN IPCC even further into disrepute, if that's still possible. Last week's revelations at Climate Depot and here at TBR.cc, followed by today's bombshell in...
  
• Chicken Littles becoming denialists as evidence tu ...
  Hot Topic is again (sigh) pushing the rapidly rising sea level meme, based on guesswork as one of the scientist involves confesses in the comments, suggesting a minimum sea level rise this century of more than a metre and probably...
  
• Report: runaway melt in the Arctic
  The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen,...
  
• New Scientist magazine eats Climategate humble pie
  New Scientist magazine is publicly questioning how a mistake it made in 1999 ended up as "official" climate change theory cited by the UN IPCC. The magazine has this weekend coughed to publishing the infamous "Himalayan glaciers gone by 2035"...
  
• More NIWA-style fudging creates doubt about global ...
  A hard hitting new report has found US agencies deliberately manipulated world temperature data so they could proclaim 2005 as the warmest year. The investigation, broadcast tonight in the US and now available online, alleges climate research centres are now...
  

Public News Service

• Peanut Poisoning Victims Still Waiting to be Serve ...
  Peanut Poisoning Victims Still Waiting to be Served Food Safety Assurances Phoenix, AZ – One year ago this week, Americans were scouring their pantries to clear out peanut products after salmonella-tainted peanut butter was linked to nine deaths and more than 700 illnesses - at least 13 in Arizona. ...
  
• Rural AZ Could Benefit from Health Care Reform
  Rural AZ Could Benefit from Health Care Reform Phoenix, AZ - While members of Congress debate the "public option," other parts of the House and Senate health care reform bills aren't so controversial. They address the lack of doctors and nurses in rural communities, and the shortage of teachers in t ...
  
• Endangered Arizona Jaguars Will Get Federal Recove ...
  Endangered Arizona Jaguars Will Get Federal Recovery Plan Tucson, AZ – Endangered jaguars will get both a recovery plan and protection for critical habitat as the result of a policy change by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Jaguars were first given federal protection back in 1997. Comments from ...
  
• AZ Kids' Acting Company Prospers Under Wing of Pho ...
  AZ Kids' Acting Company Prospers Under Wing of Phoenix Theatre Phoenix, AZ – The 26-year-old, Scottsdale-based youth theater company, Greasepaint, has recently come under the management of Phoenix Theatre. One goal of the collaboration is to provide children with a more complete acting experience. C ...
  
• Phoenix Center Guides Quest for College Cash
  Phoenix Center Guides Quest for College Cash Phoenix, AZ – Students and parents can get free one-on-one college planning assistance from a new central Phoenix resource center. The College Depot aims to remove barriers often encountered when applying for admission and financial assistance. Comments f ...
  

  Blacklisted News

• FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
  The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact ...
  
• VIDEO: Katrina Vanden Heuvel And Her "Communitaria ...
• Google probing possible inside help on attack
  Google is investigating whether one or more employees may have helped facilitate a cyber-attack from China that the U.S search giant said it was a victim of in mid-December, two sources told Reuters today.
  
• Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run b ...
  Millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money is being paid to an organisation in India run by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the controversial chairman of the UN climate change panel, despite growing concern over its accounts.
  
• Why is Blackwater/Xe in Somalia?
  Press TV reports that “There are . . . allegations of US-sponsored bomb plots in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. As of 12 Jan 2010, at least 18 people have been killed in clashes between rival factions in southern and central Somalia, and there are reports that Blackwater/Xe mercenaries have ent ...
  

The Intelligence Daily

• Chavez: US uses earthquake to occupy Haiti
  Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused the United States of taking advantage of the deadly... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  
• Obama Executive Order Seeks to “Synchronize and In ...
  By Tom Burghardt (The Intelligence Daily) — In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation,... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  
• Obama Executive Order Seeks to “Synchronize and In ...
  (The Intelligence Daily) — In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation, over-hyped terrorism... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  
• Israel: Global NATO’s 29th Member
  By Rick Rozoff (The Intelligence Daily) — As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  
• Obama Fans Middle East War Flames
  By Sherwood Ross (The Intelligence Daily) — As President Obama steps up the war that is... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  

My AntiWar

• Germany Pledges ?Comprehensive Sanctions? Against ...
  Summary: Even though it seems impossible that any significant sanctions against Iran can be pushed forward in the United Nations Security Council, German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed today that they would implement ?comprehensive sanctions? against the nation for its civilian nuclear program. s ...
  
• Gates: Taliban Leaders Unlikely to Accept an Afgha ...
• Rights Groups Urge Hamas to Allow War Crimes Probe
• US Shi’ites Tentatively Make a Home in Ameri ...
• Monday: 13 Iraqis Killed, 15 Wounded

  Rogue Government.com

• Suspected US drone kills 20 in Pakistan
  It was the eleventh such attack since militants in the area orchestrated a deadly suicide bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan, intelligence officials said.
  
• One in Seven U.S. Mortgages In Foreclosure or Del ...
  A record one in seven U.S. mortgages were in foreclosure or at least one payment past due in the third quarter, according to fresh data signaling the recovery in the housing market will be tepid at best.
  
• Top 15 chemical additives in your food
  Our list of the top 15 chemical additives and their possible side effects will help decipher ingredient lists at your supermarket.
  
• FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
  The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews.
  
• Man Died After Watching Avatar
  A 42-year-old Taiwanese man with a history of high blood pressure has died of a stroke likely triggered by over-excitement from watching the blockbuster Avatar in 3D, a doctor says.
  

Innovation Canada

• A Partnership of peoples
  (Courtesy of Frontier magazine, University of British Columbia) Forget what you may have heard about anthropology: it is not solely a science of lost cultures, dusty relics and ancient peoples. This widely misunderstood discipline provides a critical link to contemporary history, and its contributio ...
  
• Decade in review
  The first decade of the 21st century will be remembered as a decade of breakthroughs in science and technology. “It’s well known that discoveries in science are often drivers for important technological developments; for example, fuel cells,” says Thomas Ellis, director of research at the Canadian L ...
  
• i2eye with James Hesser
  Two years ago, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2009 the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, people around the globe have been marking the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo Galilei. Laypeople, especially children ...
  
• Model scientists
  When hurricane season officially blew to a close in the Atlantic basin at the end of November, two Quebec researchers did not exhale in relief. That’s because René Laprise and Louis-philippe Caron were still looking for hurricane data from the past to help create a tool to predict future storm patte ...
  
• i2eye with Andrew Weaver
  As a child growing up in Victoria, if Andrew Weaver had to choose between watching a hockey game or a Jacques Cousteau program, the ocean explorer won out every time. Now a professor and Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, Weaver has joined a crew o ...
  

Signs of the times

• Haiti has a leader in charge, but not in control
  Tucked between Port-au-Prince airport and the giant UN compound is a one-storey building with no security or reliable communications and only two small suites of grubby offices. Before the earthquake hit, this was the headquarters of Haiti's judicial police. It is now the seat of the Haitian ...
  
• Four arrested after Iran prosecutor assassinated
  Four people have been arrested after an Iranian state prosecutor was shot dead outside his home in northern Iran. Vali Hajgholizadeh, who reports say had a reputation for fighting corruption, was killed in the town of Khoy near the Turkish border. Local officials said a Kurdish separatist group ha ...
  
• Iranian parliamentary speaker Larijani: US powered ...
  Iran's parliament speaker says the US and its European allies provided Israel with behind-the-scenes support during its 22-day war on Gaza. "Israel carried out a very barbaric attack against the Gazans. It took none of the international norms and regulations into account," said Ali Larijani, while ...
  
• Broths Contain Mysterious Ingredients
  There's a company that dominates the soup business, but its products are at best bland and mushy. You probably know who I'm talking about. Some of the company's soups contain so much salt that they're the human equivalent of a salt lick. For example, its chicken noodle soup dishes up a whopping 890 ...
  
• Martin Luther King's Legacy and Israel's Future: S ...
  An Introduction by Tom Engelhardt: A country programmatically gripped by fear -- yes, that's us for more than eight years now. Fear of terrorism to be exact, even as truly terrible things happened in this land and elsewhere, from hurricane Katrina in 2005 to last week's devastating Haitian earthqu ...
  

Threat Level

• Oink Admin Beats File Sharing Charges
  A British jury on Friday cleared former Oink admin Allan Ellis of conspiracy to defraud the music industry for running one of the world’s strangest music file-sharing services with some 200,000 members Operators of the so-called Pink Palace banned low-quality sound files, enforced strict usage rules ...
  
• Google Hack Attack Was Ultra Sophisticated, New De ...
  Hackers seeking source code from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released by researchers at anti-virus firm McAfee. “We have never ever ...
  
• Hack of Adobe Conducted Via Zero-Day IE Flaw
  The recent hack attack on Adobe occurred through exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability that affects all versions of Internet Explorer, according to a security researcher with a leading anti-virus firm. Microsoft learned about the vulnerability only Wednesday evening and is planning to release an ...
  
• Eight-Year-Old on TSA Terrorist Watchlist Gets Fri ...
  The Transportation Security Administration, attempting to squelch nefarious rumors, has asserted on its web site under a “Mythbuster” feature that “No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.” Unfortunately for the TSA, the New York Times found an 8-year-old on its list. Mikey Hicks, a Cub Scout in ...
  
• China Stands Firm in Response to Google Threat
  China has hit back at Google in its response to the search giant’s announcement this week that it may pull out of China if it can’t reach an agreement about censoring content. Two government officials said on Thursday that internet companies must obey the laws of China and help the government steer ...
  

PERRspectives : Blog

• MA Voters Balk at Funding Red State Health Care
  One day before voters head to the polls, several factors seem to be fueling Republican Scott Brown's surprising lead over Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts Senate race. Voter anger over the economy, Coakley's weak candidacy and Brown's strength among independents...
  
• Tim Tebow Turns Super Anti-Abortion Crusader
  Heisman trophy winner Tim Tebow hasn't played a down in the National Football League, but he will nonetheless be a star during the Super Bowl on February 7. That's because the University of Florida quarterback will join his mother in...
  
• Remembering Bush's Disaster Response Success - in ...
  Mindful of George W. Bush's record of catastrophic failure when it came to disaster response, some commenters (for example, here and here) are questioning President Obama's decision (one I support) to ask Bush to join Bill Clinton in heading up...
  
• Why Republicans Win in Massachusetts
  That the Massachusetts Senate race is now a toss up, with some polls now putting Republican Scott Brown in the lead, is rocking the American political landscape. After all, the campaign to replace Ted Kennedy takes place in a state...
  
• Obama Right to Ask Bush to Aid Haiti Effort
  Like a child who begrudgingly has to invite his weird cousin to his birthday party, there are some things a president simply must do. So it must have been when President Obama asked George W. Bush to join with U.N....
  

Blackspot News Feed

• Ridge Defends Napolitano From Right-Wing Attacks: ...
  Tom Ridge, who served under President Bush, defended Napolitano, explaining that blame for the incident does not rest solely on her shoulders.
  
• Deported for a Tablet of Xanax? Immigrants Face Re ...
  Is being charged twice with possession enough to warrant deportation? Many U.S. courts think so.
  
• Bechyovinka
  There is a secret town in Kamchatka. One can get here only by sea or a helicopter… Yet another amazing photo-essay at English Russia, this time depicting the abandoned "submariners’ town" of Bechyovinka: Pure post-civilisation artporn.
  
• Obama Pushes Excise Tax, House Dems Fight It
  President Obama remains steadfastly committed to forcing the Senate's Chevy tax on health plans over the House's millionaire's surtax.
  
• Links for 2010-01-07
  Plastic Logic aims QUE e-reader at business crowd"Plastic Logic on Thursday unveiled a long-anticipated QUE electronic reader aimed at giving business travelers a "paperless briefcase.""(tags:computing ) French panel: Tax Google to fund the arts"How to help prop up the ailing music industry? Tax Goo ...
  

Consortium News

• Lessons from America's Lost Decade
  For the first time since the Great Depression, a decade -- George W. Bush's -- saw zero job growth, notes Robert Parry. January 15, 2010
  
• How Not to Counter Terrorism
  From the Archive: Ex-FBI Agent Coleen Rowley warned of flooding the counter-terror analysts with too much data. January 14, 2010
  
• Haiti and America's Historic Debt
  As Haiti suffers another natural disaster, few Americans know their historic debt to the Caribbean nation, observes Robert Parry. January 13, 2010
  
• Cheney's Attack Shields Failures
  Rather than face the Bush administration's failures, ex-Vice President Cheney has stayed on the attack, writes Ivan Eland. January 12, 2010
  
• Asking Europe for American Answers
  Though many people live happier lives in Europe, Americans resist the idea of learning any of those lessons, writes David Swanson. January 12, 2010
  

CounterPunch

• Richard Morse : The Streets are Now Haiti's Living ...
• Bill Quigley : Ten Things the U.S. Can and Should ...
• Patrick Cockburn : Crushing Haiti, Now as Always
• Jeffrey St. Clair : On the Firing Line
• Daniel Wolff : Haiti's Ongoing Emergency

Institute for Middle East Understanding

• Shattered notions of peace (Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ah ...
  Discounting recent suggestions that he might have moderated his extremist views vis-à-vis major contentious issues with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has reasserted the rejectio ...
  
• Political archeology (aic)
• Palestinian host first East Jerusalem meet since 2 ...
  The Palestinian Authority on Monday held its official meeting with a foreign diplomat in East Jerusalem since the closing of its headquarters there more than eight years ago. The Palestinian representatives ...
  
• Israel targets Palestinian anti-wall activists (O ...
  Jamal Juma' could not help but laugh at one of the accusations he said he had been threatened with while in Israeli detention. "They said they would indict me for links to Hizbollah. They didn't like it when ...
  
• Gazans collect donations to Haiti (Saed Bannoura, ...
  Palestinians in the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip gathered on Monday at the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza to offer donations and financial support to the victims of the devastating earthquake in Hait ...
  

Water - AlterNet

• 10 Million Tons of Chemical Fertilizer Discharged ...
  A new report finds that Chinese farmers used a stunning 40 percent more fertilizer than necessary.
  
• Water For Haiti, Now
  In any disaster like this, after search, rescue, and immediate medical care, clean and safe water becomes a critical need.
  
• Why Are Exxon Mobil and XTO Energy Meeting With Co ...
  As Congress reviews the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, that could have big impacts on Exxon's acquisition of XTO Energy.
  
• Why Commonly Used Pesticides May Be To Blame for t ...
  We need to delve deeply into the potential link between a widely used chemical and the health of our food producers and their communities.
  
• How Alaska Should Help Fishermen and Women Survive ...
  There is an opportunity for this state to demonstrate that it will act fairly and responsibly to protect its residents from oil spill impacts when the law fails to do so.
  

TruthHugger

• Texas Progressive Alliance Weekly Round Up Jan 4, ...
  The Texas Progressive Alliance is still somewhat amazed to be living in the year we make contact, and we hope we’re all still going strong when Odyssey Three rolls around. Texas has most drilling, worst regulation. Texas made national news this week in the ProPublica investigative report and they us ...
  
• Weary Soldiers At Risk, They Know This
  A poignant editorial on Al Jazeera seems to have more in depth observations than America’s Corporate media.  Mainstream media must follow the money, toe the line for sponsors and political perks that promise ’scoops’. ‘The US military is exhausted” By Sarah Lazare The call for over 30,000 more tro ...
  
• Darth Vader Strikes Again
  The botched terrorist attack on Christmas Day is NOT Obama's fault.
  
• Try To Remember America
  Well, few public schools, and few private schools, will fill in the gaps between America the fantasy and America the reality.  The name of America has been invoked with reverence when describing its history of righteous endeavors.  What is seldom included in these filtered history lessons, is some o ...
  
• Texas Progressive Alliance Weekly Round Up Dec 14, ...
  TXsharon at Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS helps you follow the money to see why Governor Perry and others want Texans to keep breathing toxic air. BossKitty at TruthHugger is proud to give a Hat Tip to Houston – Annise Parker inherits a City of Progress. The Stonewall Democrats of Denton Coun ...
  

Dandelion Salad - Featured Writers' Posts

• Imperial Senate Foils Constitution More Than Clima ...
  By Robert S. Becker Featured Writer Dandelion Salad rbecker@cal.net January 19, 2010 To judge anythi
  
• Murders at Guantánamo: Scott Horton of Harper’s Ex ...
  by Andy Worthington Featured Writer Dandelion Salad www.andyworthington.co.uk 18 January 2010 It’s h
  
• A lootin’ an’ a burnin’? By William Bowles
  By William Bowles Featured Writer Dandelion Salad Creative-i 18 January, 2010 It was obvious from th
  
• Cindy Sheehan: No More CIA Drones!
  by Cindy Sheehan Featured Writer Dandelion Salad Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbo
  
• The CIA, and their drone attacks, is the symbol of ...
  by Bruce Gagnon featured writer Dandelion Salad Organizing Notes Jan. 18, 2010 I love taking the tra
  

Unexplained Mysteries

• Scientists to back-breed extinct giant cattle
  Massive beasts that would have once roamed the Earth in their droves before becoming extinct may soon be making a comeback. Scientists are working to ...
  
• Seeking extraterrestrial life in the multiverse
  While most scientists focus their efforts on finding signs of life in our own universe some are starting to set their sights elsewhere. The majority ...
  
• Amber Room of the Tsars found by treasure hunter ?
  The priceless Amber Room of the Tsars was looted and hidden by the Nazis in World War 2 but may now have been found again. A replica of the Amber Room...
  
• Missile test sparks UFO reports in China
  One month on from the spectacular spirals in Norway a new spate of sightings in China is also being attributed to a missile launch. A series of UFO si...
  
• Diamond oceans may be possible on gas giants
  New research has suggested that there could be liquid diamond oceans with solid diamond icebergs floating in Uranus or Neptune. The research is based ...
  

Grassroots

• Via Campesina calls for Solidarity with Haiti incl ...
    La Via Campesina International peasant movement Jln. read more
  
• Letter from Camille Chalmers, PAPDA
  trinidadandtobago200904-132.jpg Recently, Grassroots International received an email from our partner Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA). It is translated below. read more
  
• Ten Things the United States Can and Should Do for ...
    Bill Quigley of our ally the Center for Constitutional Rights wrote recently on what he thought the US can and should do for Haiti in response to the devastating earthquake. read more
  
• A note from our colleagues at the Presbyterian Hun ...
  Presbyterian_logo.jpg   read more
  
• Answering the Call Even when the Phone Isn't Answe ...
  trinidadandtobago200904-132.jpg In the last 48 hours, my work to gather information from our partners in Haiti has become a puzzle game. As of Thursday morning, I have been unable to talk with our partners and allies in Haiti. The lack of elec ...
  

Climate

• January 18, 2010
  EU Nations Spar Over Climate Policy After UN Summit Deadlock (Bloomberg) Europe is struggling to hold a common line on climate policy after last month's failed UN summit in Copenhagen, with the UK, Germany and France defending deeper emission cuts in the face of Italian and Polish resistance. U ...
  
• January 16-17, 2010
  Lobbyist Clients Gave Heavily to Murkowski Campaigns (Politico) Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has received more than $124,500 in donations from clients of an energy lobbyist involved with drafting an amendment that would bar the EPA from regulating CO2 as a pollutant. Huge Ice Chunk Br ...
  
• January 16-17, 2010
  Lobbyist Clients Gave Heavily to Murkowski Campaigns (Politico) Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has received more than $124,500 in donations from clients of an energy lobbyist involved with drafting an amendment that would bar the EPA from regulating CO2 as a pollutant. Huge Ice Chunk Br ...
  
• January 15, 2010
  Investors Urge Governments to Take Immediate Action on Climate Change (Guardian) Over 450 investors controlling $13 trillion of assets have urged governments to pre-empt a climate treaty and take immediate action on global warming, or risk losing the opportunity to establish a low-carbon economy ...
  
• January 14, 2010
  UN Should Be Sidelined in Future Climate Talks, Says Obama Official (Guardian) America sees a diminished role for the UN in trying to stop global warming after the "chaotic" Copenhagen summit, Jonathan Pershing, the U.S. deputy special climate change envoy, said. Britain Confident of Climate D ...
  

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

• Why Is The Haiti Disaster Response So Screwed Up?
  Is This Another Katrina Relief Effort In The Making? Every disaster plan is built to some degree around the idea of triage -- deciding who can and cannot be saved. The worst cases are often separated and allowed to perish so that others who are considered more survivable can be treated. There is a t ...
  
• What Bush Did to Haiti
  If a group of dedicated scholars, attorneys, journalists, and activists had tried to generate a comprehensive list of impeachable offenses committed by George W. Bush as president, and only 35 of them had been introduced into Congress, one of the many discarded ones, in rough and overly detailed for ...
  
• What Would Dr. King Have Thought of Health Reform?
  This year's commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. comes as the nation struggles with the issue of health reform. What would Dr. King have thought of the current proposal? While nobody would presume to speak for him, his writings and speeches leave us plenty of clues. How better to honor his memor ...
  
• The Scum of the Earth
  — from Truthout Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, GOP luminaries Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh have once again waded into a catastrophic tragedy with all the care and concern of hammerhead sharks unleashed into a fish tank full of orphans. For those not yet in the know, the dynamic global ...
  
• Dems Inadvertently Suggest a Coakley Loss Would St ...
  If Democrats lose the Massachusetts Senate race, there are two possible ways to pass a final health care bill: 1) The House will simply pass the Senate bill unamended thus circumventing another Senate vote entirely or 2) The Senate will be forced to use reconciliation to pass an amended conference r ...
  

Ten Percent

• Aid?
  When all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
  
• We Are Being Lied To About Haiti To Justify The Mi ...
  Both the US and UN have terrible histories in Haiti, they are approaching this, with the US leading as a security issue and corporate media are following, but even then when you read carefully they fail to substantiate the chaos/looting meme beyond violent police reactions, that is very familiar if ...
  
• Peoples’ World Referendum on Climate Change
  In a January 5 statement, Bolivian President Evo Morales called on “the peoples of the world, social movements and Mother Earth’s defenders … scientists, academics, lawyers and governments that want to work with their citizens to the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rig ...
  
• Simples
  The 38 largest financial institutions on Wall Street will pay out a total of $145.85 billion in compensation for 2009, an 18 percent increase over 2008 and “slightly more than in the record year of 2007,” theWall Street Journal reports. The UN launched an emergency appeal for $550m (£338m) yesterda ...
  
• Stop New Labour Changing the Law To Protect War Cr ...
  Amnesty Int. UK The UK Government are planning imminent changes to the law, to avoid any future attempts to prosecute suspected war criminals, Israeli or otherwise. This would see the UK reneging on its international treaty obligations, particularly those under the Fourth Geneva Convention which com ...
  

Booman Tribune

• Open Thread
  Hey, if you live in Massachusetts, the polls are open. Do me a favor and go cast a vote for Martha Coakley before the polls close. You'll be glad you did. How is everyone this morning?
  
• Fire Mueller
  Robert Mueller was confirmed to a ten-year term as Director of the FBI and took over the position on September 4th, 2001. Obviously, he should not be confirmed for a second decade-long term, but he really should be shit-canned right now. Not tomorrow. Right now. The FBI illegally collected mo ...
  
• Casual Observation
  Who knew that you could attempt to murder the Pope and live to see the light of day?
  
• Predictions Thread
  Who will win the Massachusetts special election tomorrow? What will the dominant accompanying narrative be? And how will the Democrats respond?
  
• It Is What It Is
  Hugo Chavez is accusing the United States of militarily occupying Haiti under the cover of providing humanitarian aid. Of course, my first reaction to seeing the condition of Port-au-Prince was to say that Haiti would need to become a protectorate of sorts, if not in letter then in reality. I didn ...
  

European Tribune

• Live-blogging the EU Commisioner confirmation hear ...
  From the European Parliament's portal: On Tuesday morning from 0900 CET Sweden's Europe Minister Cecilia...
  
• European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 19 ...
   A Daily Review Of International Online Media Europeans on this date in history:1925 – Nina Bawden,...
  
• Monday Open Thread
  Most Depressing Day of the YearTM...
  
• European offshore wind industry taking off
  2009 marks the third year of industrialisation and growth for the nascent offshore wind sector,...
  
• Live-blogging the EU Commisioner confirmation hear ...
  From the European Parliament's portal: The hearings will be from 1800-2100 CET. Italian Antonio Tajani...
  

Futurismic

• Avatar techniques could turn back the clock on age ...
  Via SlashDot comes a brief soundbyte (or rather textbyte) from James Cameron, who posits that the pore-deep photorealistic CGI techniques that allowed him to create current box-office smash Avatar could be used to recreate the youthful looks of popular actors who’re getting on a bit… … Cameron’s f ...
  
• Monday sensawunda: diamond icebergs on Uranus
  If you’re struggling to lift your spirits out of the Monday slump, maybe a kick-in-the-pants for your imagination will help. So try this for size: Uranus and Neptune may be home to vast oceans of liquid diamond, upon which may be floating icebergs of the same material in its solid phase. Straight ou ...
  
• MIT’s Cornucopia: 3D printing with food
  Ah, those crazy geeks and boffins at MIT – is there any idea they can’t run with so far and long that it ceases to make any sense whatsoever? Here’s your trajectory: you already know about 3D printing, right? And that there’s a 3d printer called the CandyFab, which specialises in fabbing objects usi ...
  
• Mental illness: America’s biggest export?
  A fascinating (if slightly grim and worrying) article at the New York Times by Ethan Watters suggests that Western psychiatry may be successfully homogenising the mental illnesses of the entire planet, thanks to aggressive programs designed to export “psychiatric literacy”. The intent was good, but ...
  
• The Exhumation Factor: just when you thought reali ...
  … you find a story that says the UK’s Channel 4 is seeking terminally ill volunteers who are willing to undergo embalming and mummification, Ancient Egyptian style, after they’ve died. [image by broma] Granted, the piece is in the Daily Mail, whose knee-jerk revulsion toward such unpatriotic and li ...
  

Therapy News

• “Choking Game” in Oregon Linked to Mental Health C ...
  A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Children and adolescents are sometimes prone to engaging in dangerous behavior for reasons that might elude their elders, and a trend frequently referred to as “the choking game” tends to fall into this category of activities. Potentially causing a high through buildu ...
  
• UK Considers Lifting Ban on Jury Service for Menta ...
  A GoodTherapy.org News Summary Jury service comprises an important, if not always warmly welcomed, element of social involvement, and its focus on requiring time and effort from all citizens in order to establish a realistic representation of society at large is a major aspect of its healthy functio ...
  
• New Psychotherapy Accreditation System Considered
  A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Those in the mental health professions are able to rely on an accreditation system and rigorous academic and clinical training that work diligently to ensure that psychotherapists are well-qualified to deliver excellent care. But some suggest that the current American ...
  
• Fighting Among US Girls Higher than Expected
  A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Though it is generally understood that adolescent girls sometimes participate in fighting and other potentially dangerous behaviors, common perceptions tend to suggest that rates of female aggression are relatively low. Not so, says a recent government report based on ...
  
• Morphine Therapy?
  A GoodTherapy.org News Summary The effects of combat on the psychological health of soldiers deployed in wars have been show to cause serious detriment to well-being and mental health, with a number of veterans developing symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, after their return home. ...
  

Mountaintop Removal

• Ken Hechler Honored with Martin Luther King Jr. Ac ...
  Ken Hechler Honored with Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award WSAZ-TV ... advocating for better health, safety, and environmental legislation and calling for an end to strip mining and mountaintop removal of coal. ... and more »
  
• JPMorgan Chase Cashes in on Destroying the Appalac ...
  JPMorgan Chase Cashes in on Destroying the Appalachian Mountains AlterNet Wells Fargo and Bank of America have severed ties with Massey Energy, the leading mountaintop removal mining corporation. So what's holding up JPMorgan ...
  
• Obama's first year: On environment, big changes bu ...
  Obama's first year: On environment, big changes but little notice San Jose Mercury News He also has not moved as fast as they would like to stop a type of coal mining in West Virginia known as " mountain top removal . ...
  
• End Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in Virginia - ...
  End Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in Virginia Ethiopian Review Despite what Creigh Deeds believes, mountaintop removal coal mining is not the same thing as surface mining or "whatever euphemism you're gonna use. ...
  
• EPA and US Army Corps Forcing Real Change With Wes ...
  Treehugger EPA and US Army Corps Forcing Real Change With West Virginia, Mountain-Top ... Treehugger On mountain top removal , for example, EPA and the Army Corps seem to me to have got it about right. West Virginia's coal industry reps and the Governor are ...
  

Memeorandum

• Date for State of Union (New York Times)
  New York Times : Date for State of Union   —  WASHINGTON — President Obama will deliver his first State of the Union address on Jan. 27.  —  The White House announced Monday that the president would speak to a joint session of Congress next Wednesday at 9 p.m.  —  In the televised speech …
  
• Obama plans combative turn (Mike Allen/The Politic ...
  Mike Allen / The Politico : Obama plans combative turn   —  President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday's special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say.  —  “This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who wor ...
  
• Obama's Discontents - Bernard Avishai on the elect ...
  Kevin Drum / Mother Jones : Obama's Discontents   —  Bernard Avishai on the election in Massachusetts: … The frustration on the left with Obama — and with healthcare reform specifically — was almost inevitable.  During the campaign, a lot of people chose to see in him what they wanted to see …
  
• Democrats Seeking to Push Health Bill Through Hous ...
  New York Times : Democrats Seeking to Push Health Bill Through House   —  WASHINGTON — The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders, scrambling for a backup plan to rescue their health care legislation if Republicans win the special election in Massachusetts on Tuesday, have begun laying th ...
  
• AWESOME... Scott Brown Responds to Elitist Obama's ...
  Jim Hoft / Gateway Pundit : AWESOME... Scott Brown Responds to Elitist Obama's Attack on Truck Owners   —  Republican Scott Brown has been running ads in Massachusetts where he is out driving around in his old pickup truck while campaigning for US Senator.  Brown released this ad on January 3.
  

Energy & Environment News

• Trying to Stop Carbon Emissions Halfway Around the ...
  A Pacific island nation has challenged plans by the Czech Republic to refit a coal-fired power station, in an appeal that environmental activists described as the first of its kind.
  
• China Tries a New Tack to Go Solar
  The country is taking tentative steps to master an alternative energy industry: using mirrors to capture sunlight, produce steam and generate electricity.
  
• Heavy Rains End Drought for Texas
  The rains have quenched huge expanses of parched earth, but state officials estimate that farmers and ranchers suffered losses of around $4 billion.
  
• Newport Journal: By Landing Fleet, Small Port Sets ...
  Newport, Ore., has been named the new home of the federal oceanic agency’s Pacific Fleet, irking its neighboring state of Washington and three ports there.
  
• Renault Pledges to Keep a French Factory Busy
  Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Renault, met with French officials to address concerns that the carmaker was intent on sending jobs to Turkey.
  

5+ quakes - 7 days

• M 5.0, Solomon Islands
  Tuesday, January 19, 2010 08:08:47 UTC Tuesday, January 19, 2010 07:08:47 PM at epicenter Depth : 35.00 km (21.75 mi)
  
• M 5.3, Solomon Islands
  Monday, January 18, 2010 22:31:00 UTC Tuesday, January 19, 2010 09:31:00 AM at epicenter Depth : 37.80 km (23.49 mi)
  
• M 5.0, offshore Antofagasta, Chile
  Monday, January 18, 2010 22:22:19 UTC Monday, January 18, 2010 07:22:19 PM at epicenter Depth : 12.30 km (7.64 mi)
  
• M 5.2, Tonga
  Monday, January 18, 2010 21:35:29 UTC Tuesday, January 19, 2010 11:35:29 AM at epicenter Depth : 82.90 km (51.51 mi)
  
• M 5.7, Santa Cruz Islands
  Monday, January 18, 2010 16:09:15 UTC Tuesday, January 19, 2010 03:09:15 AM at epicenter Depth : 10.00 km (6.21 mi)
  

China Dialogue

• Beware the GM giants
  Biotech firms are rapidly gaining ground in global agriculture. China must take a stand or else face risks to food security, argues Jiang Gaoming. Greenpeace recently discovered genetically modified (GM) ingredient Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in Nestlé-branded baby cereal in China. According to the ...
  
• The Mekong under threat
  South-east Asia’s longest river has been transformed in the past three decades. Now, the food security of the Lower Mekong Basin hangs in the balance, writes Milton Osborne. Until the 1980s the Mekong River flowed freely for 4,900 kilometres from its 5,100-metre-high source in Tibet to the coast of ...
  
• A fight for life in the Andes
  Peruvian villagers already on the edge of survival are enduring bitter cold linked to climate change. Now, reports Annie Kelly, they are having to choose whether to save their livelihoods or their children. For alpaca farmer Ignacio Beneto Huamani and his young family, life in the Peruvian Andes , a ...
  
• What to watch for in Washington
  The global recession, US mid-term elections and a weak Copenhagen deal all play a part in the future of cap-and-trade legislation. Suzanne Goldenberg explains what lies ahead in 2010. What is the state of play for climate-change legislation in America? Barack Obama put his reputation on the line ...
  
• Thinking the unthinkable
  A new book by Stewart Brand, one of the founders of the modern environmental movement, challenges green orthodoxy and considers some frightening scenarios, writes John Elkington. Imagine Karl Marx calling for capitalism, Gandhi advocating war or the Pope embracing atheism. That is the scale of the d ...
  

AlterNet Top Stories

• How Carbon Polluters Have Hijacked Part of Califor ...
  the AB 32 Implementation Group, supposedly an environmentally-friendly coalition, is working to change the state's global warming laws.
  
• Sex Addiction: A B.S. Excuse for Not Thinking
  Sexual compulsions are real and they harm the person in their grip as well as others. But treating them like a problem -- something to be 'fixed' -- isn't working.
  
• Should You Stay Together for the Kids? Hell No!
  Choose the pursuit of happiness instead. For yourself, and for your child.
  
• 9 Things the U.S. Could and Should Do for Haiti
  The unfathomable tragedy in Haiti demands that we do things differently.
  
• Bill Moyers & Thomas Frank: How America's Deme ...
  Bill Moyers interviews Thomas Frank on how our short attention span has allowed conservatives to escape blame for their role in the economic meltdown.
  

Threat Level

• Oink Admin Beats File Sharing Charges
  A British jury on Friday cleared former Oink admin Allan Ellis of conspiracy to defraud the music industry for running one of the world’s strangest music file-sharing services with some 200,000 members Operators of the so-called Pink Palace banned low-quality sound files, enforced strict usage rules ...
  
• Google Hack Attack Was Ultra Sophisticated, New De ...
  Hackers seeking source code from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released by researchers at anti-virus firm McAfee. “We have never ever ...
  
• Hack of Adobe Conducted Via Zero-Day IE Flaw
  The recent hack attack on Adobe occurred through exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability that affects all versions of Internet Explorer, according to a security researcher with a leading anti-virus firm. Microsoft learned about the vulnerability only Wednesday evening and is planning to release an ...
  
• Eight-Year-Old on TSA Terrorist Watchlist Gets Fri ...
  The Transportation Security Administration, attempting to squelch nefarious rumors, has asserted on its web site under a “Mythbuster” feature that “No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.” Unfortunately for the TSA, the New York Times found an 8-year-old on its list. Mikey Hicks, a Cub Scout in ...
  
• China Stands Firm in Response to Google Threat
  China has hit back at Google in its response to the search giant’s announcement this week that it may pull out of China if it can’t reach an agreement about censoring content. Two government officials said on Thursday that internet companies must obey the laws of China and help the government steer ...
  

Reuters - Most Popular Articles

• FBI broke law in phone searches: report
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI collected more than 2,000 records on U.S. telephone calls by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or by persuading phone companies to provide them, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
  
• NBC chief defends role in late-night debacle
  LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The NBC executive who has overseen the network's decline in recent years said on Monday he showed "guts" and "leadership" by shaking up the network's late-night programing -- a disastrous move that will likely send talk-show host Conan O'Brien to a rival broadcaster.
  
• Massachusetts votes in crucial election for Obama
  BOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts voters head to the polls on Tuesday in a cliffhanger election for a new senator that could derail Democrats' dominance in Washington and scuttle their top priority of sweeping healthcare reform.
  
• Impromptu billboard porn film stops traffic
  MOSCOW (Reuters) - An enormous television screen showing a pornographic film caused a midnight traffic jam in central Moscow Thursday as stunned motorists slammed on the brakes to gawk at the writhing naked bodies.
  
• U.S. and U.N. boost Haiti aid security as food dro ...
  PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - U.S. troops protected aid handouts and the United Nations sought extra peacekeepers in earthquake-shattered Haiti on Monday as marauding looters emptied wrecked shops and desperate survivors began to receive medical care and air-dropped food.
  

Equality Trust

• Economics is the real divide
  Daily Mail comment piece
  
• Caroline Lucas: Where now for Social Democracy in ...
  ...according to the groundbreaking work by British authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, the key to reducing the cultural pressure to consume is greater equality. In their book The Spirit Level they set out how greater equality makes growth much less necessary, revealing research which shows t ...
  
• The ills inequality brings
  It is possible to improve the lives of the poor, the middle class and the well off, by addressing one big problem. It turns out that reducing economic inequality can reduce a whole range of social problems, from teenage pregnancy and youth violence, to heart disease and depression. The authors of ...
  
• Should Wall Street execs be required to donate to ...
  You know things are out of whack when an investment bank is considering forcing its employees to donate to charity. That plan is reportedly in the works at Goldman Sachs, with bonuses, some as high as eight figures, being paid to bankers this week. Read the full article in The Seattle Times
  
• The importance of economic equality - Time.com
  Read the Time.com Q&A with ichard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
  

IntelNews

• France accuses US of launching military invasion o ...
  Rivalries between the major donor powers, as well as non-profit agencies, in earthquake-devastated Haiti are delaying humanitarian help to the island. The tense situation led to France accusing the US of using the island’s Toussaint L'Ouverture airport as a “military annex”, while French and Brazili ...
  
• News you may have missed #0258
  CIA Abdulmutallab report not distributed, awaiting photo. CIA Abdulmutallab report not distributed, awaiting photo.
  
• Mystery surrounds arrest of renegade CIA agent in ...
  In January of 2008, a man with an American accent appeared at a passport office in the popular West Java tourist resort of Bogor, Indonesia, and applied for an Indonesian passport. But his inability to speak Bahasa Indonesia triggered the suspicion of passport officials, who subsequently discovered ...
  
• News you may have missed #0257 (assassinations edi ...
  Who tried to kill the Israeli diplomats in Jordan? Iran insists in Israeli link to Mohammadi assassination. Pakistanis urge US to stop drone attacks.
  
• Cash register ringing for NSA’s corporate suitors
  The decision by the US National Security Agency to build 5.8 million square feet of data-storage and office space by 2029 has drawn mixed reactions by intelligence observers. But for businesses in northern Utah, where the NSA is preparing to build a million-square-foot facility, at Camp Williams, it ...
  

After Downing Street.org

• Keith Olbermann & Scott Horton - Harper's Magazine ...
  read more
  
• U.S. Air Force Drops 55,000 Pounds Of Food, Water ...
  U.S. Air Force drops 55,000 pounds of food, water into Haiti By Larry Shaughnessy | CNN Bypassing the gridlock of Haiti's main airport and congestion of roadways in the earthquake-ravaged country, the U.S. military delivered badly needed food and water on Monday by parachute. A C-17 cargo plane l ...
  
• Iraq Set To Launch Blackwater Class-Action Suit
  Iraq set to launch Blackwater class-action suit | MSNBC U.S. court threw out case against contractors accused of killing 14 civilians Iraq's government has started collecting signatures for a class-action lawsuit from victims who were wounded or lost family in incidents involving the private securi ...
  
• The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta Sergeant B ...
  The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle By Scott Horton | Harper's Magazine According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bin ...
  
• Three Corpses In Gitmo: The Very Worst Seems True
  Three Corpses In Gitmo: The Very Worst Seems True By Andrew Sullivan | Daily Dish Excerpts: ...They are attempts to lie about some of the worst crimes committed by a president and vice-president of the United States in history. Anyone with their eyes open and their mind not closed knows this somew ...
  

Grist - News

• Scientists cautiously optimistic as Doomsday Clock ...
  by Agence France-Presse NEW YORK -- The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock was moved back slightly Thursday, indicating the world has inched away from nuclear or environmental catastrophe, but still is not out of danger. "It is six minutes to midnight," the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which creat ...
  
• Small cars make it big at Detroit Auto Show [slide ...
  by Grist   DETROIT—Small, hybrid, and electric cars took center stage at the Detroit Auto Show this week, as automakers adapt to the changing demands of a market ravaged by recession and soaring fuel costs. A clutch of manufacturers also displayed fuel-efficient cars with designs inspired by Europe ...
  
• Grist exclusive: A fiery battle over land in Braz ...
  by Brenda Baletti On the Arapiuns River, barges of illegally taken timber smolder after being set aflame to protest logging in Gleba Nova Olinda, Amazon Rainforest. All photos: Brenda Baletti While world leaders were meeting in Copenhagen to address the challenge of climate change last month, indig ...
  
• Break with consumerism to save the world, Worldwat ...
  by Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON -- The world faces environmental havoc unless people shift from a culture where success is measured by the accumulation of goods to one where people are admired for living sustainably, experts warned in a report published Tuesday. "It's no longer enough to change ...
  
• Ford Fusion Hybrid wins 2010 Car of the Year, no g ...
  by Ashley Braun The Ford Fusion Hybrid. Photo courtesy Ford Motor Company via FlickrNo green spin necessary, the Ford Fusion Hybrid sedan was soundly voted the 2010 Car of the Year . While not the first-ever hybrid vehicle to win this award (even for Ford), it is notable that the 2010 North America ...
  

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Technorati - What's Hot in Blogs

• Chinese Search Giant Baidu Loses CTO Unexpectedly
  Baidu loses its second major executive during a tumultuous time for the Chinese search market
  
• Blog Focus on Apple Tablet's Birth and Internet Ex ...
  Internet Explorer 6 won't die and the Apple tablet won't be birthed before its time
  
• Daily Five: Stephon Marbury Might Play in China an ...
  Each day, we'll take a quick look at five of the most important stories going on in the NBA.
  
• LeBron James Backs Out, But The NBA Lets Shannon D ...
  LeBron James bails, but the dunk contest still has some appeal this year.
  
• Video: Jose Offerman Banned For Life From Dominica ...
  Jose Offerman's latest antics make him persona non-grata in the Dominican League.
  

Time - Top Stories

• Massachusetts Senate Race: GOP Gains Rattle Democr ...
  A Senate seat that the Democrats long took for granted could very well go Republican on Tuesday, and Obama's health-care bill could be in jeopardy as a result
  
• Haiti Tries to Go From Rescue to Recovery to Relie ...
  As the voices beneath the rubble fade away, the living try to figure out how to survive the coming crises of the day-to-day
  
• Iraq Election Ban on Sunni Candidates Could Imperi ...
  Just when Sunni voters have decided to rejoin the political process, the Iraq government decides to ban some of their most prominent representatives
  
• Goel Ratzon: Israel's Messiah with More Than 30 'W ...
  Israeli police arrest a self-styled healer who headed a strange household of many women and more than 80 children
  
• French Wines Learn New World Marketing and Brandin ...
  To compete with new wine producers like Argentina and Australia, Frenchvintners are slowly ditching their traditional wine labels in favor ofcatchier brands like Fat Bastard Chardonnay
  

Washington Independent

• MA-Sen: The NRSC’s Secret Plan
  BOSTON — John Bresnahan has the details on the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s extremely quiet, under-the-radar support for Scott Brown’s candidacy in Massachusetts. The basics: $500,000 in aid, starting on Jan. 7. The timing is important here. On Jan. 5, Rasmussen Reports released a poll ...
  
• Wes Clark to Run for Vic Snyder’s Seat?
  Surprising speculation! According to this Arkansas news organization, the Second Congressional District seat that will be vacated by retiring Dem Vic Synder may get some four-star interest: There is chatter in Democratic circles about possible interest from Wesley Clark as a candidate for retiring D ...
  
• The Ongoing Logistical Nightmare of Haiti, Six Day ...
  Ken Keen, a three-star Army general, was in Haiti on Tuesday at the U.S. ambassador’s office shortly before nightfall when the quake began. The ambassador’s office is high above the city of Port-au-Prince. Keen heard “the screaming and yelling of the people in the valleys below.” Now Keen is the com ...
  
• In Final Stretch, Brown Stresses Insurgency Over I ...
  The speed of this campaign, and the slow reaction of Democrats who considered the seat safe until one week ago, have let the Republican candidate blur the details.
  
• MA-Sen Video: Brown’s Crowd Control
  Here are two quick video examples of something BlueMassGroup blogged yesterday–the Brown campaign busing in support for its “People’s Rally” and running some serious crowd control. In the first part of the clip, supporters stream off the bus. In the second part, an angry Brown supporter is pulled aw ...
  

CowBoss' Brain Food

• Change, They Say, Is Good. But Is It?
  It's said that Alexander the Great wept when he realised there were no more lands left for him to conquer. In other words, there was nothing new to challenge him; there was no raison d'être. It's a laughable thought today, isn't it? Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-i ...
  
• Teacher breaks 4th grader’s arm for ‘forgetting Iq ...
  LAHORE: A female teacher of a private school thrashed Muhammad Jahanzeb, a fourth grade student when he was unable to explain a poem by Allama Iqbal, causing multiple fractures in his arm. Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  
• We're expanding, while economy shrinks
  Americans now have another excuse for hitting the fast food establishments and getting farther out of shape by adding unwanted weight, and it's allegedly not their fault. The latest health discovery is called "recession pounds," and some researchers Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Cul ...
  
• Reports call for radical rethink on food policy to ...
  The food and farming sector is not pulling its weight when it comes to tacking climate change and food shortages could be the consequence if we fail to make fundamental changes to the way we farm, process, distribute and eat our food over the next 20 year Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society ...
  
• TV host curious about attacks on animal ag (audio)
  “Anybody from a city, in my opinion, who spends a day, a week, maybe even just a few hours on a working farm is going to be quickly disabused of a lot of what they believe,” Rowe told AgriTalk radio host Mike Adams last week. Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |  ...
  

Suzie-Q

• Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have A Dream (VIDEOS)
  Martin Luther King Jr.: I Have a Dream (1 of 2) I Have A Dream (2 of 2)
  
• Does Scott Brown Support Waterboarding?
  Massachusetts could elect senator who supports waterboarding RAW STORY- By John Byrne Monday, January 18th, 2010 — 9:16 am The Republican state senator vying to fill the Senate seat recently vacated by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) says he doesn’t believe waterboarding — where a suspect is effec ...
  
• Kerry: ‘The Only Thing Republicans Say Yes T ...
  Kerry: ‘The only thing Republicans say yes to are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, tea partiers, and Fox News.’ Think Progress- By Faiz Shakir at 8:15 am Campaigning for Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley on Friday, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) took a shot [at] the “party of no.” Kerry a ...
  
• ABC/Washington Post Poll: Obama Approval Rating At ...
  President Obama at One Year: Lower Ratings, Higher Doubts ABC News/Washington Post Poll: 53 Percent Approve of Obama’s Job Performance ANALYSIS By GARY LANGER Jan. 17, 2010 Bruised if unbroken, President Barack Obama faces shrinking public confidence, increasingly negative views of the country’s ...
  
• Help For Haiti
  ReallY…WoW really wow from the work of artist James W Johnson. . .
  

Solari

• Who’s Your Sheriff?
  On this week’s Solari Report, we will addressing the most important question facing U.S. citizens during this year and for years to come. Under the U.S. Constitution, who has the ultimate authority to determine the legality of an enforcement action and enforce the law in your community? If the Cong ...
  
• Quote du Jour
  Make not impossible that which but seems unlikely. ~ William Shakespeare
  
• Money & Markets - Week of 01.17.10
  ECB Prepares Legal Ground For Euro Rupture As Greek Crisis Escalates Telegraph.co.uk (17 Jan 10) Darrell Issa Seeks To Expand AIG Disclosure Inquiry To Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson And Goldman’s Friedman Zero Hedge (15 Jan 10) Merkel Says Greece Means Euro Faces ‘Difficult’ Time Bloomberg.con ( ...
  
• Will 2010 be the Year of the 10th Amendment?
  By Michael Boldin, “Already, over a dozen states are considering laws or state constitutional amendments that would effectively ban, or nullify, any proposed national health care plan in their state, and we expect that number to reach at least twenty in 2010,” said Michael Boldin, founder of the Te ...
  
• Paulson and Friedman Called to Testify
  The list of those called to testify for a House inquiry into the American International Group and its payouts to its counterparties just gained a few more high-wattage witnesses. Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary (left), and Stephen Friedman, the former chairman of the Federal Res ...
  

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 - Newswire

• Stepping up - University at Buffalo The Spectrum
  Stepping up University at Buffalo The Spectrum The president of Pakistan , Asif Ali Zardari, recognized the direness of the situation and began to mobilize military forces to combat the Taliban . ... and more »
  
• 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 . ...
  

AlterNet - Rights and Liberties

• Harrowing New Report Exposes Chilling Truth Behind ...
  The three "suicides" in June 2006 were not suicides at all. The men were killed during interrogations in a secret prison block and the murders were disguised to look like suicides.
  
• Getting to the Bottom of Why "They" Want ...
  Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas broke through the terrorism boilerplate by asking "why."
  
• Avatar Half-Tells a Story We Would All Prefer to F ...
  The real story of what happened to Native Americans is a story no one wants to hear, because of the challenge it presents to the way we choose to see ourselves.
  
• If MLK Were Around, He Wouldn't Care About Racial ...
  It’s the personal and dramatic aspects of race that obsess us, not the deeply rooted and currently active, political inequalities.
  
• Iraq War Vet Jailed For Writing Song Protesting St ...
  The military is claiming that Marc Hall "communicated a threat" through a rap song that angrily denounces the policy that has barred him from exiting the army.
  

Sideways News

• Exile on main tweet
  The Internet has undoubtedly changed how we interact with one another. The rise of social networking, the ubiquity of email and the steady adoption of smart phones as standard devices have changed how we communicate. Like many a journalist approaching a piece, I had to ask myself the six basic quest ...
  
• Nanoburrs to help fight heart disease
  Researchers at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a new method of treating patients with cardiovascular disease.
  
• Tablet PC market set to 'explode'
  The tablet PC has been earmarked as the next big thing in personal computing, kick-starting a £1 billion industry which will bridge the gap between bulky home computers and handheld smartphones. Business advisory firm Deloitte branded the tablet as a "goldilocks device" - not too big and not too sma ...
  
• The Infidel set to court controversy
  Comedian David Baddiel is making his cinematic debut with a controversial religious comedy which is bound to be the subject of much debate. The Infidel, which is due to be released in April, stars Omid Djalili as a British Muslim who is left reeling by the revelation that not only is he adopted, but ...
  
• White-tailed eagle chicks fly the nest
  White-tailed eagle numbers have tripled on the Isle of Mull after 10 chicks managed to survive last year's breeding season, according to conservationists. Nicknamed "flying barn doors" due to their size, the birds number 10 breeding pairs on the island, which has successfully seen 10 chicks reared ...
  

Fabius Maximus

• FM newswire for 19 January, hot articles for your ...
  Today’s links to interesting news and analysis… Disturbing news:  “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides’: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle“, Scott Horton, Harpers, January 2010 New Scientist’s Editors ask IPCC for explanation of their egregious error about melting of the Himalayan glaciers: ”Si ...
  
• Hidden truths about American health care
  Some hidden truths about the American health care system, lost amidst the noisy debate. It’s among our most serious problems, the largest single component of the $70+ trillion government liability (including Federal, State, local).  It will bankrupt us if not fixed. It’s the easiest of our major ...
  
• FM newswire for 18 January, extraordinarily good a ...
  Today’s links to interesting news and analysis… Vital information to to know about America (myths are good for kids, often lethal for adults):  “Conservatives and Economic Mobility“, Matt Zeitlin, at his blog, 10 January 2010 Perhaps it’s not the people; perhaps it’s the process:  “Politicia ...
  
• Stratfor: “The Khost Attack and the Intelli ...
  This Stratfor articles discusses a critical component of our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan:  intelligence.   At the end are links to other posts about this subject. As usual, Stratfor gives an authorative analysis on the several dimensions of this topic.  But the authors “bury the lede”, p ...
  
• FM newswire for 17 January, hot articles for your ...
  Today’s links to interesting news and analysis — with a new feature, daily good news! Provocative commentary:  “The COINdinistas: Last Year’s News“, Kelley B. Vlahos, AntiWar, 12 January 2010 Dumbest post of the week, even among right-wing propaganda:  “The High Cost of No Price“, Veronique ...
  

sibeledmonds - tweets

• sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Editorial Toon by Paul ...
  sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Editorial Toon by Paul Jamiol: TSA Body Scanners http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/01/18/jamiol-presents-11/
  
• sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Updates: Larry Wilkers ...
  sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Updates: Larry Wilkerson on Israel & MIC, Recent Polls: Liberties for Perceived Security…and more http://boilingfrogspost.com
  
• sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Post Updates & Weekly ...
  sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Post Updates & Weekly Round UP: Upcoming Exclusive-Explosive Videos & Noteworthy Headlines http://boilingfrogspost.com
  
• sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Podcast: Dr. Nafeez on ...
  sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Podcast: Dr. Nafeez on creation of Al-Qaeda, US Intelligence and Military Practices & More http://boilingfrogspost.com
  
• sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Show Presents Dr. Nafe ...
  sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Show Presents Dr. Nafeez Ahmed. Listen to the Podcast interview here: http://boilingfrogspost.com
  

WIRED Magazine | Science

• Cryosphere: Earth’s Icy Extremes Seen From Space
  > Floating sea ice covers about 11 million square miles of Earth’s oceans in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It plays an important role in regulating climate and is critical for many animals. Glaciers and Ice sheets cover around 10 percent of the land area on Earth. Every co ...
  
• Scientists Scramble to Analyze Haiti’s Seismic Ris ...
  Since the ground shook Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, on January 12 and sent the densely populated city into chaos, scientists have been harnessing every possible tool to quickly assemble a detailed picture of a region in which scientific research had already been difficult to conduct. “The question we are ...
  
• Despite iPods and Walkmen, Rates of Hearing Loss D ...
  Despite all the Walkmen, boomboxes, 8-tracks, iPods and Bluetooth headsets that have delivered raucous noise to the ears of Baby Boomers, hearing loss appears to be declining among adults. This counterintuitive finding from the first study of long-term changes in hearing loss is that for every five ...
  
• NASA Listens for Sign Mars Phoenix Survived Winter
  NASA will attempt to reestablish contact with the Mars Phoenix Lander on Monday. The Mars Odyssey orbiter will pass over the lander’s position (highlighted in the image above) 10 times a day for three straight days, listening for any sign that the craft survived the Martian winter’s freezing temper ...
  
• Satellite Photos of Haiti Before and After the Ear ...
  > The pictures and video from on-the-ground reports in Haiti following the magnitude 7 earthquake Tuesday are truly heartbreaking. But it is difficult to imagine the full extent of the damage to that country and its capital, Port-au-Prince, in particular. These new sate ...
  

The Progressive Realist

• Debating the Strategic Significance of Iran's Natu ...
  Following on from our recent post, “Iran, the Competition Over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21st Century”, we want to draw readers’ attention, first of all, to a very thoughtful comment on that post from Ed Chow, our friend and colleague at CSIS .  Ed generous ...
  
• New Iranian Ambassador To Iraq Is From Revolutiona ...
  Iraqi paper al-Zaman reported that Tehran has appointed a new ambassador to Iraq , Hassan Danafar. Like the outgoing ambassador, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, Danafar is from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force. Kazemi-Qomi was exposed as a member of the Revolutionary Guards in October 2007 by then c ...
  
• In Ukrainian Election Yanukovych Comes Out On Top, ...
  Ukrainian voters today braved frigid temperatures to narrow the field of presidential contenders to Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko.  These two candidates will face off in a run-off on February 7.  This outcome was consistent with pre-election polls and conventional wisdom.  However, accordi ...
  
• Guestimating Iran
  Tyler Cowen looks at the very bad estimates that experts were giving in the 1940s of when the USSR would be able to build a nuclear weapons and wonders “whether today’s estimates of Iranian production are any better.” Today’s estimates are almost certainly worse. Sovietologists had, at a minimum, v ...
  
• Radicalizing al-Awlaki
  The Jamestown Foundation has some interesting information on Anwar al-Awlaki , who probably played a role in radicalizing Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan and would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: “In November 2001, an American Muslim cleric told the Washington Post that he had no ...
  

TAPPED - The American Prospect

• Lightning Round: The Most Important Election in th ...
  Massachusetts Senate race roundup: Interim Senator Paul Kirk 's expiration date is to be disputed ; I'm not convinced that the election is a "referendum" on health-care reform; Scott Brown has dabbled in birtherism; temp workers and out-of-staters are assisting the Republican's campaign; and will t ...
  
• The Little Picture: Fierce Urgency Abroad.
  A mural featuring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Ali Air Base in Iraq, near the city of Nasiriyah. ( Flickr/ alohateam )
  
• Taking Public Responsibility for Public Stands.
  The Supreme Court decided to hear a case Friday to determine whether the names of those who signed a petition supporting a referendum to overturn a Washington state law extending marriage benefits to same-sex couples should be released to the public. The petitioners say they have had threats made a ...
  
• The Ideological Vacuum
  E.J. Dionne tells us something important: It's also striking that most conservatives, through a method that might be called the audacity of audacity, have acted as if absolutely nothing went wrong with their economic theories. They speak and act as if they had nothing to do with the large deficits ...
  
• More on Biden's Criticism of the Filibuster.
  Earlier, we mentioned that Vice President Joe Biden had some less than nice things to say about the filibuster, and tried to remind him that he's actually a relatively important government official who can do something about the problem. However, the accusations of hypocrisy that would accompany su ...
  

Andy Worthington

• Obama’s Countdown to Failure on Guantánamo
  Barring some frankly unattainable miracle, this will be the week that President Obama’s international credibility, regarding his promises to undo the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” detention policies, takes a nosedive. The President began well, freezing the much-criticized Military Commission ...
  
• Murders at Guantánamo: Scott Horton of Harper’s Ex ...
  It’s hard to know where to begin with this profoundly important story by Scott Horton, for next month’s Harper’s Magazine (available on the web here), but let’s try this: The three “suicides” at Guantánamo in June 2006 were not suicides at all. The men in question were killed during interrogations i ...
  
• BBC Interviews Matthew J. Olsen, the Head of Obama ...
  On a car journey to one of the “secure locations” where a Review Panel meets on a weekly basis to examine recommendations made by the Guantánamo Review Task Force — charged with deciding what to do with the remaining prisoners at Guantánamo — the BBC’s Jon Manel spoke to Matthew G. Olsen, th ...
  
• “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” – at th ...
  On Saturday February 6, 2010, Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, the directors of the new Guantánamo documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” will attend a screening of the film at the Human Rights, Human Wrongs Film Festival, at the Parkteatret, Oslo, and will take part in a Q&A sessi ...
  
• On YouTube: Guantánamo Guard and Ex-Prisoners Meet ...
  On Monday and Tuesday evenings, the BBC’s Newsnight ran an extraordinary two-part feature on Guantánamo, bringing former guard Brandon Neely over from the United States to meet — and apologize to — former prisoners Shafiq Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed, two of “The Tipton Three,” from the West Midland ...
  

Buzzflash

• Michael Winship: Global Cooling? Tell It to the Je ...
  BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY by Michael Winship There are certain newspaper headlines that catch your eye and stop you in your tracks. Like the New York Post's famous "Headless Body in Topless Bar." Or tabloid greats such as "Evil Cows Ate My Garden," "Double Decker Bus Found on Moon," and my personal ...
  
• Another Road Less Taken
  MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON BuzzFlash, As if being poor isn't enough of a tragedy suffered by many on this earth, the amazing strength we are seeing by the poor people of Haiti, while they wait patiently, with death scenes all around them, for life sustaining help from the outside, is most importan ...
  
• Rage Against the Vegetable Garden: Factory Farming ...
  BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White My father often tells a story of a chicken dinner he once prepared that involved a "whole fryer." I toddled into the kitchen, perhaps curious as to what Da-da was doing in there. He held the bird that would become our dinner up for to his little daughter to see: ...
  
• BuzzFlash Mailbag for January 15, 2010
  BUZZFLASH MAILBAG 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.buzzflash.com/contact/newstip.html . Subject: rush and pat dig deeper Hi ...
  
• Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith: Unions Call for ...
  BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith Over the past couple of years, the American labor movement has become an enthusiastic supporter of expanding "green jobs" that fight global warming. But policies to reduce carbon emissions scientists say are safe have been a harder pill ...
  

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

• Public opinion merits "the profoundest respect"
  In his New York Times column today , David Brooks (as he so often does) recites emerging conventional Washington wisdom, demanding that Democrats abandon health care reform if the Republicans today win the Massachusetts Senate seat: Many Democrats, as always, are caught in their insular liberal ...
  
• Congress takes a bold stand against surveillance a ...
  Fixating on and condemning abuses of other countries is one of the greatest weapons the U.S. Government wields for distracting attention away from its own transgressions:  like those gossip-obsessed individuals endlessly mucking around in and passing judgment on the personal lives of others as a me ...
  
• Krugman, Gruber and non-disclosure issues
  In the midst of my lengthy discussion yesterday of Cass Sunstein's proposal to "cognitively inflitrate extremist groups" by employing covert agents and secretly paying so-called "independent" analysts to tout the government line, I noted the recent controversy surrounding MIT Professor Jonathan Gru ...
  
• The creepy mindset behind Cass Sunstein's creepy p ...
  Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he "is in charge of "overseeing policies relating ...
  
• Harold Ford's warped understanding of "capitalism"
  (updated below) The incomparably horrific Harold Ford -- who sounds ready to challenge incumbent New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in a primary -- contradicted himself so egregiously in his cringe-inducing New York Times interview yesterday that it's hard to know whether one should ...
  

The BiPartisan Report

• Sheldon Whitehouse brings truth to the Senate floo ...
• Pesky facts spoil GOP’s mammogram arguments
• Those holier than thou Conservatives
• Dennis Kucinich: Enemy of the good, pursuer of the ...
• Betsy’s Bullshit, Round 2

Sciencebase

• Indian urban wetland heavy metal
  A study of heavy metal contaminants in the urban lakes of India, particularly around Bangalore have revealed that attempts at mitigation meant to remove these pollutants have not so far worked and may not be a long-term remedy for the problem. I’ve provided more detail on the analysis in the Atomic ...
  
• Alcoholic drug discovery truths
  As with much of medical science, the appearance of a fascinating research paper and an accompanying press release do not usually mean that a new pharmaceutical intervention, a medicine, is ready to be prescribed to patients on the very day that the paper appears. The drug discovery, research, and t ...
  
• Chemophobia and risk
  As a chemist by training, I’ve always been loath to give credence to unfounded criticism of synthetic chemicals that might stoke up chemophobia. Indeed, on several occasions I have written about how our bodies have evolved to cope with all kinds of chemicals regardless of whether they are synthetic ...
  
• Intute Hot Topics
  My latest news round up on the Intute website is now live: Getting a grip on catalytic troublemakers, detecting toxic compounds in chlorinated water, and a trip to the Martian lake district. Related Posts:Moon, Earthquakes, Chemical WeaponsBasic Chemistry ResourcesIntute hot topics in physical ...
  
• Scientists torn between cash and kudos
  With ailing banks propped up by billions in taxpayers’ money and nations rolling through the mud of economic recession is it any surprise that we get mightily frustrated to hear of their enormous bonuses and golden pension pots? Of course not… But, here’s a thought… As the lines drawn between com ...
  

Common Dreams-Progressive Newswire

• Rights Groups Urge Respect for Human Rights in Del ...
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 14, 2010 Rights Groups In the wake of the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, six prominent rights groups issued a statement today calling for relief efforts to be grounded in human rights principles, transparency, and respect for the human dignity of all Haitians. The gr ...
  
• Saudi Arabia: Criminal Justice Strengthened
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 14, 2010 Human Rights Watch (HRW) Saudi Arabia's appointed Shura Council has approved establishing a public defender program, a step that will strengthen the criminal justice system, Human Rights Watch said today. read more
  
• More than 13,000 Americans File Comments Asking th ...
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 14, 2010 Free Press With the approach of a midnight deadline tonight for comments on the Federal Communications Commission's proposed rules to safeguard the open Internet, thousands of individuals from all walks of life, as well as small businesses, civil rights groups ...
  
• Haiti: Access to Water and Sanitation Urgently Nee ...
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 14, 2010 Action Against Hunger (ACF) Less than 48 hours after a massive quake devastated parts of western Haiti, Action Against Hunger's teams already on the ground have fully mobilized to meet humanitarian needs. External emergency personnel from Action Against Hunger ...
  
• 'Crisis Fee' Good First Step, But Banks Owe Much M ...
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 14, 2010 US PIRG The "Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee" announced by President Barack Obama earlier today is a good first step toward paying taxpayers back for the money lent out under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  read more
  

Common Dreams-Views

• Haiti: Horsemen and Hoarse Women
  by Raj Patel It’s already bitterly ironic that Bill Clinton is the United Nation’s special envoy to Haiti, after the economic policy he imposed there to transform it into the Caribbean’s sweatshop. Now, President Obama has asked George Bush to lead fundraising efforts for relief in Haiti. After Bush ...
  
• We’ve Ignored King on War
  by Rusty Nelson On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Monday, hundreds of people will gather, greet friends, hear inspiring words, walk Spokane streets together and promote racial and community harmony. It's a genuine community event, but some of us experience it more personally because our lives, faith pe ...
  
• 'Easier to Build Monuments than to Make a Better W ...
  by Rebecca Burns This year, Americans will celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as researchers report that up to one in four black and Hispanic workers is under-employed and that approximately 90 percent of black children will use food stamps at least once before turning twenty. In this context, it ...
  
• 'Even Charles Manson Could Beat Him Now'
  by Gary Younge Every Wednesday at 4.30pm they come: a small steady human trickle rolling down a ravine in Prestonsburg, western Kentucky ­towards the Town Branch church. They come in pick-ups, on foot, alone and with families. Some stop for just a few minutes. Others linger. They come for food and w ...
  
• Israel and Egypt continue to Squeeze the Lifeblood ...
  by Ann Wright Two weeks ago, almost 2,000 internationals came to Egypt and Gaza in a massive show of civil society support for the people of Gaza.  1,362 persons representing 44 countries in the Gaza Freedom March and over 500 persons with the Viva Palestina Convoy let the people of Gaza know of the ...
  

Karl Burkart

• Boating through a wind farm
  Video footage from our tour of an off-shore wind farm in Denmark.
  
• Is 3/50 the new 350?
  Will the local economy movement replace the 'climate movement'?
  
• Homeowners: sell your own carbon credits
  My Emissions Exchange just sold its first carbon credit on behalf of the Wilsons, a family in Harrisburg, PA.
  
• Phosphorescing TV's to save 75% on electricity
  LPD is the new OMG in energy-efficient TV technology, using as much energy as a single light bulb.
  
• Pope emerges as new climate leader
  Pope Benedict XVI is turning out to be one of the greatest advocates for climate regulation.
  

Water Privatization

• Crisis of water is Saturday film focus in Mendham ...
  MENDHAM TWP. - A film and discussion on the world water crisis is the subject of a free community program planned for 5 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 16, at the Brookside Community Church, 8 E. Main St.
  
• Can You Trust Your Paper's Business Pages? (in Med ...
  Too often, the section panders to a corporate audience. Canadians can't afford that bias.
  
• Naomi Klein: How Corporate Branding Is Taking Over ...
  I'm not trying to understand what is happening at the mall but rather at the White House -- first under the presidency of George W. Bush and now under Barack Obama, the first US president who is also a ­superbrand.
  
• Unraveling community fabric (Fernandina Beach News ...
  There's an old Bob Dylan song called, "The Times, They Are A-Changin'" and indeed they are: if we're lost, our cars will tell us where we are, my students are texting wizards - fingers moving across their cells at warp speed, my friend, with his iPhone, keeps me informed of the Georgia and Alabama s ...
  
• Crisis of water is Saturday film focus in Mendham ...
  MENDHAM TWP. - A film and discussion on the world water crisis is the subject of a free community program planned for 5 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 16, at the Brookside Community Church, 8 E. Main St.
  

Guardian

• Hoon at the Iraq inquiry - LIVE
  Full coverage as the former defence secretary gives evidence to Sir John Chilcot's panel 10.49am: Chilcot asks whether the conditions were viewed as requirements that were necessary for the military action to be successful. Hoon says that's correct. 10.43am: Lyne asks what Blair told Hoon about his ...
  
• Japan Airlines 'nearing bankruptcy'
  JAL, once revered as a symbol of corporate Japan, attempts to free itself from multimillion-dollar debts Japan Airlines (JAL) was today reported to be hours away from bankruptcy – the first step in an attempt to free itself from the huge debts and poor management that have come to define a once-reve ...
  
• Cadbury agrees £12bn sale to Kraft
  • Live reaction to one of most controversial deals in years • Dan Roberts: 50 reasons to fight Kraft • Poll: should British companies be protected from foreign bids? • Interactive: Cadbury's 186-year history Cadbury today accepted defeat in its battle to stay independent by recommending a £12bn take ...
  
• Microlight pilot dies on charity flight
  Body of British man recovered from Channel near France after crash on first day of flight from UK to Australia A microlight pilot who set off to fly from the UK to Australia for charity has been killed on the first leg of his journey. Martin Bromage took off yesterday morning from Gloucestershire ai ...
  
• Prince William urged to help Aborigines
  Elders at community centre in Sydney present royal with petition calling for monarch's intervention to boost living conditions Prince William was urged to help improve living conditions for Aborigines on the first day of his trip to Australia today. The prince had been in Sydney for less than five h ...
  

McClatchey

• Allstate CEO sees flat economy, challenges ahead
  WASHINGTON — When Thomas Wilson, chairman and CEO of Allstate Insurance Co., scans the economic horizon, he sees a landscape that requires adaptation: Real estate remains in the dumps, car sales are sluggish, the unemployment rate is stubbornly high and the economy remains questionable.
  
• Cop charged with sex assaults had troubled backgro ...
  CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The hiring of police officer Marcus Jackson, who is accused of sexually assaulting five female motorists, has revealed flaws in how the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department screens officer candidates.
  
• Despite Obama campaign visit, Coakley seems besieg ...
  BOSTON — Before he died last August, Sen. Edward Kennedy called health care the "cause of my life."
  
• Obama gets an 'incomplete' in foreign policy for f ...
  WASHINGTON — A year after he took office to global acclaim, President Barack Obama has yet to translate his mantra of "change" into foreign policy success or to define how he'll use America's clout to advance its security, economic and political interests.
  
• Exxon Valdez spill's lingering oil may be explaine ...
  For nearly a decade, scientists have puzzled over the persistence of oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
  

BBC - Richard Black's Earth Watch

• Back to school on biodiversity
  I'm spending part of this week at biodiversity school. Not any ordinary school, mind, but Britain's Royal Society . This week it hosts a conference with the somewhat arcane title Integrating Ecosystem Services into Biodiversity Management - which doubles as the triennial conference of the InterAca ...
  
• Conservation contemplates the pre-emptive strike
  Among those who work on and care about the preservation of nature's plants and animals, the word "endangered" is an absolute touchstone. Endangered species will in general have more conservation resources devoted to them. There may be political or community or scientific action aimed at saving them ...
  
• Arctic roots of 'upside-down' weather
  It's cold in Kirkcaldy , freezing in Frankfurt and brass monkeys in Bryn Mawr... a winter spell with weather that's unusually - well - wintry. But not everywhere; in fact, other places in the Northern Hemisphere are seeing weather that's unseasonably warm. In Goose Bay in Newfoundland, it's barely ...
  
• 2010: Intruders on a biodiverse year?
  In a somewhat dank and dreary London back garden, I've just been watching grey squirrels carrying off and eating bits of stale Christmas cake that we'd left out for them and the birds. If we'd been quick enough with the camera, it would have made a fantastic picture, with the bushy-tailed squirrel ...
  
• Best wishes from a white land
  Just a quick note, today, to say "best wishes" to everyone about to celebrate Christmas or some other winter festival. Here in London, it's been refreshing (in more ways than one!) to see snow on the ground and kids out playing in it - a reminder of childhood days. For me, it's time to put the lap ...
  

Afghanistan Sun

• 'US deliberately delaying funds to pressurise ...
  Islamabad, Jan. 19 : Senior Pakistani officials have blamed the US of deliberately delaying the reimbursement under the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) to pressurise Islamabad to 'do more' against the Taliban and other banned extremist groups operating from inside the country.
  
• UNESCO Director-General deplores the death of Brit ...
  Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO, today expressed sorrow at the death of British journalist Rupert Hamer, who was killed on 9 January in the explosion of a roadside bomb when travelling wi...
  
• 'The Taliban Wants to Undermine the Handover& ...
  Taliban insurgents on Monday plunged the Afghan capital Kabul into chaos with a series of well-coordinated attacks across the city. Militarily, the offensive was a failure. But the propaganda value of...
  
• 'US deliberately delaying funds to pressurise ...
  Islamabad, Jan. 19 : Senior Pakistani officials have blamed the US of deliberately delaying the reimbursement under the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) to pressurise Islamabad to 'do more' against the Ta...
  
• Google postpones phone launch in China
  BEIJING (AP) - Google on Tuesday postponed the planned launch of its mobile phone in China amid a dispute with the government over Internet censorship and e-mail hacking that the search giant says may...
  

Futurismic

• Avatar techniques could turn back the clock on age ...
  Via SlashDot comes a brief soundbyte (or rather textbyte) from James Cameron, who posits that the pore-deep photorealistic CGI techniques that allowed him to create current box-office smash Avatar could be used to recreate the youthful looks of popular actors who’re getting on a bit… … Cameron’s f ...
  
• Monday sensawunda: diamond icebergs on Uranus
  If you’re struggling to lift your spirits out of the Monday slump, maybe a kick-in-the-pants for your imagination will help. So try this for size: Uranus and Neptune may be home to vast oceans of liquid diamond, upon which may be floating icebergs of the same material in its solid phase. Straight ou ...
  
• MIT’s Cornucopia: 3D printing with food
  Ah, those crazy geeks and boffins at MIT – is there any idea they can’t run with so far and long that it ceases to make any sense whatsoever? Here’s your trajectory: you already know about 3D printing, right? And that there’s a 3d printer called the CandyFab, which specialises in fabbing objects usi ...
  
• Mental illness: America’s biggest export?
  A fascinating (if slightly grim and worrying) article at the New York Times by Ethan Watters suggests that Western psychiatry may be successfully homogenising the mental illnesses of the entire planet, thanks to aggressive programs designed to export “psychiatric literacy”. The intent was good, but ...
  
• The Exhumation Factor: just when you thought reali ...
  … you find a story that says the UK’s Channel 4 is seeking terminally ill volunteers who are willing to undergo embalming and mummification, Ancient Egyptian style, after they’ve died. [image by broma] Granted, the piece is in the Daily Mail, whose knee-jerk revulsion toward such unpatriotic and li ...
  

geopolitics | geoeconomics

• Geithner's Dirty Little Secret
• Swine Flu
• Putin and the Geopolitics of the New Cold War: Or ...
• The Fake Oil Crisis of 1973
• Fossiles Erdöl
  
  

Whistleblowers Protection Blog

• Groups ask President Obama to pardon Birkenfeld
  Leading national and international anti-corruption groups have joined the National Whistleblowers Center (NWC) in a clemency campaign on behalf of UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld . In an open letter President Barack Obama, the groups request a presidential pardon for Mr. Birkenfeld, or commuta ...
  
• Whistleblower murdered in India
  Satish Shetty — who exposed many land scams in Maharashtra, India — was stabbed to death with swords on Wednesday during is morning walk.  Shetty, age 38, was a "Right to Information" (RTI) activist who began exposing corrupt land deals ten years ago. “This has become a trend and social activists ar ...
  
• EEOC whistleblower Ricardo Jones faces termination
  Last September, EEOC Investigator Ricardo Jones told The Black Star News that, “The EEOC is not investigating African-American complaints from New York to North Carolina.” At the time, Black Star News writer Donald Winfield predicted that the EEOC would fire Jones.  Now that prediction is coming tru ...
  
• Renner to keynote King Day event in Dover, Ohio
  I am pleased to announce here that I will be delivering the keynote address of the commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.  The event will begin at 7:00 p.m., this Monday, January 18, 2010, at the First Baptist Church, 140 Regent St., Dover, Ohio.  The local Tim ...
  
• California Court of Appeals reinstates whistleblow ...
  The California Court of Appeals for the Fourth Appellate District has ruled this week that a lower court erred, for the second time, in dismissing a lawsuit brought by David Ohton, a strength and conditioning coach at San Diego State University (SDSU). In 2003, Ohton had filed an official report det ...
  

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 having mo ...
  
• 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 same subjec ...
  
• 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 “Political Corr ...
  
• 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, the ...
  

Digital Journal

• Jim Rogers: Everything is coming together for Chin ...
  The Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Co-founder of the Quantum Fund, Jim Rogers, attemped to debunk Jim Chanos' remarks that China is in a bubble. Rogers also provided insight into the current state of the global financial system.
  
• AGO to display works of Francoise Sullivan
  The Art Gallery of Ontario will be displaying the works of Francoise Sullivan beginning February 10. Sullivan is the winner of the 2008 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO.
  
• Investers bid for National Post, Ottawa Citizen, M ...
  A group of investor's headed by former Liberal senator Jerry Grafstein are preparing a bid for CanWest's newspapers which have the largest circulations.
  
• High Fidelity (The Play) Opens in Toronto
  High Fidelity is a 1995 British novel by Nick Hornby that was later adapted into a 2000 film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Cusack. Now the cult classic makes its Canadian premiere as a theatrical musical.
  
• Junior hockey player faces suspension after devest ...
  Junior Team Canada captain, Patrice Cormier delivers a brain injury with an elbow to the head of an opponent in overtime.
  

End Homelessness | Change.org

• The Volunteer You Turned Away
  I honestly believe that today more than ever, people genuinely want to get involved in the fight to end homelessness. After CNN profiled me and my work , I received lots of e-mails from people wanting to help. As always, I suggested they support their local homeless services. I also gave the disclai ...
  
• Marching to Protect Homeless Women
  Contributor Israel Bayer is reporting all week about the homeless advocacy protest in San Francisco on January 20. Bayer is the director of Street Roots , a street newspaper in Portland, and a member of the board of the Western Regional Advocacy Project . What makes the action in San Francisco on J ...
  
• Why Homeless on Homeless Crime Is Hard to Prosecut ...
  The rise in the number of hate crimes against the homeless is well documented . Less well known are the challenges law enforcement officials face in punishing those responsible for homeless on homeless crimes. Take the case of Dawn Rae Davenport, who walked into a homeless camp in Portland she'd bee ...
  
• What Conservatives Get Wrong About Homelessness
  It's very easy to think that a discussion concerning homelessness should be apolitical. It's easy to argue that those of us who fight for the homeless are above the fray: we're for whoever is for the homeless. Why waste time arguing, one colleague writes , when fighting homelessness helps everyone? ...
  
• Join the Fight For Change in S.F. on January 20
  Over the next week, Street Roots , the Portland, Oregon grassroots newspaper of which I am the director, and Change.org will be highlighting the adventures of community organizations from up and down the West Coast as we prepare to come together in San Francisco on January 20 with one message: housi ...
  

Ceasefire.ca

• U.S. sights carry New Testament Jesus references
  From the Shooting-Ourselves-in-the-Foot Department: U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes Pentagon Supplier for Rifle Sights Says It Has ‘Always’ Added New Testament References By JOSEPH RHEE, TAHMAN BRADLEY and BRIAN ROSS Coded references to New Testament Bible passages ab ...
  
• Canadians support humanitarian aid/peacekeeping
  The earthquake in Haiti this week has created a humanitarian disaster, with ten of thousands of people killed or injured and millions requiring assistance. Canada and other countries around the world are scrambling to provide emergency aid. The federal government has already donated $5 million to em ...
  
• Civilian deaths increase in Afghanistan
  According to the United Nations, 2009 was the deadliest year for civilians in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban government in 2001. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 2009 reports that at least 2412 Afghan civi ...
  
• Canadians see climate change as greater threat tha ...
  According to a recent poll, Canadians are much more likely to view climate change as a “critical threat” to Canada’s “vital interests” than international terrorism. Commissioned by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI) and conducted by the Innovative Research Group Inc., t ...
  
• Canada and UN peacekeeping
  A new fact-sheet published by the Peace Operations Working Group documents the collapse in Canadian government support for UN peacekeeping since the early 1990s. As recently as 1992, Canada was the single largest contributor of personnel to UN peacekeeping missions. We have since fallen to 56th pla ...
  

Kevin Trudeau Show

• Climate Change Affecting BBC Weather Computer
  January 18, 2010 DailyMail.co.uk A BBC weather forecaster has suggested that the Met Office’s super-computer has a ‘warm bias’ which has stopped it predicting bitterly cold spells like the one we have just endured. Paul Hudson said the error may have crept into the computer’s climate model as a resu ...
  
• Baby Food Recall Due to Potential Bacterial Contam ...
  January 18, 2010 NewYorkInjuryNews.com Legal news for New York product liability attorneys–Nurture Inc. and the Food and Drug Administration recalled baby food for potential bacterial contamination. New York, NY (NewYorkInjuryNews.com) — The Food and Drug Administration advised all consumers to not ...
  
• Looking For Better Advertising Regulations Regardi ...
  January 18, 2010 Guardian By Alex Renton Heinz has received an embarrassing ticking-off from the Advertising Standards Authority for the nauseating TV advert for its baby milk, Nurture, above. The ASA said on Monday that the claim that the formula would support growth in the brain, body and immune s ...
  
• Ridiculous Story of the Week: ‘Microwaves He ...
  January 18, 2010 Visit Bulgaria By Anna Tomova Reporting a new advancement in late stage breast cancer treatment, Dr. William Dooley, Director, Surgical Oncology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Centre reports, a recent study reveals microwave heating of breast tissue, not only helps shrinks ...
  
• WHO Official Denies Over Hyping Flu Pandemic Exagg ...
  January 18, 2010 The Washington Post By Rob Stein A top World Health Organization official dismissed charges Thursday that the agency exaggerated the threat posed by the H1N1 virus and that it had been unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry to issue dire warnings about the swine flu pandem ...
  

Pambazuka News

• Katrina victims face eviction
  Following reports of federal government plans to repossess temporary housing from Katrina victims, the US Human Rights Network - http://www.ushrnetwork.org has called for the Obama administration to reverse this decision and provide those affected with substantive directive support.
  
• Extradition threat for Black Liberation activist
  As the US opens up political channels with Cuba, Black Liberation Army - http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/freedomfighters.html activist Assata Shakur faces extradition from the country where she has lived under political asylum since 1984, writes Paul Scott. While the mainstream media portrays Shakur h ...
  
• Stop senate renege on black farmer compensation
  ColorOfChange.org - http://www.colorofchange.org/farmers/?id=1842-429864 is campaigning to ensure that a US senate bill to compensate black farmers in the South for discrimination gives them the money they deserve, rather than capping the total amount available at $100 million, which would only cove ...
  
• Ekiti must hold free, fair elections
  The North America-based Ekiti Focus Group has strongly condemned election violence and intimidation in Nigeria’s Ekiti State, describing reported cases of ‘arson, maiming, ballot stuffing, ballot hijacking, and shooting’ as ‘barbaric acts’. In a statement the group called for ‘the release of true an ...
  
• Global: Why Haiti can't forget its past
  Thank you for the attention you have brought to the country of Haiti. In response to your New York Times op ed piece I wanted to widen your perspective a bit. I don't pretend to represent anyone. I've been living in Haiti since 1985. I grew up in New...
  

War in Context

• Unholy alliance at war with Obama’s foreign policy
  Unholy alliance at war with Obama’s foreign policy By Philip Stephens, Financial Times, January 14, 2010 Mr Cheney’s outburst [as he recently accused Barack Obama of being soft on terrorism]… is part of a bigger story in Washington. The aim reaches beyond self-exculpation for his lead role in th ...
  
• Netanyahu: We’re a small country with a big heart
  Netanyahu: We’re a small country with a big heart By Ronen Medzini, Ynet, January 17, 2010 Referring to the Israeli aid delegation sent to Haiti, the prime minister said that “the moment the dimensions of the disaster became known, I instructed the immediate deployment of an aid delegation on behalf ...
  
• Taliban launch bold attack in central Kabul
  Taliban launch bold attack in central Kabul By Dexter Filkins, New York Times, January 18, 2010 A team of militants launched a spectacular assault at the heart of the Afghan government Monday, with two men detonating suicide bombs and the rest fighting to the death only 50 yards from the gates of th ...
  
• Candidate bans worsen Iraq’s political turmoil
  Candidate bans worsen Iraq’s political turmoil By Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, January 18, 2010 Iraqi officials have done little to clarify who, exactly, has been disqualified from running for Parliament in March because of ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. They did, however, make clear on ...
  
• Iran prosecutor calls for death penalty against pr ...
  Iran prosecutor calls for death penalty against protesters AFP, January 18, 2010 An Iranian prosecutor called Monday for the death penalty against five protesters arrested during demonstrations staged as Shiites participated in solemn Ashura rituals last month, state media reported. The five were ac ...
  

Watts Up With That?

• The IPCC: Hiding the Decline in the Future Global ...
  More Insidious than the Himalayan error Guest post by: Indur M. Goklany Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings of the Times of London this weekend spotlighted an IPCC error of Himalayan proportions, namely, that, contrary to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, the Himalayan glaciers will not have melted ...
  
• Pachauri used TERI email account to conduct offici ...
  There’s quite a big story developing over Dr. Rajenda Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and how it botched it’s fourth IPCC assessment report (AR4) in 2007 with the inclusion of  non peer reviewed speculation of glacier melt by 2035 in violation of it ...
  
• Climategate: The CRUtape Letters now online at Ama ...
  If you tried earlier and could not purchase this great book, it is online now at Amazon and ready for purchase. Climategate: The CRUtape Letters (Volume 1) (Paperback) ~ Steven Mosher (Author), Thomas W. Fuller (Author) Climategate: The Crutape Letters (Volume 1) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #72,392 in B ...
  
• Searchable PDF created for NASA GISS FOIA document ...
  As we reported earlier: Newly released FOIA’d emails from Hansen and GISS staffers show disagreement over 1998-1934 U.S. temperature ranking Now thanks to the efforts of Richard Henry Lee, a searchable PDF document of those files has been set up. Download it here: NASA_FOIA_docs_OCR (PDF  – war ...
  
• Summer snow in Australia
  More from the “weather is not climate department”. Flurries hit southeast Australia as towns record their first-ever summer snowfalls excerpts from the story by: Rod Mcguirk, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CANBERRA, Australia – Australia is following its second-hottest year on record with extraordinary sn ...
  

Dandelion Salad

• Olbermann: Camp No, a black site within Gitmo
  http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ MoxNewsDotCom January 18, 2010 more about “GITMO SUICIDES NOT SUICIDES!“, posted with vodpod see Murders at Guantánamo: Scott Horton of Harper’s Exposes the Truth about the 2006 “Suicides” from the archives: Countdown: Mysterious “Suicides” At Gu ...
  
• Haiti: Guns or food?
  http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ TheRealNews January 18, 2010 Peter Hallward: Arrival of US military raises questions of motivations and memories of recent interventions For more visit www.therealnews.com more about “Haiti: Guns or food?“, posted with vodpod see Eva Golinger: The Streets Wo ...
  
• Wall Street’s Power Grab by Michael Hudson
  http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ by Michael Hudson www.globalresearch.ca, January 18, 2010 The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Hearings You almost could hear the bankers heave a sigh of relief when Haiti’s earthquake knocked the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings off the front pa ...
  
• Eva Golinger: The Streets Would Be Safer If People ...
  http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ RussiaToday January 18, 2010 more about “Eva Golinger: The Streets Would Be Sa…“, posted with vodpod see Chavez: US uses earthquake to occupy Haiti + Ortega warns of US deployment in Haiti A lootin’ an’ a burnin’? By William Bowles Disputes emerge ...
  
• Work Sucks!
  http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ TheLeftLibertarian January 16, 2010 more about “Work Sucks!“, posted with vodpod When I originally wrote this essay, I included Fordism as other aspect of the dehumanizing of labor. It was too long so I cut it but you can still see the remnants. This video is ...
  

Your New Reality

• No title
  2009 : The Your New Reality Year In Review Here's a roundup of the more unusual and/or less known stories I've written about or linked to on this blog through 2009, with a couple of essays thrown in. The 'Best Of' January/February 2009 (in no particular order) : "I'm A Missile, I'm Here To Kill Y ...
  
• No title
  Afghanistan : "International Forces" Handcuffed Then Executed Children An extraordinary series of claims leveled at western military forces in Afghanistan that have received a suspiciously thin amount of mainstream media coverage. News of the massacre was no doubt overshadowed by the priority of c ...
  
• No title
  Paywalls Will Dry Out The News Junkies By Darryl Mason Here are 16 stories I've now got open in various windows and tabs. I intend to read them all, but there doesn't seem to be enough time to soak it all up, so much fresh news and information flooding in, constantly, sometimes feel stressed when ...
  
• No title
  Contact : .
  
• No title
  So Many Holocausts.... George Monbiot has a read of David Stannard's American Holocaust : (the book) ­documents the greatest acts of genocide the world has ever experienced . In 1492, some 100 million native people lived in the Americas. By the end of the 19th century almost all of them had been e ...
  

Wired - Science

• Cryosphere: Earth’s Icy Extremes Seen From Space
  > Floating sea ice covers about 11 million square miles of Earth’s oceans in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It plays an important role in regulating climate and is critical for many animals. Glaciers and Ice sheets cover around 10 percent of the land area on Earth. Every co ...
  
• Scientists Scramble to Analyze Haiti’s Seismic Ris ...
  Since the ground shook Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, on January 12 and sent the densely populated city into chaos, scientists have been harnessing every possible tool to quickly assemble a detailed picture of a region in which scientific research had already been difficult to conduct. “The question we are ...
  
• Despite iPods and Walkmen, Rates of Hearing Loss D ...
  Despite all the Walkmen, boomboxes, 8-tracks, iPods and Bluetooth headsets that have delivered raucous noise to the ears of Baby Boomers, hearing loss appears to be declining among adults. This counterintuitive finding from the first study of long-term changes in hearing loss is that for every five ...
  
• NASA Listens for Sign Mars Phoenix Survived Winter
  NASA will attempt to reestablish contact with the Mars Phoenix Lander on Monday. The Mars Odyssey orbiter will pass over the lander’s position (highlighted in the image above) 10 times a day for three straight days, listening for any sign that the craft survived the Martian winter’s freezing temper ...
  
• Satellite Photos of Haiti Before and After the Ear ...
  > The pictures and video from on-the-ground reports in Haiti following the magnitude 7 earthquake Tuesday are truly heartbreaking. But it is difficult to imagine the full extent of the damage to that country and its capital, Port-au-Prince, in particular. These new sate ...
  

Israeli Occupation Archive

• Mustafa Barghouthi: Israel using negotiations as c ...
  Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouti said on Sunday that returning to negotiations with Israel is not possible until a complete settlement standstill, including... The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, ...
  
• Israel, Turkey Seek to Repair Ties
  Analysts say it is no surprise that the main effort to restore the relationship is coming from the two militaries, which have formed its bedrock ever since the alliance was formed in the mid-1990s...... The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, ...
  
• Akiva Eldar: Israel’s compassion in Haiti can’t hi ...
  A few days before Israeli physicians rushed to save the lives of injured Haitians, the authorities at the Erez checkpoint prevented 17 people from passing through in order to get to a Ramallah... The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, now in ...
  
• Open Shuhada Street! February 25, 2010 Internation ...
  On February 25, 2010 activists around the world will participate in an international day of action to raise awareness about the issue of lack of freedom of movement in the Palestinian city of Hebron.... The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, ...
  
• Palestinian activists urge Hamas to probe own Gaza ...
  "Whereas the bulk of the (Goldstone) report addressed violations by Israel, the occupying power, it also considered violations by Palestinian armed groups and the Palestinian authorities in Gaza and... The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, ...
  

Ria Novosti - Military

• Russia suspends flights of Su-27 fighters after cr ...
  Russia has suspended SU-27 Flanker fighter jet flights until the cause of a deadly crash earlier in the week is determined, a Defense Ministry official told RIA Novosti on Saturday.
  
• Search for missing Su-27 fighter
  
  
• CIA chief confirms deaths of 7 agents in Afghanist ...
  CIA chief Leon Panetta has confirmed in an official statement that seven CIA operatives were killed and six others wounded in a recent terrorist attack in eastern Afghanistan.
  
• N. Korea urges dialogue on nuclear-free Korean Pen ...
  North Korea stressed dialogue in improving relations with the United States as a key step toward a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula in a New Year's message on Friday
  
• Russia's Nerpa sub passes final trials
  Russia's Nerpa nuclear attack submarine, damaged in a fatal accident during tests in November last year, has successfully passed final trials.
  

NewsWise

• Veteran Meetings and Exhibits Director Joins Ameri ...
  Christopher J. Wehking, CMP has been hired as the new Director of Meetings and Exhibits at the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Wehking will join the ASA January 25.
  
• Expert Says Fixing America's Infrastructure is Mor ...
  The nation's top lobbyist remarked recently that America's infrastructure is "running out of capacity," and that it is time to boost public investment in infrastructure, including the world beneath, to help catapult the country out of the worst recession in 70 years. To upgrade existing lines in nee ...
  
• Appendicitis May be Related to Viral Infections
  Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center evaluated data over a 36-year period from the National Hospital Discharge Survey and concluded in a paper appearing in the January issue of Archives of Surgery that appendicitis may be caused by undetermined viral infection or infections, said Dr. Edwar ...
  
• Drowsiness, Staring, and Other Mental Lapses May S ...
  Older people who have "mental lapses," or times when their thinking seems disorganized or illogical or when they stare into space, may be more likely to have Alzheimer's disease than people who do not have these lapses, according to a study published in the January 19, 2010, print issue of Neurology ...
  
• In Vitro Pregnancy Rates Improve with New Device T ...
  Gently rocking embryos while they grow during in vitro fertilization (IVF) improves pregnancy rates in mice by 22 percent, new University of Michigan research shows. The procedure could one day lead to significantly higher IVF success rates in humans.
  

Intel Trends

• Afghan mujahideen military operations reports: Att ...
  The following Afghan mujahideen military operations report pertains to the attack on Kabul, 18-JAN-2010. Ref: BBC news report Afghan capital Kabul hit by Taliban attack. Title:   Full report of yesterday's operations Source:  Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Reported by Zabihullah Mujahid January ...
  
• BURMA: Wa army training 'thousands' of civilians
  The following article is from Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), Oslo. Wa army training 'thousands' of civilians ©   DVB January 18, 2010 Military training is being given by a Burmese ceasefire group to thousands of civilians in Shan state amid tensions between the ceasefire group and the Burmese a ...
  
• IntelTrends - 18-JAN-2010
  'All terrorists who stormed Taj Hotel were Indians' PTI, 18 Jan Mumbai: Continuing his flip-flop, Pakistani gunman Ajmal Kasab today told a special court trying the 26/11 attacks case that all the four terrorists who stormed Taj hotel were Indians. Iranian VP Meets Hezbollah Secretary General Fars, ...
  
• How Financiers of Terrorist Attacks Against Somali ...
  The following commentary appeared in Somaliland Press. How Financiers of Terrorist Attacks Against Somaliland Enjoy Western Lifestyle ©  Dalmar Kaahin Source:   Somaliland Press January 17, 2010 Although Alshabaab terrorists' horrific attacks steal attention from the other deadly groups in Somal ...
  
• IntelTrends 17-JAN-2010
  Harakat Al-shabab Mujahideen hails Islamists' demonstration in Nairobi Shabelle, 17 Jan - - - Harakat Al-shabab Mujahideen officials have Sunday held a press conference in the Somali capital Mogadishu and hailed the demonstrations organized by Islamists in Kenya and against a cleric detained in K ...
  

Organic Consumers.org

• Cash to Cool the Planet
  One practical and philosophical controversy is whether rural communities that live in and around the forests ought to be removed from sensitive ecosystems or aided in living among the trees. If they stay, should they be required to leave off traditional extractive livelihoods or be supported in thei ...
  
• Transgene from GM Corn Detected in Soil Animals
  Scientists in Canada have found evidence of the transgene present in genetically modified Roundup Ready corn in various soil-dwelling animals, pointing to "serious implications for environmental health and human safety." Click here to read this article
  
• Scientist Finding Many Negative Impacts of Roundup ...
  Robert Kremer is a microbiologist with the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and an adjunct professor in the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Missouri. He is co-author of one of five papers published in the October 2009 issue of The European Journal of Agron ...
  
• Proposed Dose Limits on Vitamin Supplements in Eur ...
  A critical study published in the scientific journal Toxicology casts serious doubts over the methods being considered by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Commission to limit dosages of vitamin and mineral food supplements across the European Union (EU). Click here to read ...
  
• An FDA Ban on Genetically-Engineered Milk is Twent ...
  In May 2007, Samuel S. Epstein, MD, Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, and four other leading national experts on genetically-engineered, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) milk filed a Petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), "Petition Seeking the Withdrawal of the New An ...
  

fotoFrontera

• 55 ejemplos de foto manipulación by tspot.pl
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. La foto manipulación o creación de efectos especiales sobre las imágenes, siempre ha sido para muchos algo muy interesante. En gran parte, se debe a que es justamente ahí donde se encuentra la fusión de la imaginación co ...
  
• 33 obras majestuosas de Christian Hecker
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. Si alguien desconoce por completo los límites de la imaginación, es el artista Christian Hecker , quien al igual que Raphael Lacoste y Dylan Cole , nos permiten transportarnos a un mundo paralelo donde la fantasía se fun ...
  
• 32 artworks de Dylan Cole en Presidia Creative
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. Hace algunos días, les recomendaba las excelentes obras artísticas de Raphael Lacoste a través del sitio PresidiaCreative. Continuando con esta saga de artistas, me permito traerles el día de hoy la magia y creatividad d ...
  
• ScrapBook en Blogspot
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. ScrapBook , es un blog alojado en blogspot que tiene un buen de fotos bien bonitas. Al principio, creí que era un sitio parecido a The Sartorialist , pero no es así porque este blog no sólo se dedica al universo de la mo ...
  
• Foto Reportajes: Fotografías de Montreal
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. Durante una de las tantas caminatas que hace con frecuencia el Reportero sin Fronteras , hoy tiene la oportunidad de compartir con ustedes una serie de imágenes de Montreal, Canadá . La nieve cubre las casas y los autos ...
  

Executive Intelligence Review

• Shut Down `Londonistan's' Terrorist Operations Now ...
  By Michele Steinberg Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  
• Next Comes Hyperinflation
  By John Hoefle Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  
• Russia Seeks To Develop Far East; Invites U.S. Rol ...
  By Rachel Douglas Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  
• The Case for Impeachment of President Barack Obama
  By Nancy Spannaus Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  
• The Case of Obama: Tantamount to Treason
  By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 15, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 2
  

Center for a Livable Future

• Fish and Health: More to the Story
  I’d like to expand a little on my recent interview for a CNN piece by Elizabeth Landau entitled “Farmed or wild fish: Which is healthier?” At face value, this question can partialy be answered by comparing the nutritional content in farmed and wild fish and weighing the health benefits of fish consu ...
  
• My Response to Caitlin Flanagan’s Article “Cultiva ...
  This post is in response to the recently published article in the Atlantic Magazine by Caitlin Flanagan titled, “Cultivating Failure.” Ms. Flanagan makes the argument that the school garden movement presently building in California and nationwide is somehow stripping students of valuable time to bec ...
  
• The Ethanol Policy Trap
  Mention the biofuel ethanol from corn in anything but glowing terms in Iowa five years ago and one had probably best apply for witness protection. Created by political pressure from the corn and the high  fructose corn syrup industry with the lobbying from ADM and later other corn related lobby grou ...
  
• Meatless Monday Begins Week of Volunteer Events in ...
  Charm City government leaders are following the lead of the Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) and fully embracing the Meatless Monday campaign. Members of the the Mayor’s office, city employees and BCPS officials visited Hampstead Hill Academy this Monday to serve students meat-free meals. Accord ...
  
• Is the UK Abandoning the Precautionary Principle o ...
  The latest posting by FoodforeThought summarizes recent debate in the United Kingdom about the role of genetically modified (GM) crops in planning for future food security. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) report, Food 2030 was released at the Oxford Farming Conference. ...
  

Norwegianity

• Bonus links (because you’ve been bad)
  I love all the focus on the Coakley-Brown race in Massachusetts. It reminds me that the only thing special about off off-year elections is that they attract the attention of every political junkie in the country. Quite honestly, I think there are more of us than there are people who will actually vo ...
  
• Gitmo: worse than even I thought
  A stunning exposé on Gitmo from Scott Horton. Part one reviews what we already knew, but parts two through ten explain why nothing short of Nuremberg style trials can ever erase the stain of Guantanamo from American military history. Three murders of three men who should have never been at Gitmo, an ...
  
• Dog poses with flag, Strib instantly polls results
  Norm “Iranians buy my suits and give money to my wife” Coleman comes to his senses, poses for a Patch Adams flag picture, and announces he’s not going to run for governor this year, mostly because the teabaggers hate hate hate him. The Strib immediately runs an instant poll to talk him out of it. So ...
  
• Hitler’s children
  Last year when the UN was getting ready to consider the Goldstone Report, a thuggish aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that if the report was approved, Israel would turn the West Bank into another Gaza. Given that Gaza is Dachau without the ovens, I t ...
  
• None dare call it bigotry
  Your weekly hate list wrapped around a brick: African-Americans harassment Swastikas scrawled on churches religious books burned Homes defaced people hounded from their jobs Ku Klux Klan neo-Nazis fundamentalist right-wing hate groups bullying brown-shirt intimidation and harassment fear bullying b ...
  

The Seferm Post

• Haiti New Reality: Haitians Losing Limbs After Ear ...
  "What will I do? How will I manage to survive on my own with just one leg?" Vital asked, lying lethargically on a metal bed frame at Renaissance Hospital, which Cuban doctors founded for eye care in 2006 and swiftly converted to a trauma unit after last Tuesday's quake.
  
• Obama To Boost Funding For U.S. Education
  Obama will ask Congress for $1.35 billion in his 2011 budget proposal to extend an education grant program for states, although the Education Department remains months away from announcing its first round of awards, senior administration officials said. Obama was outlining the budget proposal at a F ...
  
• Australian Open Tennis Championships 2010: UPDATE
  Roger Federer, Urszula Radwanska, Serena Williams, Venus Williams take center stage in Australian Open Tennis Championships 2010 Grand Slam
  
• Australian Open: Serena Williams Defeats Urszula R ...
  Serena Williams demolished Poland's Urszula Radwanska 6-2, 6-1 - Australian Open Tennis 2010
  
• Links for 2010-01-16 [del.icio.us]
  Lucky Winner!!! What would you do if you're this lucky winner of £26 million 'Euromillions Jackpot'?
  

The World We Live In

• Indian army doesn’t posses ability to fight in nig ...
  NEW DELHI: While the Indians celebrate 62nd Army Day, country’s Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor, just after a couple of weeks of announcing a new war doctrine of Indian army to eliminate Pakistan and China in matter of hours even if it has to fight on simultaneous fronts, outrageously admitted I ...
  
• Pakistan ahead of India in literacy rate: UN
  UNITED NATIONS: A United Nations agency UNFPA has said in its report that India lags behind Pakistan in literacy rate as the literacy rate here in Pakistan is much more higher than that of its rival neighbor. According to report, total 32.3 percent male while 60.4 percent female aged above 15 years ...
  
• US Not To Interfere If Zardari Goes | The News
  WASHINGTON: The United States further distanced itself from the beleaguered Zardari government on Wednesday when the State Department stated clearly that if there was a legal judgment that changes the status of the government, “it is really an internal matter for Pakistan.” State Department spo ...
  
• US spies: Israel or UK forged nukes report on Iran
  Philip M. Giraldi, PhD, is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer. He was also foreign policy advisor to Ron Paul during his last presidential run. US intelligence sources have confirmed Iran’s assertions that a document published by a British daily about Tehran’ ...
  
• Detained Americans had nuclear power site map | Th ...
  Police are trying to determine whether five Americans detained in Pakistan had planned to attack a complex that houses nuclear power facilities. The young Muslim men, who are from the Washington DC area, were arrested in Pakistan earlier this month. Pakistani police and government officials have ma ...
  
  
  
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  To Do

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  Solar Power Advocates Hopeful for 2010

  New York Times (blog)

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 13 minutes ago

  By ROBERT P. WALZER Interstate Renewable Energy Council California is expected to continue its first place lead in solar power development in the coming ...

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  India Unveils Renewable Energy Trade Rules

  Wall Street Journal

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 2 hours ago

  The instruments--called renewable energy certificates--will help boost power generation from water, wind, solar and other such clean energy sources in the ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  IR : Iran Announces New Renewable Energy Facilities

  Instal Biz

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 5 hours ago

  OPEC member Iran intends to implement new renewable energy power facilities with a total installed capacity of 2000 MW in the next five years to supply ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Ofgem Approves Power Grid Spend Rise

  New York Times

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 3 hours ago

  "The funding proposals will enable vital new generation, much of it renewable, to be connected to the grid," an acting senior partner for transmission at ...

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  Human Habitat

  ecology water energy

  Study: Minke whale deaths don't help other species

  USA Today (blog)

  - Jan 18, 2010

  - 17 hours ago

  Published in the current Molecular Ecology journal, the study led by Kristen Ruegg of Stanford University looked at 52 whale meat samples from Japanese ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Butterflies struggling with climate change and development

  San Jose Mercury News

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 6 hours ago

  "There is nowhere to go except heaven," said Arthur Shapiro, a UC Davis professor of evolution and ecology. During the past 35 years, Shapiro has built the ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Boise paper mill to examine its 'footprint'

  Mid Columbia Tri City Herald

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 2 hours ago

  The company on Highway 12 is participating in an "Industrial Footprint Project" sponsored by the Washington Department of Ecology and funded by a grant from ...

  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Lakeshore rules might change

  TheNewsTribune.com

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 7 hours ago

  The open house runs from 5 to 8 pm in the council chambers of City Hall, 420 College St. SE The state Department of Ecology is requiring all 39 counties and ...

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  Water Power

  water floods pollution

  New Calif. water policy aims to save state's key estuary, but critics say it ...

  Los Angeles Times

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 3 hours ago

  Numerous theories abound for the decline, from too much water being pumped from the delta for drinking and irrigation to the use of agricultural chemicals. ...

  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Russians plunge into icy water for Epiphany

  Sin Chew Jit Poh

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 5 hours ago

  A Christian Orthodox worshipper immerses herself in a big plastic container filled with water pumped out from the Jordan River during Orthodox Epiphany ...

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  N. Indiana town's water declared state's tastiest

  Chicago Tribune

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 5 hours ago

  AP MONON, Ind. - A northern Indiana town has bragging rights these days after its drinking water was declared the tastiest in the state. ...

  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  NH dentists seek fluoridation of water

  Boston Globe

  - Jan 19, 2010

  - 6 hours ago

  About 40 percent of New Hampshire residents on public water supplies receive fluoridated water, the lowest percentage in New England. ...

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