24 Jan - RSS SnapShot!

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

IPS - Inter Press Services

• Q&A: ‘With More Political Space, Women ...
  PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 25 (IPS) - As a political activist and president of the women’s wing of the Awami National Party (ANP), Zahira Khattak has been working relentlessly for the empowerment of women in the war-torn North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan. She believes that by empoweri ...
  
• WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Back Seat Driver of Social Ch ...
  RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 24 (IPS) - The World Social Forum (WSF) is only "a tool" and must not be confused with the global movement for another world, says Chico Whitaker, one of the founders of this meeting which is celebrating its tenth year with a seminar to assess its track record Jan. 25-29, in ...
  
• WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Positive Reviews, On Balance
  LISBON, Jan 23 (IPS) - Nearly a decade after its inception, and in spite of some reverses, on balance the World Social Forum (WSF) has proved a resounding success as a platform for planet-wide debate, from the point of view of the people most affected by the world's problems.
  
• CLIMATE CHANGE: After Copenhagen, Back to Basics ...
  NEW DELHI, Jan 24 (IPS) - As environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) prepared to meet in the Indian capital on Sunday to draw up a post-Copenhagen strategy, there were great expectations on the role they could play in pushing a consensus on how the world shoul ...
  
• MAURITIUS: These Women Chose the Sea
  PORT-LOUIS, Jan 23 (IPS) - She cannot swim, but Marie-Claite Hector is not afraid of the ocean. The 53-year-old pushes her small boat with all her strength towards the blue lagoon, starts the engine, and sets out to sea.
  

Scoop - NZ

• Tuvalu tells it how it is on Climate Change
  Climate Change negotiator for Tuvalu,Ian Fry tells about the whys and wherefores and the tactics and the problems  »  PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews
  
• Six Million in the US With no Income but Food Stam ...
  Some six million Americans-one in 50 people in the US-are living on no income other than $100 or $200 a month in food stamps, according to an analysis of state data by the New York Times. The number of people who reported that they are unemployed and receive no cash aid-neither welfare, nor unemploy ...
  
• Illinois foreclosures up 32% in 09
  The number of Illinois properties that got a foreclosure-related notice rose almost 32 percent last year, more than the increase for the country.A total of 131,132 properties in the state faced actions such as default notices, scheduled foreclosure auctions and bank repossessions in 2009, according ...
  
• US Mortgages: walking away becomes mainstream.
  As many Americans begin to realize that it will be many years (if not decades) before their houses are worth what they owe on them, the idea of walking away from your mortgage is going mainstream.Not surprisingly, the mortgage industry is doing everything it can to prevent this, including telling ho ...
  
• Obama's risky bet on Massachusetts race
  President Barack Obama will travel to Massachusetts on Sunday afternoon to campaign for Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley - a risky bet that puts Obama's own credibility on the line on behalf of a weak candidate in hopes of averting a loss that would shatter the party's 60-seat Senate super ...
  

Independent ( London )

• Obama recalls key aide to avoid rout in elections
  Barack Obama has called back the architect of his insurgent campaign for the presidency to take charge of Democrat efforts to avoid a rout in this year's mid-term elections.
  
• Afghan poll delayed due to 'lack of funds'
  To the relief of Afghanistan's Western partners, the country's election commission yesterday pushed back parliamentary polls by four months, blaming inadequate security and a shortage of funds.
  
• Iceland willing to talk over £3bn Icesave debt
  Iceland has approached several governments about the possibility of mediating talks on the more than $5bn (£3.2bn) it owes Britain and the Netherlands after the island's banking crisis, Icelandic media reported yesterday.
  
• Sailing: 16-year-old girl sets out on solo global ...
  A 16-year-old has set out to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone.
  
• Beer and biscuits saved man trapped in rubble for ...
  The time for miracles seemed to have passed but, 11 days after the earthquake that flattened large parts of Port-au-Prince, Wismond Exantus was pulled from under the rubble without a single broken bone, without even a fracture.
  

CASMII - Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

• Stop Amir Taheri's Lies
  Summary: Amir Taheri Taheri’s piece of text, manufactured by his strong yet equally tasteless imagination, at best does not make any sense. At worst can become fuel to yet another war-making propaganda machine in our war-torn region. It remains the responsibility of the informed public to defend ...
  
• Russia warns against rushing to Iran sanctions
  Summary: Lavrov MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia on Friday cautioned world powers against rushing toward sanctions to punish Iran for spurning a U.N.-brokered proposal to send its uranium abroad for processing. source: Reuters read more
  
• Engineer's arrest exposes US pursuit of Iranians
  Summary: The Iranian engineer flew to Paris with his wife, intending to see the Eiffel Tower and other tourist sites. Instead, he was arrested at the airport under a U.S. warrant — suspected of evading export controls to buy U.S. technology for Iran's military. source: AP read more
  
• Iran sets condition for attending Afghan confab
  Summary: Iran said Thursday it would take part in a conference on Afghanistan in London providing its viewpoints are fully taken into consideration. source: Press TV read more
  
• Iran denies rejecting UN offer
  Summary: Mottaki TEHRAN: Iran has not rejected a UN-brokered offer to exchange enriched nuclear fuel but it wants a staged swap rather than a wholesale handover of most of its stockpile, foreign ministry officials said in comments published Thursday. source: The News read more
  

The Daily Galaxy

• Pandora's Astrobiologist: Avatar's Dr. Grace Augus ...
  "There are many dangers on Pandora, and one of the subtlest is that you may come to love it too much" Dr. Grace Augustine is a xenobotanist in charge of the Avatar Program, who arrived several years before the avatar...
  
• China Eyes Antarctica: Now Mapping Bottom of the W ...
  Chinese scientists have shifted its focus from mapping the moon to completing the world's first land cover map of the Antarctica at the end of this year. The result will be the most accurate map of the continent ever published....
  
• The Day Earth Survived Its Greatest Stellar Attack ...
  It came suddenly from the distant reaches of the Constellation Sagittarius, some 50,000 light years away. For a brief instant, a couple of tenths of a second, on December 27, 2004 an invisible burst of energy the equivalent of half...
  
• A Cure for the Common Cold? Geneticists Close to ...
  "We still can't cure the common cold", the rallying cry of anyone trying to belittle progress. You'll notice that these people don't live in caves, walk to work, die of smallpox or eat anything they caught themselves, but it makes...
  
• The Haiti Response: Is the Human Species Hardwired ...
  The world's incredible outpouring of help to thhe people of Haiti raises the queestion: are we evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive? A research team at the University of California, Berkeley, says...
  

Natural News

• What "skeptics" really believe about vaccines, med ...
  (NaturalNews) In the world of medicine, "skeptics" claim to be the sole protectors of intellectual truth. Everyone who disagrees with them is just a quack, they insist. Briefly stated, "skeptics" are in favor of vaccines, mammograms, pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy. They are opponents of nutritiona ...
  
• Music exposure helps premature babies gain weight ...
  (NaturalNews) Babies born prematurely are at increased risk for a host of health problems. But now research by Israeli scientists has uncovered a non-drug way to help preemies gain weight and grow stronger quickly. A new study by Dr. Dror Mandel and Dr. Ronit Lubetzky of the Tel Aviv Medical Center, ...
  
• Birth Drugs Impair Breastfeeding
  (NaturalNews) Drugs commonly given during hospital labor may impair a woman's ability to breastfeed, according to a study conducted by researchers from Swansea University and published in the journal BJOG ."A lot of women are not given enough information about the medications that might be given to ...
  
• Shorty Awards exposed as rigged contest; legitimat ...
  (NaturalNews) NaturalNews has learned that the Shorty Awards are being operated fraudulently and that the voting results are fixed to exclude candidates who the editors at the Shorty Awards don't want to win. In addition, the Shorty Awards, by refusing to police its own contests, actually encourages ...
  
• Health Ranger invites product companies to be inte ...
  (NaturalNews) This March 12 - 14, I'll be in Anaheim, California covering the Expo West show. I'll be there specifically looking for new products to cover and new companies to interview. My findings will be reported on NaturalNews.com, which is now reaching roughly two million unique readers each mo ...
  

TheGallopingBeaver

• Starry, starry night
  MICHAEL YON is an enterprising and intrepid reporter who has been out in Afghanistan for a number of years, covering that sorry situation that the troops are contending with. A few months back, I posted his coverage of British troops in their efforts to pacify their assigned areas. Currently, his si ...
  
• Duct Tape
  During a private "fly-in" fishing excursion in the Alaskan wilderness, the chartered pilot and fishermen left a cooler and bait in the plane. And a bear smelled it. This is what the bear did to the plane:  The pilot used his radio and had another pilot bring him 2 new tires, 3 cases of duct tape, ...
  
• Vancouver Rally For Democracy photos
  Pix from me and West End Bob -click 'em to enlarge . Canwest : Thousands turn out for Vancouver rally to protest PM Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament. " Thousands ", says Canwest, with 25,000 nation-wide. . Look at all those handmade signs! Very upbeat mood throughout, passing cars ...
  
• "No Prorogue" Day
  Antonia Zerbisias in The Star : Canadians can win at numbers game "It was Woody Allen who said that 80 per cent of success is showing up. As CBC's Rick Mercer, who gets it, ranted Tuesday, "Yes, we (Canadians) are apathetic but, the minute somebody tries to use our apathy against us, suddenly we st ...
  
• Bamboo Bikes
  DER SPIEGEL has an interesting article on bicycles that are greener than average, because their frames are fabricated from bamboo and hemp fibers and resin. Originally big-buck high-tech enthusiast items, they are moving to the third world as a cost-effective method of manufacture. Carbon fiber and ...
  

Media Matters for America

• Quick Fact: Wallace ignored Cornyn's reconciliatio ...
  Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) about the "political repercussions" Democrats would face if they were to use reconciliation to pass health care reform. Wallace made no mention of any "political repercussions" Cornyn faced for embracing reconciliation in order to pas ...
  
• George Will's torrent of global warming misinforma ...
  In a Washington Post column, serial global warming misinformer George Will said that the "menace of global warming" is "elusive" and claimed that an acknowledged error about Himalayan glaciers in a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) constituted "another dollop of ev ...
  
• Hannity falsely claims Abdulmutallab was not inter ...
  Sean Hannity falsely claimed that alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was not interrogated, stating, "we have an underwear bomber that has information, that wanted to kill 300 Americans and we don't interrogate the guy and we let him lawyer-up." In fact, FBI Director Robert Muell ...
  
• Hopeless: Fox News stands virtually alone ...
  On January 22, a wide variety of broadcast, cable, radio, and internet outlets, including CNN and MSNBC, preempted their regularly scheduled prime-time programming and aired Hope for Haiti Now , a benefit concert and telethon to raise funds for Haiti earthquake relief. But even after receiving crit ...
  
• WSJ latest to spread falsehoods about Ab ...
  Accusing President Obama of "dangerous folly," The Wall Street Journal falsely claimed that Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, "told the Senate that by immediately handing [alleged Christmas Day attacker Umar Farouk] Abdulmutallab to the civilian justice system, the government all ...
  

Global Research.ca

• The Crisis in Haiti
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  
• OTTAWA: Public Lecture on "War and the Economic Cr ...
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  
• Glacier Meltdown: Another Scientific Scandal Invol ...
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  
• Cuba, China, Venezuela Send Immediate Assistance t ...
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  
• Canada Discontinues Support to United Nations Rel ...
  For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
  

TPM Cafe

• Tell Retreating Obama and Dems: No Health Reform, ...
  Last Tuesday in MA, Obama and the Democrats suffered a setback -- and ever since they have run around like chickens with their heads cut off turning it into a rout. We learn that Obama will probably downplay health... Democratic - Senate - United States - Politics - United States Senate
  
• More Obfuscation About Corporate "Speech"
  Many "progressives" (even at the ACLU) who've sympathized with the Supreme Court's rollback of almost all public regulation of corporate expenditures in elections accept the Court's declaration that it's defending "freedom of speech" against "censorship." It isn't. Nothing in campaign-finance... ...
  
• Sheikh Jarrah: Going Mainstream
  This past Friday, the weekly protest at Sheikh Jarrah grew to about 800. It is going mainstream, as the young organizers had hoped. The atmosphere was electric, owing to the police's denial of a permit last week and its subsequent... Police - Sheikh Jarrah - Warfare and Conflict - Middle East ...
  
• Stop Bernanke: It Can Be Done
  Remarkably we have gone from a world in which Bernanke's approval was a foregone conclusion to one where there will be trench warfare for the 60th vote. The Wall Street boys and the media are dusting up the tall tales... Wall Street - Business - Investing - Stocks and Bonds - Great Depression
  
• Haiti, Cynicism, and TPM Commenters
  Because of comments by amike and erica, there's more to say on the issues raised in my last post. My post seized on a strand of the media coverage of the earthquake relief efforts to make a point about a... Talking Points Memo - Politics - United States Senate - Health care - Republican
  

TruthOut

• What is Implied by Living in a World of Flow
  At the Web 2.0 Expo held in New York in mid-November, sociologist Danah Boyd , as is her wont, made a brilliant presentation on the consequences of living in a world of flow, notably by starting to draw up a list of its limitations. Let us, in her footsteps, explore - partially, but faithfully - her ...
  
• Marijuana in the Classroom? Sometimes It's Legal
  Medical marijuana legally prescribed to young people is showing up in classrooms. This is putting teachers and principals in a new and challenging position. A high school student found to have marijuana in the classroom would seem to be a prime candidate for a little “talk” with the vice principal – ...
  
• GOP Hopeful: People on Public Assistance "Like Str ...
  Greenville - Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals." Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents. read mor ...
  
• US Lends Firepower to Yemen Fight
  Sanaa, Yemen - Yemeni policemen sprinted up a rocky dirt road, firing AK-47s, lobbing grenades and detonating explosives at a cinderblock house, a supposed Al Qaeda hideout. The scenario was fake, but the firepower very real, as U.S. and U.K. military trainers put local counterterrorism forces throu ...
  
• Soldiers' Wives: Fighting Mental, Emotional Battle ...
  A new study shows higher levels of depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders among Army wives whose husbands have had lengthy deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. New programs aim to help, but there's a stigma in a professional culture that values toughness. It's always been true that when a soldier ...
  

Planetsave

• Asian Carp Near Great Lakes: Are They So Bad?
  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists with a bighead carp, one of two species whose entry into the Great Lakes is sparking widespread concern. Last week’s edition of Great Lakes Asian carp news brought both a U.S. Supreme Court decision and disclosure of the species’ environmental DNA in Lake ...
  
• MN Solid Waste Reform Could Sharply Reduce Greenho ...
  A new Minnesota stakeholder report identifies 38 solid waste reform recommendations that could dramatically reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. A report submitted December 31 to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) outlines 38 ways the state could achieve a 20-year reduction of 5 ...
  
• 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 ...
  

Water Quality - WordPress

• Commission to discuss update of coastal plan
  Marin IJ Staff Report Posted: 01/23/2010 09:26:35 PM PST // // 0){ document.getElementById(‘ar
  
• What Makes a City Green?
  National Geographic’s Green Guide asks the question, “What Makes a City Green?“  T
  
• Where it all goes
  Sometimes, when people find out about my professional work with sewage systems, they ask, “Oh,
  
• RBC Blue Water Project
  RBC Blue Water Project commits $1 million to help rebuild Haiti infrastructure Canada NewsWire, 22 J
  
• Big Week for Montana Water
  by jhwygirl The joint interim Water Policy Committee meets this Wednesday and Thursday to discuss wa
  

Public Citizen in Texas

• Portland General Electric plans to shut down its c ...
  Austin is not alone in preparing for clean and affordable energy. When good news like this comes across the internet like this, we have to share. From the cloudy northwest: Portland General Electric Co. would shut down the state’s only coal-fired power plant 20 years earlier than planned under a p ...
  
• Tree Sitters Halt Blasting On Coal River Mountain
  Blasting on Coal River Mountain was halted due to a tree sit by three activists: Eric Blevins, 28, Amber Nitchman, 19, and David Aaron Smith, 23.  On standby at the trees’ base were the direct supporters Josh Graupera, 19, and Isabelle Rozendaal, 22. Associated with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain ...
  
• Renewable Energy Opportunities for Rural Communiti ...
  Live anywhere close to Stephenville?  Next Tuesday, January 26th there will be a forum there titled “Renewable Energy Opportunities for Rural Communities and Agriculture.”  Speakers will present information on how rural communitities, agriculture, and landowners can benefit from partnering to deve ...
  
• Protect Texas from Becoming Nation’s Radioactive W ...
  SEED Coalition opposes any radioactive waste dumping in Texas, but at minimum seeks to prevent our state from receiving waste from more than just the two Compact States and becoming the nation’s radioactive waste dump. With support from Public Citizen, Environment Texas and Nuclear Information and R ...
  
• Coal Fight! Kennedy vs Blankenship
  Thursday evening at 6:30pm Robert F. Kennedy Jr will debate Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy – the largest coal producer in West Virginia. The subject of debate is the future of coal, Mountain Top Removal (MTR) mining, and economic opportunities for Appalachia. Kennedy is the chief litigat ...
  

Press TV

• Istanbul to host trilateral, Afghan summits
  A trilateral meeting between the presidents of Turkey, Afghanistan, and Pakistan will be held in Istanbul, a day before the city hosts a summit on Afghan security.
  
• Huge demo held in Kashmir
  Thousands of people have taken to the streets of Srinagar, in Indian-controlled Kashmir, for a demonstration, accusing the Indian army of killing a civilian.
  
• Ethiopian airliner crashes in Mediterranean Sea
  An Ethiopian Airlines plane with 85 passengers on board has crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after takeoff from Beirut airport.
  
• Britain goes on high alert
  Britain has raised its terror alert level to “severe”, the second-highest level, days before it hosts an international conference on Afghanistan in London.
  
• Afghanistan postpones parliamentary election
  Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission has confirmed that it will postpone parliamentary elections until September.
  

Axis of Logic

• Watt A Hero?
  
  
• "Best thing I've read so far" : Haiti 2010: An Unw ...
  
  
• Beasts in Samaritan Clothing
  
  
• Turkey widens aid efforts for Haiti
  
  
• 2050: The Re-Birth of a New Just Nation
  
  

They Gave Us a Republic

• "If we're going to go down, let's go down fighting ...
  Alan Grayson, you now have competition:  Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on Wednesday: As for the Howard Fineman proposal to which Rendell refers, here it is: But I know that I have also discussed the possibility of taking pieces of it and passing them or trying to pass them and trying to force-as ...
  
• Ken Ham's Creationist Masturbation Closet is a Nat ...
  PZ Myers brings us yet another well-respected national magazine exposing Kentucky's public idiocy. A good take-down is a thing of beauty. A.A. Gill visited the "museum" in Kentucky , and gets right to the heart of the matter: it's not a museum, it's a national embarrassment. The Creation Museum isn' ...
  
• 37 Years and Counting
  37 years and still going - well, not strong.  More like beaten to within an inch of its life and hanging by a thread, but still alive and still determined. Shame on me for not recognizing the anniversary.  After four decades we take this right for granted, which means that the women-hating anti-choi ...
  
• The Worm's Eye View
  Coakley was the absolute worst candidate they could have run for Kennedy's old seat. And she ran one of the worst campaigns for national level office that we've seen for many a year. I see little room for argument there. All indications are that the election was lost from the get go by an inept cand ...
  
• Magic Radioactive Buggy Whips
  A good political rule of thumb:  if the Kentucky General Assembly thinks something is a good idea, do the oppposite. But in D.C., Scott Brown's mental retardation appears to be contagious :The Obama administration soon may guarantee as much as $18.5 billion in loans to build new nuclear reactors to ...
  

Care 2

• Mom Sentenced In 12-Year-Old's Death
  A 36-year-old woman was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for letting her 12-year-old daughter waste away and die from malnutrition and neglect Submitted by Tonya B. to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  
• The danger of a single story
  (CNN) -- Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie believes in the power of stories, and warns that hearing only one about a people or nation leads to ignorance. She says the truth is revealed by many tales. Submitted by Rosemary RYour CyberSis to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  
• A child saved, but family crushed by doctor bills
  Five months into pregnancy, Jodi Lemacks discovered that her unborn son had a severe heart defect and would require a complex operation as soon as he was born Submitted by Tonya B. to Health & Wellness  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  
• Vt. child porn suspect is sentenced to 3 years
  A child pornography suspect who initially refused to give up his computer password so police could search his laptop was sentenced Friday to three years in prison and deported Submitted by Tonya B. to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  
• ‘Aggressive’ tactic on Bonner bighorn herd good in ...
  West Riverside won’t be a bonanza of bighorn sheep-watching next spring, but that could be a good thing. Herds as large as 95 of the usually elusive sheep had been coming down from Woody Mountain Submitted by Lone Wolf to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  

GreenBiz

• Sainsbury's Targets Tinned Tomatoes in War on Pack ...
  U.K. supermarket giant Sainsbury's will replace tomato tins with cartons in an effort to cut packaging and emissions.
  
• Targeting Energy Efficiency
  To accelerate energy efficiency, we need to capture the imagination of individuals from college dorm rooms to corporate boardrooms across the country.
  
• Golden State Warriors Hook Up with The Solar Compa ...
  The Golden State Warriors and The Solar Company are cutting the ribbon today on a solar installation at the basketball team's practice facility — the first in the NBA to be powered with renewable energy.
  
• The Pendulum of Energy Efficiency and the Importan ...
  Increasing imbalance is looming between our eagerness for energy efficiency and our nonchalance for inclusion of human factors and the impact that our energy efficiency measures will have on human health.
  
• How a Kindergarten Mentality Can Drive Widespread ...
  The CEO of OPower talks to GreenBiz.com senior writer Marc Gunther about how a simple smiley face can get energy hogs to become energy misers, and how utilities are seeing the light in using behavioral science to drive their quest for efficiency.
  

Reuters Global

• U.S. policy confusion on Pakistan and India
  What is the U.S. policy towards Pakistan and India, and in particular over how to deal with their rivalry over Afghanistan which complicates U.S. efforts to bring stability there? I've been trying to find an answer for weeks now amid a raft of contradictory signals and statements coming from differe ...
  
• ‘my office is my laptop’
  Haiti's government ministers are struggling to deal with the aftermath of a natural disaster that has left them without their own offices and equipment.
  
• Haiti and “the bad dream of newspaper headli ...
  Many journalists may feel like the ghost of Graham Greene is looking over their shoulders as they seek to chronicle the suffering in a seemingly hopeless country.
  
• The unnumbered dead
  A new report suggests only have as many people may have died in Congo's wars as previously estimated. How much faith can we put in such figures? How much use are they?
  
• Will EU ever move on from “soft touch” ...
  The European Union may be home to 500 million people and the world's largest trading bloc, but when it comes to international diplomacy it bats far below its weight. Individual states want to pursue their own foreign policy agendas. But "soft power" diplomacy - projecting the EU's image through over ...
  

Paul Krugman

• Know Your Feds
  This isn't a simple question of good versus evil. There are substantive policy disputes, and some very good people are, in my view, on the wrong side of some issues.
  
• The Phantom Policy Conflict
  We could have had a lot of speeches about the economy. Would that have helped, absent a policy to make things better?
  
• The Bernanke Conundrum
  I'm agonizing -- which isn't a place I ever expected to be, and not just because Bernanke hired me at Princeton.
  
• Intimations Of Sanity
  Democrats seem to be getting somewhere on health.
  
• Geithnerdaemmerung?
  This post is partly designed to put dibs on the term in the headline.
  

No Quarter

• Barack Obama and His Ship of Fools
  So David Plouffe, campaign manager extraordinaire, is back at the White House to perform some miracle act of rescue for the sinking Obama Presidency. This event encapsulates what is wrong with Obama and his Presidency. And it also is a stark reminder that these boneheads simply do not understand t ...
  
• The End of Hope
  The tsunami effects of the Massachusetts election results Tuesday night are still being felt, not only throughout the United States but also throughout the world. In “The World Bids Farewell to Obama” (!), the esteemed German publication Der Spiegel notes: US President Barack Obama suffered a painf ...
  
• In 30 Minutes, Join No Quarter Radio’s Sense on Ce ...
  If anybody thought the economic landscape was ready to level off for a smooth and easy stretch, think again. This past week we witnessed truly historic developments. Massachusetts launched a missile on Washington with the election of Republican Scott Brown to fill ‘the people’s seat’ previously held ...
  
• Dear Ellie Light…
  There are a lot of Chicagoans in Washington trying to milk the nation, and I don’t want to scare anybody, but the last time one of them tried to milk a cow there was a fire sale on Lake Michigan. Now they have really started the Astroturfing for your support. So I propose that everyone write a [... ...
  
• Wassup With The Supremes?
  Okay, just what the hell is in the water in Washington, D.C.? Can someone, ANYONE, please tell me how a Corporation = Human? Seriously, because I’m not seeing it. I cannot imagine what kind of machinations through which the Supreme Court went to come to the conclusion that it is unconstitutional ...
  

Environmental Graffiti

• 30 Japanese Hornets Massacre 30,000 Bees
• Gulp!
• Surfers Riding Waves Inches from the Jaws of Death
• Giraffes Making Woopie
• High-Speed Underwater Photography

Foreign Policy in Focus

• Africa Policy Outlook 2010
  The Africa Policy Outlook is an annual publication released jointly by Africa Action and Foreign Policy In Focus that highlights key themes and trends in U.S. Africa policy.
  
• Energy and Climate Change: C+
  Some significant actions but a failure to follow through.
  
• Global Economy: C
  After one year, it's hard to point to new global economic policies that are better for people and the planet. But the Obama administration has helped bust open the debate over globalization policies.
  
• Coup in Honduras: D
  The administration condemned the coup but eventually acceded to the coup leaders' conditions.
  
• China: The Prince of Denmark
  Like Hamlet, Shakespeare's conflicted Prince of Denmark, China was caught between conflicting currents in Copenhagen. Its failure to manage these challenges, argues columnist Walden Bello, led to its biggest diplomatic debacle in years.
  

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

• Ethiopian jet crashes off Beirut
  Plane carrying 85 passengers has crashed into sea, air traffic controllers say.
  
• Exodus as Haiti toll passes 150,000
  Residents urged to leave shattered capital and minister says death toll could still rise.
  
• Bin Laden warns US of more attacks
  Al-Qaeda leader addresses US president in tape praising attempted Detroit attack .
  
• '150,000 dead' in Haiti's capital
  Death toll will grow as figures from outside port-au-Prince emerge, official says.
  
• Venezuelan channel taken off air
  Government says station critical of president is not complying with regulations.
  

Green Inc. - NYT

• Oil Estimates in Venezuela Doubled
  In a new assessment, researchers with the United States Geological Survey have provided a dramatic new estimate of how much oil is "technically recoverable" from Venezuela's oil sands.
  
• Energy Debate Yields Little Middle Ground
  In a nearly 2-hour debate, the environmental attorney Robert Kennedy Jr. and the coal executive Don L. Blankenship found little to agree upon.
  
• Solar Water Heaters Get a Boost in California
  California regulators green-light a $350 million program to subsidize the installation of solar water heaters.
  
• Glass and Cement Makers Settle With E.P.A.
  The E.P.A. and Justice Department announced two major settlements for reducing emissions from 28 glass and cement plants across the country.
  
• Ahead of Debate, Coal Chief Says Environmental Con ...
  Don L. Blankenship, chief executive of Massey Energy, says concerns over the environmental problems associated with coal mining are overblown.
  

Dot Earth News

• Building Safer Schools in Poor, Shaky Places
  As Haiti tries to recover and eventually rebuild, earthquake engineers offer simple, cheap and safer school designs.
  
• Adjustments Likely in Hudson River Cleanup
  General Electric may have to adjust its dredging operation in the Hudson River.
  
• Ban Sought on Trade in Pythons and Kin
  The federal government seeks to ban the import and transport of giant invasive snakes.
  
• A Drawback to Urban Green Spaces
  Urban green spaces may be less "green" than they seem.
  
• Warming Expected to Cut Atlantic Hurricane Tally b ...
  A new climate analysis foresees a drop in Atlantic Ocean hurricanes but rising damage because of more potent storms.
  

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

• Democracy Privatized!
  Forget about those lucrative investments in foreign oil! It’s Time for the Next Big Thing! Purchase influence in the newest, Made-in-USA Bubble, the Election Market! Yes, friends! Become a shot-caller and make millions! We guarantee the vote will go your way – every time! Log onto Dollars for Democr ...
  
• Uneven Exchange: The New Language of Political Dis ...
  In the harsh climate of postmodern America the old adage “Money talks” doesn’t suffice: money screams. With the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Citizen’s United v. the Federal Election Commission, a corporation’s right to sway elections with its wealth has essentially been granted part of its right ...
  
• Haiti and Toxic Waste
  by Mitchel Cohen Two decades ago, the garbage barge, the Khian Sea, with no place in the U.S. willing to accept its garbage, left the territorial waters of the United States and began circling the oceans in search of a country willing to accept its cargo: 14,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash. First ...
  
• Demise of Stare Decisis under the Stewardship of C ...
  Regarding judicial power, more than 225 years ago the Virginian Patrick Henry famously stated that: Power is the great evil with which we are contending. We have divided power between three branches of government and erected checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. However, where is the check ...
  
• US Corporate Media Propagandizes Haiti Tragedy
  The following analysis traces the long history of imperial domination and exploitation of Haiti by the United States. The US Corporate media covers the “humanitarian’ message of US military control and fails to include the historical context of over 100 years of imperialism. Haiti’s tragedy: A crime ...
  

AlterNet's Breaking News

• Bin Laden reportedly claims responsibility for Chr ...
• McConnell: Obama lost support because he governed ...
• Ed Schultz to Robert Gibbs: ‘Yo ...
• Details of Iraq whistleblower’s ...
• Menendez calls out ‘unprecedent ...

Institute for Policy Studies

• Change Can Be Tougher Than Hope
• Energy and Climate Change: C+
• Global Economy: C
• Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer
• Trade Policy: B

Pine River World News

• Pak editorial: Contradictions of Gates
  The following editorial is from The Frontier Post, Peshawar, Pakistan. Contradictions of Gates ©   The Frontier Post January 24, 2010 U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates has come and gone, after making the noises so pet with American officials nowadays about Pakistan. But hadn't we heard of thi ...
  
• Paul Craig Roberts: How Wall St Destroyed Private ...
  The following column is reprinted with permission from Paul Craig Roberts. How Wall St Destroyed Private Medicine ©  Paul Craig Roberts January 22, 2010 At my annual check-up, my doctor handed me a sheet explaining the reasons for office fee increases for Medicare Patients. It is worth reporting a ...
  
• The age of the killer robot is no longer a sci-fi ...
  The following commentary is from The Independent, U.K. The age of the killer robot is no longer a sci-fi fantasy ©   The Independent By Johann Hari January 22, 2010 You can't appeal to robots for mercy or empathy - or punish them afterwards In the dark, in the silence, in a blink, the age of the ...
  
• IBM buys spook-riddled DC services expert
  The following article is from The Register, U.K. IBM buys spook-riddled DC services expert ©   The Register By Timothy Prickett Morgan January 20, 2010 Spending on defence and security is probably the one sure growth market in the United States. It therefore comes as no surprise that IBM has acqui ...
  
• Ramzy Baroud: Iran and Latin America
  The following column is reprinted with permission from Ramzy Baroud. Iran and Latin America ©  Ramzy Baroud January 20, 2009 Should the United States be concerned about Iran's determined efforts to reach out to Latin America? Or, as was suggestively described in the Economist, by the Ayatollahs' ...
  

PDA AMERICA

• IOT: Stop Global Warming: Jan Call
  On this month’s Stop Global Warming/Environmental Issues Organizing Team call, the following topics were covered: Kathy Callan's meeting with Sen. Boxer's staff, results of the Copenhagen climate summit, updates on the Price Carbon Campaign and ...
  
• IOT: Healthcare for All/Single Payer January Call
  A stellar group of guests spoke to over 80 callers, answering questions submitted in the PDA Chat Room. Minnesota Senator John Marty, Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate for governor, spoke about single payer legislation in MN, with ...
  
• Satire: Top CEO Defends America’s Health Insuranc ...
  Satire: Top CEO Defends America’s Health Insurance Industry (press conference) By Carmen Yarrusso | PDA Blog Contributor Good morning. I’ll open with a brief comment and then take questions… America’s health insurance industry is being ...
  
• Report: Protest at Harman Fundraiser
  By Tobi Daggert | PDA Blog Contributor About 15 or 20 protesters showed up at Saturday’s Jane Harman fundraiser in LA. Harman and Lynn Woolsey had to go right through the crowd to get to the ...
  
• Bush Attorney Charged With Attempted Murder
  This just in. More Republican traditional family values… John Michael Farren, who served as deputy counsel to President George W. Bush, has been charged with strangulation and attempted murder after allegedly choking his wife and beating ...
  

Marler Blog

• Nestle Cookie Dough E. coli Victim, Linda Rivera, ...
  I love getting these email updates as of late from Linda's brother-in-law: Sent: Sat, January 23, 2010 9:46:41 AM Subject: Linda Rivera Continued Improvement 1-23-2010 @ 9:45am PST Linda continues to improve, slowly, but surely. Richard went over some daily labs with me and they are all normal, ...
  
• Dr. William Keene, Oregon Epidemiologist, the Sala ...
  Not much new to report this morning on the now 1.25 million pound salami recall by Daniele from Costco, Walmart, Sam's Club, Kroger and on Amazon.com. Most were sold under the Daniele brand, but several items with the Boar's Head, Black Bear and Dietz & Watson labels are included. All of the recalle ...
  
• Compliments Brand Italian Blend Salad Mix may cont ...
  I got several emails today from irate salami eaters and apologists of the FSIS’s and CDC’s slow recall action. One emailer said I had “sour grapes” for not getting appointed USDA Undersecretary for FSIS – well, perhaps. So, just to be fair, I thought I would turn my attention to an FDA inspected pr ...
  
• PR heavyweight, Levick Strategic Communication, Ta ...
  Rumors have swirled over the last several weeks in the food poisoning/food safety/meat industry/public health alleys that I lurk in, that a Salmonella Montevideo outbreak was about to break. Frankly, it was an open secret between industry, government, retail and the media for a month. It was just th ...
  
• It is good after a several month CDC and FSIS inve ...
  And it is good to see the product list recalled - See post below.  Now comes the question - "what stores sold this stuff, and why are they not being named?" As I posted before, on August 18, 2008 after years of hand wringing, the FSIS finally put public health before “proprietary” business interests ...
  

AutoblogGreen

• AutoblogGreen for 01.22.10
  Volvo C30 electric vehicle uses ... ethanol for heat This is the first time we've heard this particular strategy. Report: GM to invest "hundreds of millions" into pickups with fuel-saving tech ...
  
• AutoblogGreen for 01.21.10
  Trexa platform lets you develop your own damn electric vehicle! Stop complaining and DIY is the message here. Bu$ vs. car? Public transit can save riders an average of $9,200 a year Chump cha ...
  
• AutoblogGreen for 01.20.10
  Chevy Volt, cellulosic ethanol named two of the year's biggest losers Less hype, cheaper price would have helped. GM clarifies Volt's "low 30s" price is only possible after tax credit No surp ...
  
• GM clarifies Volt's "low 30s" price is only possib ...
  Filed under: Hybrid , Sedan , Chevrolet , GM , Earnings/Financials , Electric 2011 Chevrolet Volt - Click above for high-res image gallery $40,000. That's the potential price we've heard for the first-gen Chevrolet Volt for ages , and it's the number we get again, now that the recent "low 30s" p ...
  
• 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" ...
  

Rafe's Radar

• Reporters Roundtable podcast: Charity 2.0
  This week: Charity in a Connected World. The January 12 earthquake and humanitarian disaster in Haiti had an important technological component: Through the text message giving program, the Red Cross raised $26 million in funds in just 9 days. That's not just a large amount of money to be raised ...
  
• Amazon adds optional DRM for Kindle publishers
  Independent publishers learn that their Kindle books were already unprotected as Amazon adds option to enable DRM on upload.
  
• Seesmic makes Twitter pretty, with Look
  Now you can consume Twitter without contributing, or even logging in.
  
• BumpTop brings 3D, physics to Mac desktop
  Is this the desktop of the future, or just a toy?
  
• 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 ...
  

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 on _Riz Khan_: "The Role of Media in t ...
  Has the mainstream media in the US replaced serious coverage with “junk news” and tabloidism? Especially in foreign affairs, are Americans less informed than ever? Who is shaping their perceptions of the rest of the world? And who is policing US foreign policy? Riz Khan speaks with Amy Goodman a ...
  
• The Poetic Justice of Dennis Brutus
  Dennis Brutus broke rocks next to Nelson Mandela when they were imprisoned together on notorious Robben Island. His crime, like Mandela’s, was fighting the injustice of racism, challenging South Africa’s apartheid regime. Brutus’ weapons were his words: soaring, searing, poetic. He was banned, he w ...
  
• Dennis Brutus (1924-2009): South African Poet and ...
  World-renowned South African poet and activist Dennis Brutus died in his sleep on December 26th in Cape Town. He was 85 years old. Read more
  
• NOAM CHOMSKY: "Gaza: One Year Later"
  On December 27, 2008, Israel began one of the bloodiest attacks on Gaza Since 1948. The three week assault killed some 1400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. One year later, little to no rebuilding has taken place and the siege in Gaza continues. Speaking in Watertown, Massachusetts on December 6, 2 ...
  
• CHRIS HEDGES: "Empire of Illusion: The End of Lite ...
  Journalist Chris Hedges discusses his recent book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” at the New School in New York. Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. His writing appears regularly in Foreign Affairs , Harper’s , the New York Review of B ...
  

Farming Pathogens

• The Expulsion
  In 1845 a diplomat delivered a letter from Friedrich Wilhelm to Louis Philippe of France protesting the insults leveled at the Prussian king by expatriates living in Paris. King Louis had the radicals’ newspaper closed down and the group, along with one Karl Marx, deported. This was not the first ti ...
  
• 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. ...
  

Digg Green

• Why Africa's National Parks Are Failing to Save Wi ...
  The traditional parks model of closing off areas and keeping people out simply may not work in Africa, where human demands on the land are great. Instead, what’s needed is an approach that finds ways to enable people and animals to co-exist.
  
• Hunting minke whales on grounds of overabundance u ...
  The killing of Antarctic minke whales has been justified on the theory that their population is booming. A Stanford study, based on minke DNA, concludes that the population is, in fact, not booming. The researchers ran their DNA tests on whale meat from grocery stores in Japan.
  
• Rare footage inside Mexico's giant Crystal Cave (V ...
  Professor Iain Stewart describes what it was like to get a rare glimpse inside Mexico's Cave of Crystals, which contains some of the largest natural crystals ever found.
  
• Wind energy could supply 20% of Eastern US grid -N ...
  Wind energy could generate 20 percent of the electricity needed by households and businesses in the eastern half of the United States by 2024, but it would require up to $90 billion in investment, according to a government report released on Wednesday.
  
• Crystal Palace: Superman's Fortress of Solitude Is ...
  Cavers in Mexico confront extreme conditions and find extraordinary beauty.
  

Invisible Opportunity

• Tezcatlipoca, Hunger Porn and Corporate Obeah
  By Les Visible We’ve got a lot of smoking mirrors in operation at the moment. Where there’s smoke there’s fire and we’ve got lots of fire too; the fire of impure desire, as one or more tenants of various spiritual traditions might label it. Is Haiti the plural of ‘hater’? Is there a logical and comp ...
  
• Gaspar Llamazares, Spaniard Used In Bin Laden Pict ...
  By Ciaran Giles A Spanish lawmaker on Tuesday angrily rejected the United States’ apology for the FBI’s using a photo of him to create a poster showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today. Gaspar Llamazares, of Spain’s communist-run United Left party, demanded the U.S. investigate the inciden ...
  
• $10,000 reward offered for scientific proof of H1N ...
  By Mike Adams In conjunction with NaturalNews, the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (www.ConsumerWellness.org) has publicly offered a $10,000 reward for any person, company or institution who can provide trusted, scientific evidence proving that any of the FDA-approved H1N1 vaccines being offered ...
  
• Haiti – An Unwelcome Katrina Redux
  By Cynthia McKinney, former Georgia congresswoman and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate January 20, 2010 “Information Clearing House” — President Obama’s response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first responders an ...
  
• Chavez says US ‘weapon’ caused Haiti q ...
  Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez Wednesday accused the United States of causing the destruction in Haiti by testing a ‘tectonic weapon’ to induce the catastrophic earthquake that hit the country last week. President Chavez said the US was “playing God” by testing devices capable of creating eco-type ca ...
  

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

• Do Employers Really Need to Give Drug Tests for Po ...
  Many former police officers, city officials, even corrections officers now favor a new drug paradigm. Surely it is time to revisit a system that protects few and harms many.
  
• South Dakota Advocates Set to Push Again for Medic ...
  Will the second time be the charm in South Dakota? Four years ago, a medical marijuana initiative there lost by four points. Now, advocates are ready to try again
  
• 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.
  

Twilight Earth

• NEWS FLASH: Republicans Believe in Climate Legisla ...
  American people are eager for Congress to act on climate legislation. Related posts: Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Writing Ant-Environmental Legislation? You Betcha! White House Follow-up on Global Climate Change Impacts Health Care Practices and Climate Change – Dr Bertollini Explains the Connection
  
• GreeningOfOil.Com – Big Oils Ultimate Greenwash?
  There is a new online magazine in town called Greening Of Oil and it's no Algae Bio-fuel, that's for sure! Related posts: Oil – The Cold Black Facts – A Special Report Solar Power from Outer Space: Microwaves and Frickin’ Lasers The Proof versus Belief Conundrum in Reference to Climate Change
  
• Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Writing Ant-Environmental Le ...
  Today, the Senate will consider an outrageous proposal, written with fossil fuel lobbyists, that undermines the Clean Air Act’s ability to limit harmful carbon pollution. Related posts: Fuel Efficiency for Cars and Light Trucks to be Raised 40 Percent Fossil Free Automotive Oil Uses Animal Fats ...
  
• 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 ...
  

Inhabitat

• Norwegan Turbine City Could Be The Next Big Eco-To ...
  What if we could combine turbines with tourism – turbism? Tourbines? That’s what one design firm, On Office, wants to do on Norway’s coast. Their brainchild, called Turbine City, houses a posh hotel, swanky spa and culturally-stimulating museum right inside the base of a towering wind turbine!Turbin ...
  
• GIVEAWAY: Win a Beautorium Green Beauty Kit (worth ...
  Winter weather can surely get you down, but there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be looking your best in even the heaviest of downfalls. Don’t miss out on a chance to give your skin some serious TLC with this awesome green beauty kit assembled exclusively for our readers by Beautorium.com! Packed wi ...
  
• 7 Eco-Chic Accessories Made From Living Plants
  Boho-chic and hippie garb have been staples in many of us gal’s closets over the past few years. But why not take this enchanting Earth-lovin’ ware to the next level and make a real statement? We’ve rounded up seven of our favorite eco-chic accessories, made from real live plants, that are sure to g ...
  
• Jump Rope Transforms Kinetic Energy into Light
  Eco-savvy fitness buffs will appreciate this jump rope flashlight concept by designers Hyun Joo Lee and Eu Tteum Lee. The Jumping Light skipping rope would take workouts to the next level by harnessing kinetic energy and turning it into electric energy, which powers a LED flashlight in each of the j ...
  
• Jean Luc Cornec’s Re-purposed Rotary Phone Sheep
  Where do rotary phones sit within today’s more modern, more digitized world? Does our constant manipulation of these familiar and classic, yet obsolete, objects in art and design signify a desire for a more natural state of being? Jean Luc Cornec’s exhibit at the Museum of Communications i ...
  

Pogue's Posts

• The Apple Guessing Game
  What might Apple be announcing this week? It seems to be a tablet, but the mystery is in the details.
  
• Introducing Pogue (In)Direct
  How to subscribe to and follow all of David Pogue's activities online.
  
• Bogus Tech Measurements
  Day in and day out, the electronics industry manipulates us. They publish "speeds and feeds" in big bold type - measurements that turn out to mean almost nothing.
  
• 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.
  

Open Your Eyes News

• Exhausted Aid Workers Among those Leaving Haiti
  Spiegel – While the inflow of aid into Haiti is getting more organized, thousands are trying to flee the country. They include tourists, diplomats and reporters. And, increasingly, aid workers who are worn out by what they have experienced. Christen Parker clutches a small, tattered notebook. “These ...
  
• North Korea accuses South of declaring war
  Reuters – North Korea on Sunday accused the South of declaring war by warning earlier this month that it would launch a preemptive strike if it thought its impoverished neighbor was preparing a nuclear attack. Read article
  
• Vatican bank charged with money-laundering
  Press TV – The Bank of the Vatican has been accused of laundering USD 200 million by proxy through an Italian creditor, a report indicates. The allegation of the Vatican bank’s financial corruption has been made by an Italian magazine that pointed to the financial institute’s purported involvement i ...
  
• Bee numbers in England fell by more than half over ...
  Daily Telegraph – The University of Reading research found there was a 54 per cent decline in managed honey bee populations in England between 1985 and 2005 compared to an average of 20 per cent across Europe. It comes as separate research in France suggested the reason bee numbers are falling is b ...
  
• Venezuela TV channels taken off air
  BBC – The Venezuelan government has taken six cable television channels off the air for breaking a law on transmitting government material. The privately owned RCTV International, openly opposed to President Hugo Chavez, is one of those affected. On Saturday the government had ordered RCTV to telev ...
  

Monkey Smashes Heaven

• Haiti, Beware Amerikkkans Bearing Gifts: “Ai ...
  Haiti, Beware Amerikkkans Bearing Gifts: “Aid” Becomes Pretext for U$ Colonial Occupation (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) (monkeysmashesheAmidst all the self-congratulatory noise about Amerikan “aid” to Haiti, the U$ has subjected the country to military occupation, with thousands of U$ soldier ...
  
• Μερικές προκαταρκτικές σκέψεις πάνω στο «κοινωνικό ...
  Μερικές προκαταρκτικές σκέψεις πάνω στο «κοινωνικό εργοστάσιο» Αυθεντικός τίτλος: Some tentative thoughts on the “social factory” (1) Από Prairie Fire (monekysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) Το κοινωνικό εργοστάσιο Σύμφωνα με τον Αντόνιο Νέγκρι (Antonio Negri) η καπιταλιστική ανάπτυξη, χωρίζεται σε τρε ...
  
• The Real Avatar: Mine – story of a sacred mo ...
  The Real Avatar: Mine – story of a sacred mountain (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) (thanks to vrinternationalists.wordpress.com) Imperialist corporations exploit the people and resources of India. The story of London-based Vedanta mining’s attack on India’s tribal peoples is a real life ver ...
  
• Movie Review: Daybreakers (Michael Spierig, 2010)
  Movie Review: Daybreakers (Michael Spierig, 2010) (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) “Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour.” “[The prolongation of the working day] only slightly quenches the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour.” “[The] vampire w ...
  
• Παγκόσμια ανισότητα ή Σοσιαλιστική ισότητα
  Παγκόσμια ανισότητα ή Σοσιαλιστική ισότητα Από Prairie Fire (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) Λέγεται ότι,η χρήση της ισοτιμίας ως αρχής που θα ρύθμιζε τη διανομή,έρχεται σε αντίθεση με προσεγγίσεις που επικεντρώνονται στο μηχανισμό της εκμετάλλευσης.Ιδιαίτερα λέγεται,ότι έρχεται σε αντίθεση με τ ...
  

PakAlert

• In Pictures: CIA Hosts Drink and Dance Party For P ...
  CIA Public Relations at work? Do you expect this “Pakistani media” would tell you the truth and serves the interests of Islam and Pakistan? If you still believe that then may Allah help you and show you the righteous path before its too late for all of us. Shaukat Paracha, Asma Shirazi, Meher Bu ...
  
• Nawaz Sharif and NRO
  In the hearing on NRO cases, NAB admitted that it had spent over PKR 2 billion on investigations against Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari. Despite spending this hefty amount, nothing could be proved against the two. In this series, I am trying to highlight the allegations on Right-wing politician ...
  
• Wake Up Project: Interview of Sheikh Imran Hosein ...
  Must See: The Wakeup Project: Phase 3, The Arrivals Series & The Divine Book Full Disclosure: Gog & Magog, 2012 and the Significance of Pakistan Imran Hosein: OBAMA’S AFGHAN SURGE, PAKISTAN’S MOMENT OF TRUTH AND DEATH OF THE US DOLLAR Video: More Evidence The Pentagon Is Fighting A Religious Crusade ...
  
• Oil in Haiti – Economic Reasons for the UN/US Occu ...
  There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil had dried up. by Marguerite Laurent Open Salon Engineered Earthq ...
  
• Ron Paul: After ‘CIA Coup’ The Agency Runs The Mil ...
  By Raw Story US House Rep. Ron Paul says the CIA has in effect carried out a “coup” against the US government, and the intelligence agency needs to be “taken out.” Speaking to an audience of like-minded libertarians at a Campaign for Liberty regional conference in Atlanta this past weekend, the Tex ...
  

ecogeek

• Checking Up on 2009's Green Cars
  Last year, Hank attended the NAIAS auto show in Detroit, and gave us a rundown on the various green cars he saw there. I thought it would be good to take a look at last year's list and see how things have lined up for these companies. This was already a year when the majority of manufacturers att ...
  
• Solar Power Playing Major Role in Haiti Relief
  The people of Haiti are facing a long and difficult road to recovery.  Their power infrastructure has been demolished and fuel for generators and cooking is scarce, but they do have one thing on their side:  abundant sunshine.  Many solar power companies and non-profits are focusing on that resourc ...
  
• Greenpeace Releases 2010 Green Electronics Ranking ...
  This year's annual Greenpeace "Guide to Greener Electronics" has been released, and it is a mixed bag. The lowest scores are higher than they were last year, but the highest scores are lower. Nokia is still at the top. In 2009, they were at 7.45, but in 2010 they are down to 7.3. Samsung, whi ...
  
• Driving an American-Built Electric Car
  Advanced Mechanical Products (AMP) wasn't on the show floor in Detroit at this year's North American International Auto Show, but a few of the company's representatives brought the company's X Prize competition entry vehicle to Detroit. Initially, I was offered a chance to drive the car out on the ...
  
• Offshore Wind Turbines Help Sustain Marine Life
  A study of offshore wind farms off Europe's coasts has revealed that the structures pose no threat to marine life, and in fact, they help sustain it. Scientists at Stockholm University's Zoology Department conducted the study and found that the turbine foundations acted as habitats for fish, crabs, ...
  

Times Online - Science

• Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink ov ...
  The surgeon was dressed in a goat or sheep skin and used a sharpened stone to amputate the arm of his patient.
  
• Oops, that was a bad call, Earth
  “CALLING all aliens, this is Earth. Are you receiving me?” Rather than simply listening for signals of extra-terrestrial life, some scientists are preparing to take a much more active approach to finding alien intelligence on other planets.
  
• How exotic wildlife really did jump on a raft and ...
  The unique fauna of Madagascar, including its celebrated lemurs, reached the island by hitching a lift on natural rafts, scientists have confirmed.
  
• 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.
  

Environment _ National Geographic

• BPA Linked to Heart Disease, Study Confirms
  Bisphenol-A—used in many sunglasses, reusable bottles, food packaging, and baby bottles—is linked to heart disease, a new study confirms. In a separate development, the FDA changes course and announces concern over BPA.
  
• Chemical BPA Linked to Heart Disease, Study Confir ...
  Bisphenol-A—used in many sunglasses, reusable bottles, food packaging, and baby bottles—is linked to heart disease, a new study confirms.
  
• Haiti Earthquake, Deforestation Heighten Landslide ...
  The combination of widespread deforestation and the recent earthquake in Haiti could lead to more landslides in the already hard-hit country, scientists say.
  
• Haiti Earthquake "Strange," Strongest in 200 Years
  Although earthquakes on Haiti are not uncommon, experts say, the intensity of yesterday's temblor was unusual from a historical perspective.
  
• Global Warming Indigestion May Kill Gorillas, Monk ...
  Warming could make leaves tougher to digest, potentially forcing leaf-eating primates into extinction.
  

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

• Survivor: Home Gardening Edition
  Paranoia is potentially profitable. Plenty of people are eager to sell you freeze-dried foods, medical kits and even weapons to help you survive the supposed social chaos on the horizon. Now, there’s the “Survival Seed Bank,” brought to you by an outfit called Solutions for Science. For a mere $297, ...
  
• Potential Jurors Being Interviewed for the Bill Wh ...
  ROANOKE, VA. — After sitting through his own threat trial in Brooklyn, hate blogger Hal Turner may find himself back in a federal courtroom sooner than expected — this time as a witness in a similar case. Turner was on the list of dozens of potential witnesses that a government prosecutor read durin ...
  
• Uganda’s Harsh Anti-Gay Legislation Has Amer ...
  While activists around the world criticize pending legislation in Uganda they call the “kill the gays” bill, some Americans are being outed for their connections to those involved in the proposed statute. The latest is Richard Cohen, who claims he has successfully counseled thousands of gays to beco ...
  
• Columnist Describes Barrage of Threats from Nazi L ...
  ROANOKE, VA. — Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts told the jury this afternoon that his “blood ran cold” when he received an E-mail from white supremacist Bill White with his home address, telephone number and a reference to his wife. When he clicked a link in the E-mail and saw that Whi ...
  
• Federal Jury Convicts Missouri Extremist
  Whoever complained that the wheels of justice move slowly would have enjoyed this week’s trial of Robert Joos Jr. A federal jury in Springfield, Mo., needed nine minutes to convict the reputed antigovernment white supremacist on charges of being a felon in possession of firearms and a felon in posse ...
  

change: org.

• Human Trafficking and Money Laundering: Common Bed ...
  Infamous mob boss Al Capone was finally nabbed and jailed on tax evasion charges -- not for the number of homicides, conspiracies, and other more serious crimes that he was wanted for at the time. Today, law enforcement agents who fight human trafficking are taking a tip from their forefathers who c ...
  
• Should Stores Be Held Responsible for Homeless Loi ...
  A woman in Chicago who was attacked by two homeless men outside a grocery store is suing the store , trying to establish a precedent that businesses are responsible for people who loiter on their property. The woman, Jennifer Hall, went through a terrible ordeal. As she left the store in August 2008 ...
  
• Aid Agencies Re-Evaluate Demand for Security Enhan ...
  Recently Change.org blogger Michael Bear introduced me to Madeleine Kingston, a researcher for the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF). Ms. Kingston just completed a report in collaboration with humanitarian organizations re-evaluating aid worker's expectations for security in the field. Surp ...
  
• Who Are You Calling A Prostitute?
  Can a 12-year old consent to sex acts for money? According to U.S. law, if you’re a minor and you have free sex with an adult, it’s statutory rape. The minor can’t consent. But if you add the almighty dollar, it’s suddenly a different story. Now she’s a prostitute. T he FBI reports that over 12,0 ...
  
• Dear Supreme Court, "Freedom" Shouldn't Trump Equa ...
  Since the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday to overturn two precedents and permit unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns, the word "freedom" has experienced a resurgence unparalleled since the months following September 11, 2001. Corporations deserve freedom of speech, too, suggests the C ...
  

Common Dreams -News

• Judges Urge Congress to Act on Indefinite Terroris ...
  by Chisun Lee Three judges on the federal trial court hearing challenges brought by Guantanamo prisoners are calling on Congress and the Obama administration to enact a law to address one of the nation's most perplexing moral and legal dilemmas: When can the United States indefinitely detain terrori ...
  
• US Policy in Gaza Remains Unchanged
  by Charles Fromm and Ellen Massey WASHINGTON - One year ago Thursday, the last Israeli tanks were lumbering out of the Gaza Strip, ending the 22-day Gaza War and leaving in their wake a decimated landscape and population. A year later, the humanitarian and security situation in the devastated coasta ...
  
• Last Decade Warmest Ever: NASA
  WASHINGTON - The past decade was the warmest ever on Earth, a new analysis of global surface temperatures released by NASA showed Thursday. The US space agency also found that 2009 was the second-warmest year on record since modern temperature measurements began in 1880. Last year was only a small f ...
  
• Arizona Law Would Criminalize Undocumented Immigra ...
  by Valeria Fernández PHOENIX, AZ -- Arizona could become the first state in the country to criminalize undocumented immigrants. A bill moving fast through the Arizona Senate would allow local police to arrest and incarcerate someone for "trespassing" into the territory of the state. "The federal gov ...
  
• One Quarter of US Grain Crops Fed to Cars - Not Pe ...
  by John Vidal One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in cars rather than being used to feed people, according to new analysis which suggests that the biofuel revolution launched by former President George Bush in 2007 is impacting on world food sup ...
  

Lifehacker

• Custom Monitor Stands and Cable Wrangling [Feature ...
  The owner of today's featured workspace had a peculiar cable-management problem. Where do you tuck the cables away if your desk doesn't have a back to hide the cables behind? Lifehacker reader Co.mons has a really cool desk with a bookshelf and glass display cases in the front. It's a great design e ...
  
• Ask the Commenters Roundup [Hive Mind]
  Who's managed to keep up with their new year goals so far? What do you do when you work harder than your co-workers and it goes unnoticed? How can I prevent my car from giving me a static shock every time I touch the door? Any suggestions for a great PC case in a new computer I'm building? What's a ...
  
• A La Carte Pie in a Jar Is Brilliant, Looks Delici ...
  There's nothing like a great slice of pie, but unless you're going to a party or pot luck, an entire pie spells danger for your waistline. The solution: a single-serving pie-in-a-jar. Cooking weblog Our Best Bites shares their brilliant brainchild, the single-serving pie-in-a-jar. Making them isn't ...
  
• What's Your Fastest Text Input Tool? [Ask The Read ...
  Designer and blogger Phil Gyford spends a lot of time with six different text input gadgets, ranging from low-tech (pen and paper) to more high tech (full keyboard, iPhone keyboard, etc.) His question: Which gadget provided the quickest means of input? I have six input methods to compare: The Apple ...
  
• Put Together a DIY Wrapping Station to Organize Yo ...
  Having all your ribbon and wrapping paper in one location and organized neatly goes a long way towards making gift preparation less stressful. This simple DIY organizer puts your gift supplies out of the way on the wall. It might seem like a strange time of year, post-Christmas and all, to be talkin ...
  

Newshoggers - AfPak

• Gates: U.S. is "building trust" by selling weapons ...
  By Steve Hynd From the department of feeble excuses (h/t Kat): On his arrival in Pakistan, a television news interviewer put the question bluntly: "Why re-arm both countries?" The Pentagon chief sidestepped the question. But Gates and other officials explained afterward that Washington hopes the mil ...
  
• Afghan Summit Agenda - Head For The Exits
  By Steve Hynd According to a leaked document handed to the UK's Financial Times, the first item on the agenda for the London summit on Afghanistan is a rapid handover of responsibility for security to Afghan forces. The six-page draft envisages Afghan forces starting a phased process to take over re ...
  
• Mr. President, Lead Us Out of the Afghanistan War
  By Derrick Crowe Next Wednesday, President Obama will give his first State of the Union address. It's a safe bet he'll discuss the Afghanistan war. You probably recall that the President recently committed to start drawing down troops in Afghanistan in July 2011. Setting a target date for the start ...
  
• More On The State-ergy For Af/Pak
  By Steve Hynd I mentioned the new State Dept. "Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Development Strategy" (PDF), in my last post and some more really should be said about it. AfPak Channel's daily brief today mentions it in passing: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a new strategy for civili ...
  
• Counter-Terror Fail Over So Much Fertilizer
  By Steve Hynd Ever had the feeling that most anti-terrorism measures are motivated more by PR efforts than actual effectiveness? This story won't make you rethink that. Afghanistan on Friday banned the use of a fertilizer chemical also used to make bombs, giving farmers and other holders a month to ...
  

Water Wars

• Water wars springing up all around (Athens Banner- ...
  Mark Twain famously said that, in California, water flows uphill toward money. But political machinations, such as the water grab that enabled the metropolis of Los Angeles to sprout in a land of little rain, aren't uniquely Californian.
  
• Kenyan Sci-Fi Short Pumzi Hits Sundance With Dysto ...
  screen at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “started off as a small script about what kind of world we would have to be if we had to buy fresh air,”
  
• Norton sees light at end of tunnel (Forsyth County ...
  During his annual Native Intelligence report, Gainesville real estate executive Frank Norton Jr. urged his audience to focus on the bright spots that he promised will come in the region’s economic future.
  
• Kenyan Sci-Fi Short 'Pumzi' Hits Sundance With Dys ...
  A future world ravaged by water wars serves as the backdrop for director Wanuri Kahiu's visually striking new film. Coming fast on the heels of South African sci-fi smash District 9 , the ecologically themed short promises to further raise the profile of African filmmakers.
  
• Savannah River sharing will require talk, tech (Th ...
  Sharing the Savannah River and its water with Georgia will require new laws, modern technology and lots of communication, according to South Carolina officials.
  

WordPress | Economics

• End the Fed: Book Summary (Chapters 1-3)
  End the Fed By: Ron Paul More Chapters to come. Quotes Chapter One: Why you should care “Ending the
  
• Regional Economies
  I am starting Leslie Gill and Mike Jacob’s studio at GSAPP – titled ‘Rates of Exch
  
• Interactive Risk Interconnection Map from WEF
  In preparation for the annual meeting (Jan 27-31, 2010) in Davos the World Economic Forum published
  
• The Pornography of Politics
  As John Edwards buries his paternity story deep in attempted to returned Sainthood status of returni
  
• Links and Quotes
  1. Wal-Mart employees know every product’s profit margins, and think their job is preferrable
  

Electronic Intifada

• Gaza's thin red line one year later
  During last winter's invasion of Gaza, Israeli forces killed 16 medical rescuers, four in one day alone. Another 57 were injured. At least 16 ambulances were damaged with at least nine complete ...
  
• "Palestinian journalists can't work freely or safe ...
  "Being a journalist is the most dangerous work in the world," says Palestinian photojournalist Nayef Hashlamoun, "especially being a photojournalist or a photographer. We work under risk every day, es ...
  
• Lebanon activists launch campaign targeting Egypt' ...
  The Campaign to Stop the Wall of Shame, a newly-formed activist movement based in Beirut, Lebanon, held a press conference this morning to publicize the Arab Contractors construction company's ...
  
• Israel threatening, arresting and deporting to cru ...
  RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Israel is lashing out at international criticism and attempting to crush local dissent in what appears to be growing sensitivity to reproach of its policies ...
  
• "Jerusalem is in danger"
  Once again, Israel resorts to show trials. Sheikh Raed Salah, a prominent political and religious leader of the Palestinian minority, was sentenced on 13 January by an Israeli court to nine mon ...
  

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

• Bombing Iran Would Only Lead To Calls For US Invas ...
  Numerous conservatives have pointed to Israel’s preemptive strike in 1981 against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility as a model for what should be done vis-a-vis Iran. That attack is seen as basically crushing Iraq’s nuclear efforts and has led some neoconservatives to posit: why can’t we just do ...
  
• Travels In Ecuador: Choosing The Riches Of Life Or ...
  I just returned from a two-week vacation in Ecuador. The nation, slightly smaller than the state of Nevada, is fascinating for its diversity. From the isolated Galapagos archipelago to the fecund jungles of the Amazon headwaters, from coastal forests to the volcanic highlands of Quito, one finds an ...
  
• Slimming Down Health Reform Won’t Work: Why ...
  Our guest blogger is Ellen-Marie Whelan, Associate Director of Health Policy and Senior Health Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. As a primary care nurse practitioner who has worked as one of those rare Medicaid providers in inner-city neighborhoods and in community heal ...
  
• Realism, Neoconservatism, Liberalism, And Iran
  The problems with Richard Haass’ latest op-ed start with the first sentence, in which he writes “Two schools of thought have traditionally competed to determine how America should approach the world.” Realists believe we should care most about what states do beyond their borders — that influencing t ...
  
• Bayh: There’s A ‘Fighting Chance&#8217 ...
  In an interview yesterday with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) — who met with members of the administration’s economic team this week — said that he believes there’s a “fighting chance” that President Obama will call for a freeze on discretionary spending in his next budget: We can do som ...
  

thwap's schoolyard

• Is Tom Flanagan Simple?
  Last night , on CBC's amusingly titled "Power Panel" Tom Flanagan tried to make himself out as something other than a "harper stooge" by trashing harper's inarguably ridiculous excuse for prorogation (to deal with the awesome task of winding down the response to the great recession) and wishing that ...
  
• Please Read
  I first posted this excerpt from this recent post . But I think it got lost in the shuffle of the reporting on General Natynczyk's about face on whether we'd actually detained and transferred that one suspect over to his Afghan abusers. The thing is, this account of CF actions in the field [dating ...
  
• Why I'll Be Attending the Anti-Prorogation Rally
  Today is January 23rd, 2010. As Montreal Simon pointed out, that's the fourth anniversary of stephen harper's coming to power! I'll be attending the anti-prorogation rally in Hamilton's Gore Park between 1-4 pm today. I'll be going because while I believe that our political system is debased, it ...
  
• Parallels
  I've just finished reading Antony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945 . There was one passage that struck me. Now, before I get to it, I want to assure everyone that I'm well aware of Godwin's silly law about internet discussions and the Nazis. I also want to assure everyone that I'm not going to pu ...
  
• Harper Fucks It Up Again ...
  In the CBC report about General Natynczyk changing his story , stephen harper madly attempts to spin the significance of this incident into something completely irrelevant: But Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the facts confirm what the government has been saying, that when the Canadian Forces see ...
  

Financial Sense Editorials

• Market Observation: Yesterday Once More
  by Brian Pretti. "As you know, the mainstream financial media has been literally falling all over themselves quoting equity market performance since the March lows of last year. And of course the numbers are virtually magical. Once in a lifetime. Every investors dream, right? Of course this occurred ...
  
• Dude, Is That Gold Bar for Real?
  by Doug Hornig. "As the 10-year gold bull continues its stunning run, rumors of fakery seem to be cropping up as fast as new Eagles can be minted. Should you be worried? Do you need to run to the coin shop for a home test kit?"
  
• Anti-Capitalists and Capitalists
  by J. R. Nyquist. "f you haven't scanned the cable news channels since the crash of 2008, you could be in for a shock. Except for FOX NEWS, you are going to hear an anti-capitalist message percolating up through your television. "
  
• Time the Market Using These Market Strength and Vo ...
  by Lorimer Wilson. "Trading without indicators is like running blind and it encourages emotional trading that is the bane of successful investment and speculation and given the ups and downs of the market it is hard to know what to buy or sell let alone just when to do so."
  
• Scared of falling Gold prices?
  by Peter Forth. "Looks like we are having another downdraft in the precious metals sector. In light of the carnage that happened last year it seems that over every little correction looms the spectre of a repeat washout."
  

on Government Oversight

• Grayson Gets Busy in the New Year
  It’s only been a few weeks since the Christmas recess, but Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) is already rattling cages. For starters, he has introduced two contractor accountability bills that will likely generate plenty of attention. Anticipating Thursday’s landmark U.S. Supreme...
  
• Contractor Specializes in Building Temporary Housi ...
  Washington Technology reported this week that Fluor Corporation, the government contractor hired to perform over $1.5 billion in engineering, construction, and maintenance services in 2008, has hired Deidre Lee to serve as head of compliance. The article noted that Lee...
  
• Making Sure Advisory Committees Don't Go To Waste
  One of the virtues of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) is that it requires the membership of advisory committees to be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the...
  
• Morning Smoke: Supreme Court Upends a Century's Wo ...
  Campaign finance ruling reflects Supreme Court's growing audacity Michael Waldman [The Washington Post] FDIC Chief Got Bank of America Loans While Working On Its Rescue Keith Epstein and David Heath [The Huffington Post Investigative Fund] Exclusive: Draft Pentagon review calls...
  
• POGO Weighs in on How NRC Can Improve Allegations ...
  On Tuesday, POGO Investigator Ingrid Drake presented to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on revisions to the Enforcement and Allegations programs, which handles allegations that come in about safety issues or security concerns at nuclear power plants. POGO made recommendations...
  

Science Express

• Sleep loss linked to increase in Alzheimer's plaqu ...
  Chronic sleep deprivation in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease makes Alzheimer's brain plaques appear earlier and more often, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report online this week in Science Express.
  
• Heart of a galaxy emits gamma rays
  (PhysOrg.com) -- Quite a few distant galaxies turn out to be cosmic delivery rooms. Large numbers of massive stars are born in the hearts of these starburst galaxies, and later explode as supernovae. In the remnants they leave behind, particles are accelerated to very high energies. Astrophysicists ...
  
• Physicists Demonstrate Three-Color Entanglement
  (PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, physicists have demonstrated the quantum entanglement of three light beams, all of different wavelengths. Entanglement of two light beams of different wavelengths has already been demonstrated, but the researchers explain that going beyond two beams is important ...
  
• Cassini Data Help Redraw Shape of Solar System (w/ ...
  (PhysOrg.com) -- Images from the Ion and Neutral Camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggest that the heliosphere, the region of the sun's influence, may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models. In a paper published Oct. 15 in Science Express, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Ap ...
  
• New study predicts future consequences of a global ...
  A report examining the impact of a global biofuels program on greenhouse gas emissions during the 21st century has found that carbon loss stemming from the displacement of food crops and pastures for biofuels crops may be twice as much as the CO2 emissions from land dedicated to biofuels production. ...
  

TechDirt

• Give A Man A Fish... And Make It Illegal To Teach ...
  We've talked in the past about how intellectual property rules seem to directly conflict with the purpose of educational institutions -- and yet, many of those institutions are now starting to try to enforce those rules. Taking that a step further, in response to Bono's recent confusion over ISP fi ...
  
• Parked Car Gets Multiple Speed Camera Tickets
  We've seen all sorts of problems with speed cameras -- like the time one clocked a brick wall traveling 58 MPH (watch out!). It seems that they've got a problem with stationary objects. Reader Marshall points us to a story of a guy who parks his car on a road equipped with a speed camera and has r ...
  
• 'Public' Consultation Over ACTA In Mexico Almost R ...
  Geraldine Juarez writes in to let us know of her experience attending what was billed as a "public hearing" about the ACTA treaty in Mexico (link in Spanish, Google translation here ), which sounded really messed up. First, despite it being a public hearing, originally those putting on the event wa ...
  
• If Data Centers Are Understaffed, What Does That M ...
  This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com . Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author. While I'm always a little skeptical of the numbers found in vendor surveys, it woul ...
  
• Amazon Quietly Lets Publishers Remove DRM
  While everyone was focused on the new Kindle app store or the new royalty rates, perhaps a more interesting new thing slipped quietly by: without telling anyone, Amazon is now giving publishers the option to remove DRM from ebooks . It's odd that Amazon wouldn't publicly announce this, but I'm sure ...
  

VacTruth

• “INNOCENT TILL PROVEN GUILTY:” A CASE STUDY IN AL ...
  Shaken Baby Syndrome and Lethal Minor Falls: Analysis of Causes of Death of Amanda M. Sadowshy Harold E. Buttram and Alan Yurko Medical Veritas
  
• Patient Administered Vaccination Without Doctor Ap ...
  . . . S. Humphries, MD Medical Voices January 22, 2010 H1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccines are now being given to sick hospital patients with or without their doctor’s consent.  This is being done despite there being no data on the safety of doing so. I am a licensed, board-certified nephrologist, ...
  
• Swiss warn on flu vaccine with autoimmune disease
  . . . Sam Cage Reuters ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland’s medical regulator recommended patients with serious autoimmune diseases should not use an H1N1 flu vaccine from Novartis, saying there were no studies assessing the innoculation in that population. Swissmedic said on Wednesday it could not be ...
  
• Stillbirth heartbreak after swine flu jab
  Staff Reporter The Standard Thursday, January 21, 2010 A 37-year-old woman’s child was stillborn on Tuesday – just weeks after she received a vaccination against human swine flu (H1N1). The woman was 28 weeks’ pregnant when she was admitted to Tuen Mun Hospital after she reported decreased fetal mo ...
  
• Kenya: Trial HIV Vaccine Leaves 46 Infected
  . . . Elias Mbao AllAfrica.com 12 January 2010 Lusaka — A failed clinical trial HIV vaccine that left 46 Zambian women infected with the virus has sparked controversy. The Microbicides Development Programme (MDP) 301 trial, which was testing if the gel PRO2000 would prevent HIV infection took place ...
  

BroadSnark

• Are Cynic and Optimist Mutually Exclusive?
  People often complain that I’m cynical and pessimistic.  I’m always looking for the catch, the ulterior motive, the dark side.  Every new plan, from health care to tax reform, I am immediately poking holes in.  Many of my friends are liberal, nonprofit types who are very attached to these plans. ...
  
• Things You Might Have Missed
  I know there are some people who really believe that enforcing anti-prostitution laws will help women, but it is really hard to have patience for those people when I read things like this. On a more inspiring note, these women in South Korea are bad asses. Howard Zinn recently spoke about the myths ...
  
• 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 [...]
  

Executive Intelligence Review

• The LaRouche Show, January 23, 2010
  The East Goes Nuclear; the West? Out of the Caves with the LaRouche Plan!
  
• LaRouche Meets with European LYM: What Are Your Pl ...
  Dialogue with Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 22, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 3
  
• The Case of AIG: We, The People, Demand Answers!
  By John Hoefle Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 22, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 3
  
• Obama's Health-Care Plan Will Impose Genocide on Y ...
  By Tony Papert Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 22, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 3
  
• New Kelly Revelations Can Sink Tony Blair
  By Jeffrey Steinberg Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 22, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 3
  

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 2010-01-25
  RT @heidilore: RT @Demand911Truth: Ringling Bros. beats elephants! Visit http://bit.ly/4I6ur7 # Read my article on why the UK drug laws need rethinking not tough talk by politicians http://bit.ly/7NA1FF #drugs #law #narcotics #legal # My latest article "Should we trade freedom for security" ...
  
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-24
  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 Madsen rep ...
  
• The CIA’s Third World War
  Continuing today's theme of looking at the CIA and its involvement in drug smuggling I bring you another short video that takes a look at the CIA's war on the third world over the last century. In nearly every case the countries involved are poor developing nations with little or no capability of be ...
  
• The Cocaine Importing Agency – CIA
  This short video looks at the Cocaine Importing Agency (CIA) and its connection with the huge Crack Cocaine explosion of the 80's in inner cities all over America. It is claimed that one of the primary reasons for this huge explosion in inner city drug use was that the CIA was using proceeds from dr ...
  
• You Can’t Both Support the Troops and the Constitu ...
  with my will, sir, you can do nothing. ~George Sand” At the expense of sounding callous and unpatriotic I will attempt to lay out exactly why the “Support the Troops” mantra is anti-American and determinental to the health of our Republic. Though I certainly do pray for them, I simply can’t and w ...
  

food and water watch

• Big Ag Squeezes Value While Farmers and Consumers ...
  The government is finally wising up to Monsanto's industry bullying. The Justice Department's current investigation of the stranglehold agribusinesses have on the food system reveals the confidential commercial licensing agreements at the heart of Monsanto's market monopolization.
  
• In Search of the Truth About Ocean Fish Farming: A ...
  On December 3, Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, published a disappointingly inaccurate and shortsighted piece on the development of offshore aquaculture.
  
• 53 Groups Join Food & Water Watch in Asking Rep. C ...
  Food & Water Watch, along with 53 other consumer, fishing and environmental groups and businesses, today submitted a letter to Representative Lois Capps (D-CA 23rd) requesting that she reconsider her plan to introduce legislation that would allow ocean fish farming in U.S. federal waters.
  
• Kona Blue: Planning Tropical Adventure to Get Away ...
  Kona Blue Water Farms, producer of farmed yellowtail known as “Kona kampachi,” has announced that it is opening a second offshore fish farming operation—this time, in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. The company, which operates its current facility in where humpback whales have been observed, has faced oppo ...
  
• Indiana seeks to take control of CAFO pollution
  Evidence is building up on the harmful environmental effects of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which includes a growing number of cases of local water contamination by manure depositing. Now the state of Indiana, which has suffered substantial damage from such pollution, is doing s ...
  

treehugger

• Bike Riding 7 Year Old Raises Over $100,000 For Ha ...
  The other day I posed the question : "who is the more sustaining? Those who only care about themselves, or those who look out for others?" The story of Charlie Simpson, gives me hope it is the latter. Young Charlie, all of seven years old, saw the images of the Haiti earthquake survivors and want ...
  
• Unchopping A Tree - A Video That Puts Deforestatio ...
  An image from artist Maya Lin's " Unchopping a Tree " Deforestation . It might seem obvious that rainforests are needed to continue life on earth - but why? Maya Lin lays it out in a gorgeous video with a message that will make every viewer pause and consider the scale of deforestation. Check it ...
  
• The Week in Pictures: Exxon Valdez Oil Still Trapp ...
  From the news that a new 'super snake' python hybrid may be on the rise in Florida to new research revealing that about 20,000 gallons of Exxon Valdez oil still remains trapped in the gravel beaches of Alaska, a lot happened this week in green. According to Downstream Strategies' latest report, Ap ...
  
• A French Company Tries Nuclear in California
  Photo via Flickr California's global warming law, AB32, calls for utilities to increase their use of renewable energy to at least 30 percent by 2020, and some say they may not make it. Enter Areva SA, a power developer largely owned by the French government, which has signed an agreement with the ...
  
• Junk Mail Turned Into Gold Portraits to Treasure i ...
  Credit: Screenshot from www.schimmelart.com . Junk mail. It gathers in your mailbox like flies to you know what. You can shred it, recycle it, sign up with junk mail killing services, and it still comes. An artist named Sandhi Schimmel Gold of Phoenix makes junk mail into works of art. ... Read the ...
  

Biosingularity

• Cosmetics Testing without Animals
  Researchers at Hurel Corporation have reached a major milestone in their quest to create a chip to replace skin allergy testing on animals. Working with cosmetics firm L’Oreal, Hurel has developed a working microfluidic portion of the chip. While there is still much work to be done before they have ...
  
• First evidence that blueberry juice improves memor ...
  Scientists are reporting the first evidence from human research that blueberries — one of the richest sources of healthful antioxidants and other so-called phytochemicals — improve memory. They said the study establishes a basis for comprehensive human clinical trials to determine whether blueberrie ...
  
• Hungry immune guardians are snappier
  Bonn researchers have discovered an elementary mechanism which regulates vital immune functions in healthy people. In situations of hunger which mean stress for the body’s cells, the body releases more antimicrobial peptides in order to protect itself. The scientists will publish their results in th ...
  
• Video of virus in action shows viruses can spread ...
  New video footage of a virus infecting cells is challenging what researchers have long believed about how viruses spread, suggesting that scientists may be able to create new drugs to tackle some viruses. Previously, viruses were thought to spread by entering a cell, replicating there, and then bein ...
  
• Human running speeds of 35 to 40 mph may be biolog ...
  amaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s record-setting performances have unleashed a wave of interest in the ultimate limits to human running speed. A new study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology offers intriguing insights into the biology and perhaps even the future of human running speed. The n ...
  

CFACT

• Greenpeace Opts for Millions of Blind Kids
  We can't prevent earthquakes, but we can prevent blindness.
  
• CFACT continues their mission in Cancún
• Not Exactly Mother Teresa
  In fact, unethical Greenpeace actions threaten the livelihoods and lives of millions
  
• Illegal aliens: An environmental boon?
• Peta's thrust into classrooms

Ria Novosti Online News

• Ethiopian plane believed crashed near Beirut
  An Ethiopian airliner with 85 passengers on board disappeared from radar early on Monday and is believed to have crashed into the Mediterranean Sea.
  
• Nine wounded in shooting at world's largest gold m ...
  Nine people, including an American, were wounded when unknown gunmen opened fire on a convoy belonging to a U.S. gold mining company in Indonesia's eastern province of Papua, CNN has said.
  
• Mexicans consume drugs worth $800 mln annually - m ...
  Mexicans consume more than 550 tonnes of drugs worth over $800 mln annually, the country's secretary of public security said on Monday.
  
• Rescue ship reaches ice stricken vessel in Russia' ...
  A rescue vessel has reached a refrigerator ship in distress off Russia's Sakhalin Island, a rescue spokesman said on Monday.
  
• Black snow blankets Latvian capital - media
  A blanket of snow with black dust has covered the Latvian capital, Riga, a local paper said on its website.
  

Ria Novosti - Science & Technology

• Russian cosmonaut to pilot Soyuz spacecraft to new ...
  The Russian cosmonaut is to pilot the Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft from its usual docking port on the International Space Station to the new Poisk module, a Russian Mission Control spokesman said. It is expected to take 25 minutes.
  
• 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.
  

Pruning Shears

• This Week In Tyranny
  No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post I keep waiting for some official word on Scott Horton’s blockbuster exposé on detainee deaths in Guantánamo. In the mean time here are two observations on media coverage of this bombshell story. First, Yves Smith :Anyone familiar ...
  
• Is a Tea Party Dynamic Growing on the Left?
  No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post Most of the blame in Martha Coakley’s defeat Tuesday is on her. She had a series of blunders, some of which were such a ridiculous caricature of liberal elitism it makes me wonder if she was a GOP double agent. So: That point, fir ...
  
• 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 ...
  

Natural Health News

• New Study Confirms Electrical Pollution from Cell ...
  An increasingly alarmed army of international scientists have to a controversial conclusion: The "electrosmog" that first began developing with the rollout of the electrical grid a century ago and now envelops every inhabitant of Earth is responsible for many of the diseases that impair or kill them ...
  
• After Awful Swine Flu Fiasco How Can You EVER Beli ...
  The UK Government is trying to get rid of a billion pounds worth of unwanted swine flu vaccine -- because the deadly epidemic never materialized. Major drug companies may have pushed the World Health Organization (WHO) to warn that swine flu could be a worldwide 'pandemic' killing tens of millions. ...
  
• The Dangers of QuickTrim
  Weight-loss product QuickTrim purports to burn calories by day and cleanse by night. But what is it? The morning and afternoon supplements contain a "thermogenic complex," two doses of which provide a total of 400 milligrams of caffeine -- the equivalent of four cups of coffee. The supplements also ...
  
• 5 Ways to Make Kids' Media Use Safe and Healthy
  American children spend 7 and a half hours a day plugged in to their phones and iPods and MP3 players, gaming, or otherwise engaged with electronic media. But heavy media-use behaviors are associated with health and social problems, including teenage depression, obesity, poor grades, and struggles w ...
  
• This Will be MUCH Better than the New Apple iTable ...
  Magazines have articles you can curl up with and lose yourself in, and luscious photography that draws the eye. Can what’s best about magazines be combined with the always connected, portable tablet e-readers sure to arrive in 2010? This video prototype shows the Mag+ project.
  

Antemedius

• Haiti: US Profiting From Disaster With Conditional ...
  As aid trickles into Haiti and news trickles out, and as the extent of the horror unfolding there following the earthquake becomes more widely known, decisions are already being made that will affect the kind of country surviving Haitians will live in that emerges from the disaster. In this video fr ...
  
• HCR - A Crap Sandwich On Wonder Bread
  The Dog, like a lot (most?) of the liberals on in the blogosphere is really not happy about the shape that Health Care Reform has taken. One of the hardest things about being an activist is how often you ask for policy that is like a pastrami on rye, and get handed a crap sandwich on Wonder Bread. S ...
  
• Haiti: "The world is coming to an end..."
  Channel 4 News via The Real News Network - January 14, 2010 Haiti earthquake: '100,000 may be dead' Haiti's President warns the scale of suffering is "unimaginable" Haiti and her people have not only been treated to catastrophe by nature, but have also suffered unimaginably at the hands of other c ...
  
• Doctors Without Borders Teleconference on Emergenc ...
  Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders Teleconference on Emergency Response to Haiti Earthquake January 13, 2010 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams already working on medical projects Haiti have treated hundreds of people injured in the quake and have been s ...
  
• Prop 8 Defense Says I Should Not Be Able To Be Mar ...
  Things are looking moderately good at the Prop 8 trial. Right now, the plaintiffs (the gay couples who want to be able to marry) are presenting their case so it is expected. We have had the very emotional testimony from the plaintiffs about what being denied this right that every heterosexual citize ...
  

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

• Top climatologist finds 40% of British government ...
  Roger Pielke, Jr. claims that the famous Stern Review, a British government review of the economics of climate change, which discusses the effect of global warming on the world economy, exaggerates its climate calculations by up to a factor of ten and may be 40% fraudulent. Related posts: ScienceN ...
  
• The media is starting to get it
  Hats off to RT for reporting "skeptically" on the Himalayan glacier "error." They say that glaciergate could be "swept under the rug" just like climategate was. Related posts: Glaciergate: Another scientist rats on the IPCC’s fraudulent ways New Scientist: Oops, the glaciers won’t have melted by 2 ...
  
• Positioned to educate new skeptics
  We started publishing climategate.com just last month, but we've already made it to the first page of Google, Bing and Yahoo for the search "climategate." At the moment, we are #4 on Google, #3 on Bing and #1 on Yahoo. Related posts: Can’t Hide the Decline of Google “Climategate” search results M ...
  
• Senate seeks to can EPA’s “CO2 is a pollutant” reg ...
  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced a resolution of disapproval to overturn EPA’s ruling that CO2 is a pollutant. Related posts: Environmental Blackmail Congressman Bill Shuster: Hold Your Breath, CO2 is now hazardous to your ...
  
• Glaciergate: Another scientist rats on the IPCC’s ...
  The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Related posts: IPCC apologizes for Himalayan glacier meltdown exaggeration, sort of New Sc ...
  

Opinio Juris

• Carl Schmitt’s Nuremberg Near-Miss
  by Kevin Jon Heller I've been writing Chapter 3 of my book on the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, which traces the evolution of the Office of the Chief of Counsel's trial program -- how it selected the twelve cases, why it abandoned others, which suspects it included and which it excluded.  It's a f ...
  
• The Emerging Law of Detentions: The Guantanamo Hab ...
  by Kenneth Anderson by Kenneth Anderson Anyone doing serious work on detention, Guantanamo, war on terror, any of these areas, will want to read an extraordinary new study just out from the Brookings Institution by Benjamin Wittes, Robert Chesney, and Rabea Benhalim, The Emerging Law of Detention ...
  
• More soft statehood…
  by JanKlabbers by JanKlabbers Over the last few days I learned a valuable lesson: irony and satire do not work. I thought my contribution on soft statehood was written with my tongue so far in my cheek that it risked coming out of my ear; I thought I had piled on the layers of irony so richly [.. ...
  
• Innovative Aid to Haiti
  by Chris Borgen by Chris Borgen The current issue of Foreign Affairs has an article called A Few Dollars at a Time: How to Tap Consumers for Development, which describes the “innovative financing” movement in which private companies find ways for their customers to contribute to international dev ...
  
• Carl Schmitt’s Nuremberg Near-Miss
  by Kevin Jon Heller I've been writing Chapter 3 of my book on the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, which traces the evolution of the Office of the Chief of Counsel's trial program -- how it selected the twelve cases, why it abandoned others, which suspects it included and which it excluded.  It's a f ...
  

Investigate - Breaking News

• BREAKING: Glaciergate worsens, IPCC used fake clai ...
  A top IPCC official has blown the UN's climate science organisation out of the water, admitting this afternoon that the IPCC deliberately included false information about the Himalayan glaciers, to put pressure on the public and politicians. The story has...
  
• BREAKING: New major errors found in IPCC report, c ...
  The Times of London is reporting major fresh errors in the IPCC's Nobel-prizewinning Fourth Assessment Report, again based on unreliable and non peer-reviewed sources. The latest controversy centres on claims that global warming is causing more hurricanes, cyclones and floods....
  
• BREAKING: Pachauri's TERI institute given US$14mil ...
  Things are about to get even hotter for the UN IPCC's climate change house of cards, after revelations that IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri's TERI institute wangled a $14 million research grant from European taxpayers to study the effects of Himalayan...
  
• NZ’s top climate scientists oversaw IPCC’s most em ...
  New Zealand's top climate scientists appear to have failed to spot what glaciologists now admit was an "obvious" and "ridiculous" error on Himalayan glacier melt, even though it was in the 2007 IPCC report they worked on. IPCC chairman Rajendra...
  
• Twitter test
  I think I've pushed a button to allow cross-tweets...which should appear at http://twitter.com/investigatemag
  

Public News Service

• Good News! Research Shows Many AZ Health Resolutio ...
  Good News! Research Shows Many AZ Health Resolutions Will Stick Phoenix, AZ - Arizonans who made resolutions this year to improve their health have a great shot at following through, according to research from the American Heart Association. Their surveying shows 73 percent will keep health goals th ...
  
• Saturday Immigration March Expected to Draw Thousa ...
  Saturday Immigration March Expected to Draw Thousands Phoenix, AZ – Organizers of tomorrow’s (Saturday’s) immigrant rights march in west Phoenix are expecting up to 20-thousand demonstrators. The marchers are voicing concerns about a federal policy that allows county jail officials to check the immi ...
  
• Kids Advocate: More Cuts Threaten Arizona’s ...
  Kids Advocate: More Cuts Threaten Arizona’s Recovery Phoenix, AZ – Governor Jan Brewer put a high priority on job creation in her State of the State speech, but a leading children’s advocate says further deep cuts to kids’ programs will damage the state’s chances for economic recovery. Comments from ...
  
• Call for Closed Captioning on the Web Heard by Goo ...
  Call for Closed Captioning on the Web Heard by Google Phoenix, AZ – The explosion of video and audio on the Internet has left much of the deaf community behind, but that is starting to change. Groups that advocate for people who are deaf are cheering a recent decision by Google to add automatic capt ...
  
• New Law Divides Arizona Education Advocates
  New Law Divides Arizona Education Advocates Phoenix, AZ – Arizona teachers vow to continue legal action against a new state law they say targets teachers rights. The state’s school boards, meanwhile, defend the reforms as ultimately improving education and benefiting students. Comments from Arizona ...
  

My Care2 Picks

• Retired Lieutenant Colonel William J. Astore’s, “A ...
  Hat Tip http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/ Provocative exploration of whether a military “stealth coup” is possible in America and ten things Americans can do to stop it Retired Lt-Col Wm. J. Astore No American Caesar returning with troops needed Submitted by John Farnham to Society & Culture  |  ...
  
• Riz Khan / Riz Khan - Children of Haiti
  Noted by Dr. John v. Kampen with a note that al Jazeera has a habit of 'pulling' politically inflammatory clips : 2 million orphans at risk in Haiti Submitted by John Farnham to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  
• Haiti - Five days later
  The Haitian government has signed a memorandum of understanding formally transferring control of the Port-au-Prince airport to the US. From the Guardian : most flights are for the United States military. Their priorities are to secure the country. Submitted by John Farnham to US Politics & Gov't  | ...
  
• What Now ?
  Blue Girl is a retired EMT who blogs politics. A comment on the thread by James M gives local colour to what starts out as a professional rescuer's view Submitted by John Farnham to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  
• Care2: let us use Butterfly Credits to help Haiti ...
  On January 12, 2010, the country of Haiti was devastated by a monstrous magnitude 7.0 earthquake, the country's most severe in over 200 years. Haiti was left in ruins. We would love to help all we can, but a lot of us are not able to donate any Submitted by Cher C. to Society & Culture  |   Note-it ...
  

Angry Indian News

• Wales MEP demands Egyptian apology for Swansea dep ...
  Palestine Video: "'Wales Plaid MEP has met with officials in Egypt to demand an explanation for the deportation of three Swansea women. Jill Evans has just returned from a fact finding mission to the... [[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]
  
• Haiti looting horror: Girl shot dead by police for ...
  guardian.co.uk: "The horrifying aftermath of Haiti's earthquake has claimed another victim in the form of a 15-year-old girl, an apparent looter, shot dead by police. Fabienne Cherisma was killed... [[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]
  
• #Haiti looting horror: Girl shot dead by #police f ...
  guardian.co.uk: The horrifying aftermath of Haiti's earthquake has claimed another victim in the form of a 15-year-old girl, an apparent looter, shot dead by police. Fabienne Cherisma was killed with... [[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]
  
• UN: Haiti government calls off search and rescue
  Every Drop Counts: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti's government has declared the search and rescue phase for survivors of the earthquake over, the United Nations announced Saturday, saying there is... [[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]
  
• ice outrage
  mars 2 earth: It is not okay to misappropriate bits of a culture for your own ends - namely winning a ice skating competition. This really is a shocker - it is unacceptable.From BBC"Indigenous... [[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]
  

  Blacklisted News

• PayPal Freezes Wikileaks Account
  Paypal has as of 23rd of January 2010 frozen WikiLeaks assets. This is the second time that this happens. The last time we struggled for more than half a year to resolve this issue.
  
• SEC mulled national security status for AIG detail ...
  U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.
  
• Dangerous Crossroads: U.S. Moves Missiles And Troo ...
  Nuclear and Conventional Arms Pacts Stalled
  
• Report: Canada's former ambassador to Iran was CIA ...
  A report says the Canadian diplomat praised for sheltering Americans during the Iranian Revolution was a CIA spy.
  
• US to Pay Taliban Fighters to 'Lay Down Their Arms ...
  And, if the Taliban fighters *don't* lay down their arms, and instead continue to raise them in battle against the West? Then, the US government will be in the awkward position of funding the enemy of the US soldier on the battlefield . Hmm. 'Some dare call it tr ...
  

The Intelligence Daily

• Disdain Versus Democracy
  By Joel Hirschhorn (The Intelligence Daily) — That strange sound you hear if you listen... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  
• Secret Handshakes: Old fraternal orders offer a us ...
  By John Michael Greer (The Intelligence Daily) — Last week’s Archdruid Report post on the... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  
• It’s the “New Haiti!”
  By Michael Collins (The Intelligence Daily) — The appointment of former presidents Bill... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  
• Court Finds Ex-Gitmo Prosecutor Likely Fired For S ...
  (The Intelligence Daily) — From the ACLU: A federal court found on Wednesday that, based on... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  
• Many German local authorities nearing bankruptcy
  By Elisabeth Zimmermann (WSWS) — At the start of 2010, a number of local town and district... For more details, please click on the link to read the article
  

My AntiWar

• Iran Opposition Calls for Free Elections: Website
• Ahmadinejad Hints Iran Resolved to Make 20 Pct Nuc ...
• Caucasus Extremists ‘Vanquished’: Puti ...
• Sri Lanka Opposition Warns of Election Coup
• Ten Suspects Go on Trial in Jordan Terror Plot

Rogue Government.com

• Live pigs blasted in terror attack experiments
  LIVE pigs are being blown up with explosives at Porton Down, the government’s secret military research laboratory, to simulate the effect of terrorist attacks on civilian targets.
  
• 'Avatar' replaces 'Titanic' in record books
  James Cameron's sci-fi spectacular replaced his maritime melodrama as the biggest international release of all time during the weekend and is on the verge of claiming its worldwide crown, which also includes North American receipts, distributor 20th Century Fox said on Sunday.
  
• China accuses US of using cyberwarfare
  China raised the ante at the weekend in an escalating war of words with the US as the ruling Communist party’s mouthpiece accused Washington of employing cyberwarfare.
  
• SEC mulled national security status for AIG detai ...
  U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.
  
• PayPal Freezes Wikileaks Account
  Paypal has as of 23rd of January 2010 frozen WikiLeaks assets. This is the second time that this happens.
  

Innovation Canada

• Rethinking the pine beetle
  When he talks about the fight against the mountain pine beetle, Joerg Bohlmann likes to use a medical analogy. “Imagine we’re trying to combat malaria,” says the genome biologist based at the University of British Columbia, “but we don’t know the makeup of the disease-causing parasite, so we leave i ...
  
• 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 ...
  

Signs of the times

• Israel to refute Goldstone report findings
  Bethlehem - Israel will submit its refutation of the Goldstone report to the UN on Thursday, with the aim of dispelling the report's conclusion that war crimes were carried out by the Israeli army, American media reported on Sunday. While the content of Israel's rebuttal remains confidential, off ...
  
• Rabbinic Text or Call to Terror?
  The marble-patterned, hardcover book embossed with gold Hebrew letters looks like any other religious commentary you'd find in an Orthodox Judaica bookstore - but reads like a rabbinic instruction manual outlining acceptable scenarios for killing non-Jewish babies, children and adults. "The proh ...
  
• Hermann Goering great-niece tells Hitler documenta ...
  Bettina Goering, great niece of Nazi Hermann Goering, has revealed in a documentary about Hitler she has been sterilised so she would "not pass on the blood of a monster". The 53-year-old, who now lives in New Mexico, was among many relatives of Nazi leaders to speak about the shame and revulsion ...
  
• First never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid spotte ...
  NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has spotted its first never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid, the first of hundreds it is expected to find during its mission to map the whole sky in infrared light. The near-Earth object, designated 2010 AB78, was discovered by WISE Jan. 12. Afte ...
  
• UK photographers protest against anti-terror law
  Around 2,000 British photographers have staged a rally in London, protesting the UK's new controversial terrorism laws that warrant stop and search by police. The photographers gathered in London's Trafalgar Square on Saturday to express their discontent over the country's Terrorism Act 2000, whic ...
  

Threat Level

• Judge Reduces ‘Shocking’ File Sharing Award
  A federal judge on Friday reduced a $1.92 million file sharing verdict to $54,000 after concluding the award for infringing 24 songs was “shocking.” A federal jury in June found Jammie Thomas-Rasset liable in what at the time was the nation’s only Recording Industry Association of America file-sha ...
  
• Judge Tosses NSA Spy Cases
  A federal judge dismisses lawsuits accusing the government of teaming with the nation’s telcos to funnel Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision was a major blow to the two suits testing warrantless eavesdrop ...
  
• Microsoft Learned of IE Zero-Day Flaw Last Septemb ...
  A critical security vulnerability that hackers used to breach Google, Adobe and other large U.S. companies was disclosed to Microsoft last September, not last week as previously believed. The software giant had intended to release a patch for the flaw in February, five months after learning about i ...
  
• DarkMarket Ringleader Pleads Guilty in London
  A former ringleader of a top internet carding site run secretly by the FBI has pleaded guilty in the United Kingdom. Renukanth Subramaniam, aka “JiLsi,” was a former Pizza Hut delivery guy who helped run one of the leading English-language criminal sites, DarkMarket. The site operated as an interna ...
  
• FBI, Telecoms Teamed to Breach Wiretap Laws
  The FBI and telecom companies collaborated to routinely violate federal wiretapping laws for four years, as agents got access to reporters’ and citizens’ phone records using fake emergency declarations or by simply asking for them. The Justice Department’s Inspector General’s internal audit released ...
  

PERRspectives : Blog

• Cornyn Not Threatening Judges After SCOTUS Ruling
  Apparently, judicial activism like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. On Sunday, Texas Senator John Cornyn told Fox News that the impact of the Supreme Court's Citizen United ruling, which erased decades of precedents on corporate political campaign...
  
• Scott Brown, Fred Thompson and the Authenticity of ...
  In the wake of Scott Brown's landscape changing win in Massachusetts, the clear message to Republicans is "keep on truckin'." As the Boston Globe reports, the green GMC Canyon truck - what the paper deemed Brown's "regular-guy-mobile" featured so prominently...
  
• Democrats Waver on Ending Bush Tax Cuts for Wealth ...
  Last year, President Obama kept his campaign promise to cut taxes for 95% of American households. But facing tough reelection prospects in November, a group of House Democrats is getting weak in the knees when its comes to Obama's pledge...
  
• Conservatives Put the Hate in Haiti
  On Monday, January 11, PBS Newshour aired what may have been the most upbeat assessment of the progress in and future prospects for long-suffering Haiti offered in years. That 10 minute segment ("Despite Years of Crushing Poverty, Hope Grows in...
  
• McCain Honored by Country He Put First - Georgia
  Throughout his failed 2008 presidential run, Republican John McCain campaigned on a theme of "Country First." As it turns out, that country was Georgia. After his bellicose August 2008 declaration to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili that "today we are all...
  

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

• US Democracy's End of the Road
  A Supreme Court ruling on corporate campaign cash and the Left's errors have put U.S. democracy in danger, says Robert Parry. January 23, 2010
  
• What Should Progressives Do Now?
  After a devastating week, the American Left needs to regroup and fight back, writes Michael Winship. January 22, 2010
  
• Massachusetts' Message of Stupid
  Whatever Massachusetts thought it was saying with Scott Brown's Senate election, it was a message of stupid, says Robert Parry. January 21, 2010
  
• Hiding War Horrors from Americans
  The strength of U.S. war propaganda at home was to use the mainstream media as a propaganda conveyor belt, a study finds. January 21, 2010
  
• How Obama Lost His Way
  In his first year, President Obama comforted a shaken Establishment but neglected the hard-hit public, writes Robert Parry. January 20, 2010
  

CounterPunch

• Alexander Cockburn : The Great Leap Sideways
• Ralph Nader : The Supremes Bow to King Corporation
• Nikolas Kozloff : A Thorn in the Side of the U.S. ...
• Mitchel Cohen : Haiti and Toxic Waste
• Paul Buccheit : The Tragedy of Haiti ... and Us

Institute for Middle East Understanding

• U.S. policy in Gaza remains unchanged (Charles Fr ...
  One year ago Thursday, the last Israeli tanks were lumbering out of the Gaza Strip, ending the 22-day Gaza War and leaving in their wake a decimated landscape and population. A year later, the humanitarian a ...
  
• Ignoring Gaza's humanitarian crisis (Juan Cole, S ...
  When a relief plane for Doctors Without Borders isn't allowed to land by U.S. military authorities at the airport in Port-au-Prince, there is an outcry. But Israeli military authorities will not allow any re ...
  
• U.S. policy in Gaza remains unchanged (Charles Fr ...
  One year ago Thursday, the last Israeli tanks were lumbering out of the Gaza Strip, ending the 22-day Gaza War and leaving in their wake a decimated landscape and population. A year later, the humanitarian a ...
  
• Oslo and the end of Palestinian independence (Jos ...
  Note that throughout the last 16 years, Israeli leaders have consistently said, in line with the formula of land for peace, that they want and seek peace with the Palestinians, but not the establishment of a ...
  
• Palestinians build Israeli homes (Al Jazeera)

Water - AlterNet

• Glacier National Park May Need a Name Change Soon
  Glacial retreat in the the U.S: One of Montana's most majestic places will be gone in a little over two decades, and 99% of Alaska's glaciers are shrinking.
  
• What to Make of the Latest Article Warning of Scar ...
  As scary as tap can be in certain places, there even more reason to be concerned with bottled water.
  
• Is New York's Budget Deficit Leading it to Adopt N ...
  The state's environmental regulations are supposed to ensure that drilling in the Marcellus Shale proceeds smoothly; they don't even come close.
  
• Is Schwarzenegger's Big Drought Over?
  Don't be surprised if Schwarzenegger will now use the threat of catastrophic flooding of Biblical proportions to promote the $11.1 water bond on the November ballot.
  
• Colbert Report Takes Down Big Coal: Save the Endan ...
  Stephen Colbert hosted scientist Margaret Palmer in a brilliant takedown of the Obama administration's recent decision to green light more mountaintop removal permits.
  

TruthHugger

• American Theocracy divorces the US Constitution, p ...
  America wants to be ruled by TV Evangelist Bankers who are always holier than everyone else until they're caught! This is where Religion has buddied up with weapons manufacturers to promote killing in the name of Jesus.
  
• 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 ...
  

Dandelion Salad - Featured Writers' Posts

• Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly Owned B ...
  by Dr. Ellen Brown Featured Writer Dandelion Salad webofdebt.com Jan. 24, 2010 The story goes that C
  
• The 15% Solution: A Political History of American ...
  by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH Featured Writer Dandelion Salad crossposted on TPJmagazine January 24, 2010
  
• The Sellout on Health Care is Now Complete by Sean ...
  by Sean Fenley Dandelion Salad The Anything and Everything Jan. 24, 2010 In comes Mr. Brown, this ye
  
• Mr. Obama, Do You Believe Us Now? By Timothy V. Ga ...
  By Timothy V. Gatto Featured Writer Dandelion Salad liberalpro.blogspot.com January 24, 2010 I read
  
• Cindy Sheehan on The 9/11 Issue + "Divide & Co ...
  with Cindy Sheehan Featured Writer Dandelion Salad Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog Cindy Sheehan’s Soap
  

Unexplained Mysteries

• Earth not adequately protected against asteroids
  The National Academy of Sciences has stated that more needs to be done to address the threat of asteroids. A new report has claimed that not enough is...
  
• Scientists to dig up Leonardo Da Vinci's bones
  A group of scientists is looking to dig up the remains of Leonardo Da Vinci so that they can reconstruct his face. The reconstruction will assist in d...
  
• Pope tells priests to make use of modern technolog ...
  Pope Benedict has told priests that they need to learn and make use of new technologies to spread the gospel message. The 82-year-old pope who isn't k...
  
• Humans were once an endangered species
  Scientists have determined that approximately 1.2 million years ago humans were on the verge of extinction. At this point in time there would have bee...
  
• New Zealand UFO papers to be made public
  New Zealand are preparing to release hundreds of secret military UFO documents to the public this year. The file cover the period from 1979 to 1984 an...
  

Grassroots

• From Gaza to Haiti and Back Again
  IMG_4910.JPG   GAZA CITY—I dreamt of Haiti last night. Something about the scene felt eerily familiar. The visions of people trapped under folded sheets of concrete, children crying out to family members they would never see again, and incapac ...
  
• Honduras: Unsolved matters
  DSC09727.JPG   read more
  
• Haiti: Roots of Liberty -- Roots of Disaster
  Grassroots International ally Food First's executive director Eric Holt-Jimenez wrote recently -- on HuffPost -- on the long roots of the disaster in Haiti. His point about the "historic bleeding of Haiti's economy and the systematic undermining of its political institutions" being at the root of th ...
  
• Boston Haitian community mobilizes support for the ...
  The Haitian-American community all over the United states is mobilizing to support their loved ones back in Haiti in the aftermath of the disastrous earthquake that hit last week. Boston's Haitian community has likewise risen to the occasion through forming among other things the Boston-Haiti Health ...
  
• Boston-area Kids Raise Funds to Help Haiti
  kids_raising_money.JPG Over the weekend proceeding Martin Luther King Day, kids from Jamaica Plain, MA took to the sidewalks to raise funds for earthquake relief in Haiti. They set up tables in front of local shops, including JP Licks ice crea ...
  

Climate

• January 23-24, 2010
  China, India, Brazil to Meet Jan. 31 Deadline in Climate Accord (Bloomberg) China, Brazil, South Africa and India will meet a deadline set during international talks for disclosing the voluntary steps they plan to take to mitigate climate change. France Wants 'G28' to Guide Climate Change Talks ...
  
• January 23-24, 2010
  France Wants "G28" to Guide Climate Change Talks (Reuters ) French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed setting up a "balanced, representative" group of 28 countries to guide climate negotiations and avoid a repetition of the chaotic Copenhagen talks. BASIC Nations Meet in India Over Climate ...
  
• January 22, 2010
  Past Decade Warmest Ever, NASA Data Shows (New York Times) The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record, figures released by NASA show. The agency also found that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, when modern temperature measurement began. Blankenship, Kennedy Debate Coal's F ...
  
• January 21, 2010
  Landrieu, Murkowski Collaborate on Plan to Block EPA Climate Rules (The Hill) Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told reporters that she is working with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Murkowski's efforts to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. U.S. Carbon Plan to ...
  
• January 20, 2010
  Sierra Club Gets a New Director: RAN's Mike Brune (Earth Island Journal) The choice of Mike Brune hints at a coming shakeup at the 700,000-member-strong Sierra Club, possibly toward more in-your-face tactics as the green movement struggles to translate growing mainstream interest in the environm ...
  

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

• Fire The Failures and Save The Presidency
  If President Obama wants to really understand why he got his ass handed to him in the Massachusetts Senate race--a defeat as shocking and strange as if Joe Lieberman was elected president of Iran--he might want to read one of the thousands of economic horror stories happening around the country ever ...
  
• US Democracy's End of the Road
  This past week had the feel of “game, set, match,” the end to a long string of miscalculations by the American Left and a crowning victory for the cynical American Right – a triple whammy of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to unleash corporate campaign spending, Air America’s dissolution, and th ...
  
• Err-America
  Air America, the liberal radio network, went down in flames, Jan. 21, when it filed for bankruptcy. It wasn't because of air-to-air combat with conservative talk shows and bloggers. It wasn't because of the Recession, although reduced advertising revenue, a reality of all media, also affected Air Am ...
  
• Massachusetts a great loss for Obama
  OJAI, Calif. -- Usually arid southern California is being hit by torrential rains, flash floods and mud slides. Here in the hills, roads have turned to rivers. But these tempests are nothing compared to the electoral thunderclap that just greeted President Barack Obama's first anniversary in office. ...
  
• Another Nuclear-Weapons Commission? Wait, This One ...
  THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- In December, what for all intents and purposes looks like the mother of all reports on nuclear weapons was issued. The entity responsible is called the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND). A joint initiative of the Australian and Japane ...
  

Ten Percent

• So, Murder Then
  Evidence relating to the death of Government weapons inspector David Kelly is to be kept secret for 70 years, it has been reported. A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, means medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified un ...
  
• In Iran, Labour Activists Face Repression
  (ht2 Naj) Interview by Bill Balderston, Oakland Education Association and U.S. Labor Against the War- Iran has seen incredible tumult in the last few months, with massive street protests challenging the government, even as the U.S. and allied nations continue to threaten the Iranian government under ...
  
• Friday! Four Lions
  Well done to Chris Morris for overcoming the obstacles and achieving the film. Warp Films Four Lions site.
  
• Help Haiti- Drop The Debt
  An international petition has been circulated for the dropping of Haiti’s foreign debt. For an explanation of why this is a crucial move at this time, and why the debt is illegitimate and part of the exploitation of Haiti for decades, read this article by Eric Toussaint and Sophie Perchellet entitle ...
  
• Support A Single Mother
  The US Army had Alexis Hutchinson thrown in jail and took her child from her because she took her role as a mother seriously, they have now filed four separate court martial charges against her. She was meant to deploy to Afghanistan but when her childcare arrangements fell through, she made the dec ...
  

Booman Tribune

• Open Thread
  It's annoying that both NFL games today are being played in domes. I like my football with mud, rain, and snow. It looks like the Jets are going to come up short. They had a good run. I'd like to root for the Saints just to support New Orleans, but I just can't do it. I'll be cheering for the V ...
  
• Something to Do
  The right is so fired up that they actually have five Tea Party candidates vying for the nomination in Virginia's Fifth Congressional District. While that division might present a problem to actually winning the Charlottesville seat, it's indicative of a very high overall energy level that can be s ...
  
• Quote of the Day
  "I love the president. I love him a lot. I think he is a terrific guy."- Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on Meet the Press
  
• Casual Observation
  The funny thing is that I bet less than one percent of the U.S. voting population has ever even heard of the Goldstone Report. I'd be interested to know how often it has been mentioned on the television news. But that's the way our betters want things. We remain clueless about why people try to k ...
  
• Kids Who Don't Drive
  I've noticed this in my own home: A generation consumed by Facebook and text-messaging, by Xbox Live and smart phones, no longer needs to climb into a car to connect with friends. And while many teens are still eager to drive, new laws make getting a license far more time-consuming, requiring as ...
  

European Tribune

• There is (offshore wind powered) light at the end ...
  bankers walking inside a foundation for the Belwind offshore windfarm, Zeebrugge, Belgium, 22 January 2010...
  
• Sunday Open Thread
  Chatty, Chatty?...
  
• So what are the consequences of the budget deficit ...
  Martin Wolf has an article on the Greek financial situation where he notes that there...
  
• European Salon de News, Discussion et Klatsch - 24 ...
   A Daily Review Of International Online Media Europeans on this date in history:1864 – Marguerite Durand,...
  
• Saturday Open Thread
  The last transition pieces for the Belwind offshore wind farm...
  

Futurismic

• How fanfic starts
  Does Not Equal is a webcomic by Sarah Ennals – check out the pre-Futurismic archives, and the strips that have been published here previously. [ Be sure to check out the Does Not Equal Cafepress store for webcomic merchandise featuring Canadians with geometrically-shaped heads! ] Project Wonderful ...
  
• Will Gillis on sf’s changing face
  I don’t know whether William Gillis wrote this little screed about the changing face of science fiction as a response or reaction to Jo Walton’s piece about the reading protocols of the genre, but it certainly serves as an interesting counterpoint to it. I like to read the viewpoints of smart reader ...
  
• The auroch revival: bringing back the big beef
  It’s not often that we get to hear about people working on a scientific project previously instigated by Hitler and the Nazi Party of Germany… though this is thankfully a far more benign application of eugenic theory than the atrocities of the Second World War. Italian scientists are trying to recre ...
  
• Interpreting facts as failure: the neuroscience of ...
  There’s a fascinating essay at Wired UK about a guy called Kevin Dunbar, who studies the science of science. The philosophy and theory of science – the seven-step method you had drilled into you at school, for instance – is very elegant, but it doesn’t reflect the way that real science gets done, an ...
  
• Amazon, ebooks and piracy – tipping points ahoy?
  Sticking with the piracy theme for a moment (yeah, I know, so out of character, right?), here’s an article at TechRadar that features an interview with one George Walkley, head of digital developments for publishers Hachette UK, talking about ways in which the publishing industry has tried to learn ...
  

Therapy News

• Psychiatric, Residual Health Concerns Heaviest in ...
  A GoodTherapy.org News Summary Service in the armed forces is frequently associated with certain types of combat, leading many to expect that the majority of injuries sustained along with most medical evacuations are due to being shot in some form or another while in the field. This common idea, how ...
  
• Mental Health Issues Hidden Among Co-Workers
  A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Facing the daily challenges of mental health concerns is something that many people attempt to work through on their own, but the degree to which some hide their concerns from others may be especially damaging. The mental health association Ahead has released a report ...
  
• Seen, Heard, Felt, Hidden: Putting a Name to the S ...
  By Leslie Larson, LPC-S, Domestic Violence Topic Expert Contributor Click here to contact Leslie and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile I had been seeing “Nicole” for almost a year. She had made remarkable progress in her efforts to overcome the abuse and neglect of her childhood and wanted to draw ...
  
• New Year’s Resolution: Lose Weight. Not!
  By Deborah Klinger, MA, Eating & Food Issues Topic Expert Contributor Click here to contact Deborah and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile It’s January, the time of year when we’ve rung out the old and are ringing in the new, making resolutions for the coming year. New Year’s resolutions usually inv ...
  
• Risks for Social Rejection among Children Identifi ...
  A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Helping children enjoy a more fruitful and enjoyable childhood is a central goal of many in the field of child therapy, and a study recently carried out at the Rush University Medical Center has made a considerable effort towards this end. The study showed that an ina ...
  

Mountaintop Removal

• Mountaintop Removal Must Be Stopped - Before It's ...
  Mountaintop Removal Must Be Stopped Before It's News Mountaintop removal is a horrific method of mining coal and must be stopped. Five hundred beautiful mountains have been already been destroyed forever. ...
  
• "Citizens United" for More Corporate Power - Huffi ...
  Washington Post "Citizens United" for More Corporate Power Huffington Post (blog) ... could ever cause such as when Big Coal chews up rural communities with " mountain top removal " mining; or the McWayne foundry brutalizes its workers; ... Last Week's Supreme Court Ruling: A Step Towards Corporate ...
  
• Scientists urge ban of coal mining mountaintop rem ...
  West Virginia Public Broadcasting Scientists urge ban of coal mining mountaintop removal Examiner.com Scientists urge ban for mountaintop removal for coal mining. A group of scientists from the University of Maryland last Thursday urged the Federal ... Mountaintop Removal Mining Has Obliterated 700 ...
  
• Last Week's Supreme Court Ruling: A Step Towards C ...
  Last Week's Supreme Court Ruling: A Step Towards Corporate Communism? eTalkinghead ... a majority of coal (which makes up most of our electricity source) is extracted using a nefarious method called Mountain Top Removal (MTR). ... and more »
  
• Hobet 45 deal: Mountaintop removal questions for a ...
  West Virginia Public Broadcasting Hobet 45 deal: Mountaintop removal questions for all Charleston Gazette (blog) But the agreement raises lots of questions — enough to go around and for all sides of the mountaintop removal issue. First, for environmental groups: Will ... EPA Approves One New Mounta ...
  

Memeorandum

• Why I Regret Voting For President Obama (Jill Dors ...
  Jill Dorson / Real Clear Politics : Why I Regret Voting For President Obama   —  I am a registered Independent.  I voted for Barack Obama.  And for that, I am sorry.  —  I'm not sorry for you.  I'm sorry for me.  Because I voted for Obama for me, not for you.  I voted for hope and change and all th ...
  
• Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry to retire (Chris Cilliz ...
  Chris Cillizza / The Fix : Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry to retire   —  Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry is expected to announce his retirement tomorrow morning, according to three sources briefed on the decision.  —  Berry will become the sixth Democrat in a competitive seat to leave in the last two months ...
  
• CNN poll: 56 percent oppose stimulus program (CNN)
  CNN : CNN poll: 56 percent oppose stimulus program   —  Washington (CNN) - A majority of Americans oppose the economic stimulus program, according to a new national poll.  —  Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Sunday say they oppose the sti ...
  
• Ed Schultz Tells Robert Gibbs He's 'Full Of Sh*t' ...
  Faiz Shakir / Think Progress : Ed Schultz Tells Robert Gibbs He's ‘Full Of Sh*t’ And 'You're Losing Your Base'   —  Last night, MSNBC's Ed Schultz spoke at Minnesota progressive talk radio AM950's Blue State Bash at the Minneapolis Convention Center.  During his remarks, Schultz revealed that he r ...
  
• Political push-back stalls stock market rally on W ...
  Washington Post : Political push-back stalls stock market rally on Wall Street   —  NEW YORK — Washington spent months nursing the financial system back to health after the 2008 economic crisis, stabilizing then reviving battered markets and ultimately restoring trillions of dollars in investor los ...
  

Energy & Environment News

• Green Inc. Column: Stop Eating Meat and Save the P ...
  Links between climate change and food policy are an important element in the debate over what to do about the rising levels of greenhouse gases.
  
• Why Is a Utility Paying Customers?
  As saving energy becomes a rallying cry, Idaho Power is in the vanguard, paying farmers and others to cut peak use.
  
• Business Briefing | Companies: Schlumberger Posts ...
  Schlumberger said Friday that oil drilling has started to recover after a sharp decline in crude prices last year reduced the company’s fourth-quarter profit by 31 percent.
  
• Economic View: Of Individual Liberty and Cap and T ...
  Ronald H. Coase, a Nobel laureate admired by conservatives, argued for using the least costly solution to problems. With greenhouse gases, could that mean government action?
  
• Senators Want to Bar E.P.A. Greenhouse Gas Limits
  A Republican senator introduced a resolution to prevent the agency from taking any action to regulate carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases.
  

5+ quakes - 7 days

• M 5.1, Guadeloupe region, Leeward Islands
  Sunday, January 24, 2010 22:43:23 UTC Sunday, January 24, 2010 06:43:23 PM at epicenter Depth : 67.90 km (42.19 mi)
  
• M 5.4, Kepulauan Babar, Indonesia
  Sunday, January 24, 2010 05:38:29 UTC Sunday, January 24, 2010 02:38:29 PM at epicenter Depth : 35.00 km (21.75 mi)
  
• M 5.0, Tonga
  Saturday, January 23, 2010 00:22:57 UTC Saturday, January 23, 2010 02:22:57 PM at epicenter Depth : 9.10 km (5.65 mi)
  
• M 5.4, south of the Fiji Islands
  Friday, January 22, 2010 01:24:52 UTC Friday, January 22, 2010 01:24:52 PM at epicenter Depth : 35.00 km (21.75 mi)
  
• M 5.2, Greece
  Friday, January 22, 2010 00:46:57 UTC Friday, January 22, 2010 02:46:57 AM at epicenter Depth : 10.10 km (6.28 mi)
  

China Dialogue

• Confronting the cost of dams (2)
  In the second half of a two-part article on reservoir-induced disasters, Masano Atsuko looks at a catalogue of government failures and asks what it will take to stir Japan’s politicians. In Japan, the government has only recently reached the point where it is finally willing to recognise the causal ...
  
• Confronting the cost of dams (1)
  Reservoir-induced disasters in Japan are draining the public purse and ruining the countryside. It is time for wiser planning, argues Masano Atsuko. Three months after the Iwate-Miyagi Nairiku Earthquake struck the northern part of Honshu, Japan’s main island, on June 14, 2008, triggering a huge lan ...
  
• In Africa, a need for balance
  If the continent’s wildlife is to be preserved, more income from the tourists who flock to its safari parks must find its way to local people, argues Julian Glover. Something shaming often happens when you clatter up a dusty track and enter any of Africa’s famous national parks, or even some quieter ...
  
• 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 ...
  

AlterNet Top Stories

• Convicted Felon Writes from Jail: I Don't Like Oba ...
  They give this guy a platform.
  
• What Would Ted Do? It's Time for House Dems to Fol ...
  No doubt Senator Ted Kennedy is rolling in his grave -- but if you listen very closely -- he isn't sighing -- he is saying "sign it."
  
• Football Player Tim Tebow on What Should Happen in ...
  CBS, which previously turned down ads by MoveOn.org, has agreed to run an anti-abortion ad starring Tebow and his mom.
  
• The "Creation Museum": A National Joke
  A good take-down is a thing of beauty.
  
• Uganda's "Kill the Gays" Movement Organi ...
  Tied to Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill, "Transformation" movement fields Newark volunteer army
  

Threat Level

• Judge Reduces ‘Shocking’ File Sharing Award
  A federal judge on Friday reduced a $1.92 million file sharing verdict to $54,000 after concluding the award for infringing 24 songs was “shocking.” A federal jury in June found Jammie Thomas-Rasset liable in what at the time was the nation’s only Recording Industry Association of America file-sha ...
  
• Judge Tosses NSA Spy Cases
  A federal judge dismisses lawsuits accusing the government of teaming with the nation’s telcos to funnel Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision was a major blow to the two suits testing warrantless eavesdrop ...
  
• Microsoft Learned of IE Zero-Day Flaw Last Septemb ...
  A critical security vulnerability that hackers used to breach Google, Adobe and other large U.S. companies was disclosed to Microsoft last September, not last week as previously believed. The software giant had intended to release a patch for the flaw in February, five months after learning about i ...
  
• DarkMarket Ringleader Pleads Guilty in London
  A former ringleader of a top internet carding site run secretly by the FBI has pleaded guilty in the United Kingdom. Renukanth Subramaniam, aka “JiLsi,” was a former Pizza Hut delivery guy who helped run one of the leading English-language criminal sites, DarkMarket. The site operated as an interna ...
  
• FBI, Telecoms Teamed to Breach Wiretap Laws
  The FBI and telecom companies collaborated to routinely violate federal wiretapping laws for four years, as agents got access to reporters’ and citizens’ phone records using fake emergency declarations or by simply asking for them. The Justice Department’s Inspector General’s internal audit released ...
  

Reuters - Most Popular Articles

• SEC mulled national security status for AIG detail ...
  NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.
  
• Bin Laden claims U.S. plane attempt, vows more att ...
  DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the failed December 25 bombing of a U.S.-bound plane in an audio tape aired on Sunday, and vowed to continue attacks on the United States.
  
• UPDATE 2-'Avatar' replaces 'Titanic' in record boo ...
  * Sci-fi film biggest international release of all time
  
• Sam's Club cuts 11,200 jobs, 10 percent of workfor ...
  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sam's Club, the warehouse club division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc is cutting roughly 11,200 jobs, or about 10 percent of its workforce, as it outsources in-store product demonstrations and eliminates new business membership representative jobs.
  
• Human "bed-warmers" at Holiday Inn
  LONDON (Reuters) - International hotel chain Holiday Inn is offering a trial human bed-warming service at three hotels in Britain this month.
  

Equality Trust

• How economic democracy would have prevented the Ca ...
  A letter in today's Guardian points out that employee ownership would have prevented the Cadbury sell-off. Had the Cadbury family followed the examples of the families behind John Lewis, Ove Arup, Tullis Russell, Scott Bader, the Baxi Group and others in selling their shareholdings into employee own ...
  
• Harriet Harman puts class at the heart of election ...
  Labour deputy leader to make inequality a key dividing line with Conservatives. Harriet Harman will reopen the politically explosive debate over class tomorrowby insisting that it remains the single biggest factor in determining individual achievement. In a speech designed to put the fight against ...
  
• Memo to the mainstream: where's the vision, where' ...
  Bill Kerry's guest blog at Left Foot Forward
  
• 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 ...
  

IntelNews

• News you may have missed #0266
  Convicted US Pentagon official's mom introduced him to Chinese spy. CIA contractor flying surveillance missions over Haiti.
  
• Analysis: The meaning of China’s cyber-attack on G ...
  Google’s recent decision to close down its venture business in China, after its operations there repeatedly came under cyber-attack, has received plenty of media attention. But most non-experts find it difficult to understand why these cyber-attacks were important enough to cause Google to abandon w ...
  
• News you may have missed #0265
  Plans for motion picture on life of famous Israeli spy. CIA report 'a declaration of war', says Venezuela.
  
• Venezuela silent as Colombia expels two alleged sp ...
  On Tuesday, the Colombian government announced the expulsion of two alleged Venezuelan intelligence agents, reportedly for conducting espionage operations on Colombian soil.
  
• News you may have missed #0264
  India jails two Pakistanis on spying charges. US Pentagon re-examines PsyOp doctrine.
  

After Downing Street.org

• Dateline: Critical Conditon
  You have health insurance coverage through your employer, so the health care debate isn't much of an issue for you, aside from the fact that you don't want to "pay for someone else's health insurance." Watch this program to see how health insurance companies determine your care. read more
  
• Whistleblower Reveals How Insurers Can Game Health ...
  Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy Whistleblower reveals how insurers can game healthcare bill By Brad Jacobson | Raw Story   “What worries me,” he said, “is people who are forced to buy coverage and all they can afford to buy is a high deductible. And ...
  
• Israel's Assassination Policy
  
  
• Judge Dumps Suit Over Bush-Era Wiretapping
  Judge dumps suit over Bush-era wiretapping By Bob Egelko | San Francisco Chronicle To establish the right to sue, a private citizen must demonstrate a "direct, personal stake in the outcome" and cannot merely claim "a right to have the government follow the law," Walker said. A federal judge has d ...
  
• Granny Peace Brigade Rings In 2010 With First Acti ...
  SAVE THE DATE! Thursday, January 28 Hold on to your collective hats, folks. The latest Supreme Court ruling is giving Blackwater/Monsanto/Halliburton/ExxonMobile et. al. permission to openly spend their way into the hearts and minds of both the elected and the electorate. Hey, are you gonna stand ...
  

Grist - News

• Last decade was the warmest ever, says NASA
  by Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON -- The past decade was the warmest ever, according to a new analysis of global surface temperatures released by NASA. The U.S. space agency also found that 2009 was the second-warmest year on record since modern temperature measurements began in 1880. Last year wa ...
  
• New Sierra Club chief brings confrontational style ...
  by Jonathan Hiskes Michael BrunePhoto courtesy Sierra ClubThe Sierra Club ’s new leader will come to the job with a record of “environmental agitation” against big industrial polluters.  The group announced on Wednesday that Michael Brune , 38, currently head of Rainforest Action Network (RAN), wil ...
  
• Copenhagen Accord is the priority, says U.S. clima ...
  by Amanda Little U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern.A month after he rode herd at Copenhagen's COP15 climate talks ,Todd Stern is exhorting participants to make the outcome of the conference meaningful. "Life needs to be breathed into the Copenhagen Accord," the State Department's special envoy for clim ...
  
• No guarantee of climate treaty this year, says UNF ...
  by Agence France-Presse PARIS -- World talks on climate change may not yield a legally binding pact by year's end, U.N. climate pointman Yvo de Boer said on Wednesday, in his first public assessment after last month's turbulent Copenhagen summit. De Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework C ...
  
• U.N. climate panel admits Himalayan glacier data & ...
  by Agence France-Presse GENEVA - An estimate on the fate of Himalayan glaciers that featured a benchmark report on global warming has been "poorly substantiated" and represents a lapse in standards, U.N.'s climate scientists said on Wednesday. Charges that the reference was highly inaccurate or ove ...
  

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• The Wondermark Goodsery - Greeting Cards.

Technorati - What's Hot in Blogs

• The Democratic Base Spews Venom
  The time for self-analysis and realignment of policies has come for the Democrats.
  
• Roman Polanski Ruled to Return to US to Face Charg ...
  A Los Angeles judged ruled filmmaker Roman Polanski must return to U.S. to face sexual abuse charges in court.
  
• Welcome to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
  The Wizarding World of Harry Potter 3-D map in USA today January 28th! Get a preview of this amazing theme park!
  
• "Pants On The Ground," The New Teacher Anthem
  American Idol and Larry Platt may have given the country a new song, but teachers have been hammering that message for years.
  
• Tools for Your Financial Survival Kit
  A financial resource tool to pack in your financial survival kit.
  

Time - Top Stories

• Haiti and India: Different Responses to Two Very D ...
  As much as quake zones look alike, though, the people caught in them respond to their tragedy in different ways.
  
• Oakley's Pursuit of Cool
  Going a little overboard on products is part of what creates the company's edge
  
• Another Avatar Weekend: Legion Takes Its Lumps
  Nearly completing its march into the Guinness book, the green movie with the blue people has now earned $552.8 million in North America, and later this week should pass Cameron's own 1997 Titanic ($600.8 million) as the all-time domestic champ.
  
• Amid So Much Loss, Port-au-Prince's Streets Still ...
  Amid So Much Loss, Port-au-Prince's Streets Still Teem With Life
  
• When Caring for Aging Parents Brings Back Sibling ...
  Siblings clash as they respond to parents' aging
  

Washington Independent

• GOP Rep. Holding State of the Union Tea Parties
  This is the most interesting State of the Union run-up event I’ve seen so far, although I’m still waiting on details from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL-01) today announced that he will be hosting “Tea Parties” in his Washington D.C. and Pensacola offices on Wednesd ...
  
• How to Get Out of Being Held Indefinitely Without ...
  So the Obama administration’s Guantanamo task force has decided that about 50 people ought to be held indefinitely without charge. What’s the remedy to for that? Basically, there’s habeas corpus, the procedure by which a detainee requests that a court determine the validity of the government’s claim ...
  
• Former FEC Chairman: ‘Citizens United’ ...
  Mike Lillis speculated earlier on whether the far-reaching implications of Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission could open the door for foreign companies to intervene in American elections. Former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith tells me that, indeed, the decision seems to let foreign corpo ...
  
• Senate Dems Urge 10-Month Extension of Unemploymen ...
  With unemployment still hovering in double digits and no real relief in sight, a group of 30 Senate Democrats today is urging party leaders to extend emergency unemployment benefits through the end of 2010 — 10 months longer than current law dictates. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ...
  
• Supreme Court Empowers Foreign Governments to Sway ...
  That’s the warning coming today from the folks at the Center for Public Integrity, who caution that the recent High Court decision empowering corporations to spend unlimited sums on federal election ads could also have the unintended consequence of ending the ban on foreigners buying influence over ...
  

CowBoss' Brain Food

• Tax those carbon gluttons
  LEMME TELL YOU about a carbon tax you’re gonna love. Two such taxes, actually. I tell you, kid, Stephane Dion had the right idea, but the wrong sales pitch. The fun starts with the government giving you maybe $2,000 as a carbon dividend. Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |  ...
  
• Why do we hate? Academics seek answer in new field
  Hate is everywhere, but the fundamental question of why one person can hate another has never been adequately studied, contends Jim Mohr of Gonzaga University, who is developing a new academic field of hate studies. Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comm ...
  
• 'Fat for cosmetics' murder suspects arrested in Pe ...
  Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe. Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
  
• 6 Ways Agriculture Impacts Global Warming
  Sure, agriculture provides us with the food we all eat every day. But do you know how those agricultural practices impact global warming? Turns out there's some pretty big impacts, on both the sustainable and industrial sides of the equation; employing su Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society ...
  
• We love Butchers
  Former chef Josh Applestone and his wife, Jessica Applestone, are typical of the new butcher breed. He was a vegan, she was a one-time vegetarian when they founded Fleisher’s Grass-fed and Organic Meats in Kingston, N.Y., in 2004 Submitted by cowboss Left CareII to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!   ...
  

Suzie-Q

• Biden: US Will Appeal Dismissal Of Blackwater Guar ...
  Biden: US To Appeal Dismissal Of Blackwater Case Huffington Post MATT APUZZO | 01/23/10 09:10 PM | BAGHDAD — The U.S. will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden ...
  
• Tea Party Member Charged With Child Rape
  Former Marine With Ties To Right-Wing Movements Charged With Child Rape, Possessing Grenade Launcher TPM Muckraker Zachary Roth | January 22, 2010, 11:16AM An ex-military man with ties to the Tea Party and militia movements has been charged in separate complaints with raping a minor and with posse ...
  
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates Confirms Blackwater ...
  by Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports, Jan 21, 2010 In an interview with the Pakistani TV station Express TV, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the private security firms Blackwater and DynCorp are operating inside Pakistan. “They’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” Gate ...
  
• U.S. policy in Gaza remains unchanged
  by Charles Fromm and Ellen Massey, Inter Press Service News WASHINGTON, Jan 22, 2010 (IPS) – One year ago Thursday, the last Israeli tanks were lumbering out of the Gaza Strip, ending the 22-day Gaza War and leaving in their wake a decimated landscape and population. A year later, the humanitaria ...
  
• Paul Volcker: the ‘big man’ behind Bar ...
  Until this week, Paul Adolph Volcker, the 82-year-old architect of President Barack Obama’s latest assault on Wall Street, was not so much yesterday’s man as the man of a couple of decades ago. Tracy Corrigan | Daily Telegraph | 22 Jan 2010 After all, the pinnacle of his career was being chairman of ...
  

Solari

• Kitchen Permaculture - An Online Workshop
  At the Financial Permaculture workshop in Hohenwald in 2008, I had the great pleasure to meet and work with Bob Woldrop. You will find Bob’s finger in almost every pie in sustainability, food, future thinking, in Oklahoma and environs. Bob is also a permaculturist and through his business, Prairie R ...
  
• Answering Your Questions - Mortgages
  We have received several comments from listeners and readers questioning whether or not mortgage companies or banks are required to provide homeowners specific proof of customers’ individual notes. In response, please see these previous blog posts: Ruling Could Undo Thousands of Foreclosures 17 Oc ...
  
• Ron Paul:”We Need To Take Out The CIA”
  Continue reading Ron Paul:”We Need To Take Out The CIA”
  
• Obesity: Killer at Large
  Continue reading Killer At Large (video one) Related links: Killer at Large Discussion #1 YouTube (25 June 08) Killer at Large Web Site
  
• United States District Court
  The 94 United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States di ...
  

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

• The Supreme Court Just Handed Anyone, Including bi ...
  The Court's decision is far, far more dangerous to U.S. democracy. Think: Manchurian candidates.
  
• Is the Obama Administration Covering Up Three Murd ...
  An explosive new article reveals that three Gitmo prisoners whose deaths were labeled suicides were murdered. Obama's Department of Justice has refused to investigate.
  
• One Year After Obama Promised to Close Guantanamo, ...
  On his second day in office, President Obama issued an executive order to shut down Guantanamo in a year. But the prison remains open, and prisoners still languish without trial.
  
• Arab Americans Call Extra Airport Security Measure ...
  According to lawyers from the ACLU, the techniques are intrusive and ineffectual -- tantamount to racial profiling.
  
• The Bush-Packed Supreme Court Thinks Corporations ...
  Corporations now have all the privileges of citizenship, without any of the responsibilities.
  

Sideways News

• Pop-up books brought into 21st century
  Once seen as a filler for children's Christmas stockings, pop-up books have been propelled into the 21st century, thanks to the creation of Electronic Popables .
  
• Agency workers to get equal pay rights
  More than a million UK agency workers are set to get the new rights to pay, holidays and working conditions after the Government announced new regulations. From October 2011, the 1.3 million employees who spend more than 12 weeks in one job will be entitled to many of the same benefits as permanent ...
  
• Gardeners can cooperate to save wildlife
  Gardeners should aim to create a network of interlinking wildlife habitats to protect vulnerable British wildlife, it has been suggested. Urban green spaces such as gardens and parks are an increasingly important refuge for wildlife as towns and cities encroach further into the countryside. The good ...
  
• How did animals make it to Madagascar?
  It may sound surprisingly similar to the plot of a Disney movie, but new research has suggested that ancestors of Madagascar's current inhabitants may have floated to the island from Africa. A team of researchers have been investigating how some of the isolated island's mammals, including lemurs and ...
  
• Irish island twinned with Mars
  Island Roy in Donegal is to be twinned with Mars in a bid to highlight the effects of climate change. The move is part of Donegal County Council's Lovely Weather Project , which is offering artists the chance to explore creative means of addressing global warming.
  

Fabius Maximus

• Hot news about climate change. The picture rapidl ...
  Slowly the truth comes out, showing that the western world still has a vigorous and free flow of information.  Today we examine 3 stories. Remember the horrifying Stern Report? Watch this story for further developments: past warming exaggerated Quote of the Day, illustrating the political essence o ...
  
• The floodgates slowly open and the foreign news me ...
  With the liberation of the ClimateGate emails from the CRU, suddenly long-surpressed information becomes respectable for the mainstream media to publish.  At least, for foreign news media.  People relying on the US news remain ignorant as stones.  The way our ruling elites want them to be.  ...
  
• FM newswire for 24 January, articles for your morn ...
  x x
  
• The sky darkens over America, as we (the little pe ...
  Summary:   I believe that Americans today can operate at the same level as did Americans at the founding.  In the tradition of the Federal Papers, here is a discussion of the latest and momentus Supreme Court decision.  I strongly recommend that all Americans read it, irrespective of your political ...
  
• Open thread for questions and answers!
  Ask any questions about geopolitics.  We’ll all attempt to answer. Post any notes or citations.  We’ll all comment. Per the FM site’s Comment Policy, please be brief (250 word max), civil and about geopolitics (broadly defined).
  

sibeledmonds - tweets

• sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Show Presents Andy Wor ...
  sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Show Presents Andy Worthington on Guantanamo Detention Center http://boilingfrogspost.com
  
• sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Show Presents Andy Wor ...
  sibeledmonds: Boiling Frogs Show Presents Andy Worthington: The Shameless Case of Guantanamo Detention Center, Listen here: http://boilingfrogspost.com
  
• sibeledmonds: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar:Embracing the In ...
  sibeledmonds: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar:Embracing the Insanity of the Fictional Colonel Kurtz by Gould & Fitzgerald @ Boiling Frogs http://boilingfrogspost.com
  
• sibeledmonds: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: Apocalypse of t ...
  sibeledmonds: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: Apocalypse of the American Mind by Elizabeth Gould & Paul Fitzgerald @ Boiling Frogs Post: http://boilingfrogspost.com
  
• sibeledmonds: Rep. Ron Paul on the CIA Coup: &#821 ...
  sibeledmonds: Rep. Ron Paul on the CIA Coup: ‘The CIA has taken over the US in a coup!’ Time to Take Out the CIA? http://boilingfrogspost.com
  

WIRED Magazine | Science

• Bigger, Better Telescopes Needed to Find Near-Eart ...
  If we’re going to protect the Earth from an asteroid, we need to find the dangerous ones whizzing about in the emptiness of space. Unfortunately, the United States will not complete the survey of large near-Earth objects by 2020 as mandated, but not funded, by Congress in 2005. That’s the conclusio ...
  
• Removing Part of the Skull Makes for Better Brain ...
  Removing a chunk of the skull can make way for stronger, clearer signals from a common method for monitoring brainwaves.The skull-free electroencephalography (EEG) could make neural prostheses like bionic arms or eyes less invasive. “It’s notoriously hard to have a long-term electrode implanted in ...
  
• New Hi-Res Flyover of Haiti Will Aid Recovery and ...
  New three-dimensional radar and hi-resolution aerial images of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas to be released starting Friday could boost both recovery and research efforts in Haiti in the wake of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck on Jan. 12. Satellite images and aerial photos have ...
  
• Slime Mold Grows Network Just Like Tokyo Rail Syst ...
  Talented and dedicated engineers spent countless hours designing Japan’s rail system to be one of the world’s most efficient. Could have just asked a slime mold. When presented with oat flakes arranged in the pattern of Japanese cities around Tokyo, brainless, single-celled slime molds construct ne ...
  
• Haiti Aftershocks Will Continue for Months, Maybe ...
  A preliminary U.S. Geological Survey assessment has found that the sequence of aftershocks following the magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12 is likely to continue for months, possibly years. Though the frequency of aftershocks will decrease over time, there is s ...
  

The Progressive Realist

• Recommendations for How to Conduct the Military Re ...
  At Small Wars Journal, Gary Anderson offers some advice to military personnel trying to provide humanitarian assistance in Haiti. It’s a great article – plain spoken and based on personal experience. His recommendations run from getting permission to fly non Department of Defense personnel in milit ...
  
• U.S.-EU Cooperation on Airport Security
  I mentioned last week that any attempts to close airport security loopholes in light of the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing also had to address overseas airport security if they are to be effective. Looks like that's happening . At the same time, the tolerance gap between the U.S. and Europe i ...
  
• Bombing Iran Would Only Lead to Calls For US Invas ...
  Numerous conservatives have pointed to Israel’s preemptive strike in 1981 against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility as a model for what should be done vis-a-vis Iran. That attack is seen as basically crushing Iraq’s nuclear efforts and has led some neoconservatives to posit : why can’t we just do ...
  
• Meanwhile in the World: Perspective on our Current ...
  Amidst all these problems in the United States, it’s worth recalling that for much of the world these are actually the best of times : World poverty is falling. Between 1970 and 2006, the global poverty rate has been cut by nearly three quarters. The percentage of the world population living on less ...
  
• The Shadow Government Blog's (Mostly) Constructive ...
  In the patriotic spirit of wishing President Obama a successful foreign policy year in 2010, our conservative friends at Shadow Government offer a set of nine suggestions advertised as constructive. I'm pleased to report that the product largely lives up to the advertising -- one of the pieces impre ...
  

TAPPED - The American Prospect

• Lightning Round: Less Compromise, More Confrontati ...
  I'm aware that it's not his style, but Barack Obama needs to move past the unity rhetoric and start playing some hardball politics. At a town hall in Ohio today, the president sounded a bit harsher and more defiant than usual but failed to specify what he feels Congress should do on health care, an ...
  
• Scott Brown: I Hope to Be As Ineffectual As John M ...
  This is encouraging news from our newest senator: Sen.-elect Brown navigated the Russell Senate Office Building on Thursday for his first appointment with Sen. John McCain . A National Guardsman, Brown said in the interview that McCain was his senatorial model. "I have great respect for Senator Mc ...
  
• Justice Department Hits Back On Legal Rights For A ...
  On the heels of Republican criticism of the Obama administration following Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair 's testimony in the Senate, the Justice Department released a statement defending the way alleged underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab was handled. The following statement was a ...
  
• Poverty on the Rise in Suburbs.
  The Brookings Institution released a new report this week finding that poverty rose fastest in 2008 in suburbs, particularly in suburban and urban areas in the midwest. It also found that more Americans are now low-income, hovering just above the poverty line. Over the course of this decade, two ec ...
  
• On Haiti's "Culture."
  As with Yemen after the failed underwear bombing, it's been astonishing to watch one Haiti expert after another emerge to explain all that ails Haiti in the aftermath of its earthquake. The explanations from these righteous dilettantes have been astonishingly similar. David Brooks writes that Hait ...
  

Andy Worthington

• Control Orders Take Another Blow: Libyan Cartoonis ...
  The news that Ziyad Ali Hashem, a control order detainee in the UK (previously identified only as DD) has had his control order lifted elicits two particular responses from those who have been aware of his case since he was first deprived of his liberty in November 2005: firstly, relief that his ord ...
  
• “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” – ...
  On Tuesday February 16, 2010, Amnesty International UK is screening the new Guantánamo documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” at the Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA (map and directions here). This is a free event, but those who want to attend ne ...
  
• The Guantánamo Files: Andy Worthington’s Boiling F ...
  In case you didn’t know, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has a new website, Boiling Frogs, described as “the Home of the Irate Minority.” Sibel and I discovered each other’s work some time ago, and when she established Boiling Frogs, we set a date for an interview, to be broadcast around the ...
  
• Rubbing Salt in Guantánamo’s Wounds: Task Force An ...
  With a stunning lack of sensitivity, Barack Obama’s Guantánamo Task Force chose the anniversary of the President’s failed promise to close the prison to announce its conclusions regarding the eventual fate of the 196 prisoners who are still held, stating, with no trace of irony, that “nearly 50” of ...
  
• The Guardian interviews Omar Deghayes: “The spirit ...
  Omar Deghayes, the former Guantánamo prisoner whose story is at the very heart of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington), was interviewed for the main feature in the Guardian’s G2 supplement on January 21, 2010 (available ...
  

Buzzflash

• The 2010 Double Whammy and the Incredible Shrinkin ...
  BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY By Dave Lindorff        The Democratic Party’s embarrassing electoral disaster in Massachusetts, losing a seat held for 46 years by the late Sen. read more
  
• 'Unprecedented' Spike in Defense Spending: New Rep ...
  BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT by the Project on Defense Alternatives Since 1998 the Pentagon has spent more than $6.5 trillion. More than $2 trillion of this sum was above the levels set in 1998. But only half of the $2 trillion in added funds was for recent wars and military operations. Among other things, ...
  
• Supreme Court Hands Yet Another Victory to Corpora ...
  BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT by Meg White Needless to say, we're devastated by the Supreme Court's decision to allow corporations to spend untold amounts of money influencing elections . It's bad enough that companies have all the rights and none of the responsibilities of citizens of this country. And it's ...
  
• The Corporate Mainstream Media is the BuzzFlash Me ...
  The Corporate Mainstream Media What happened in Haiti is dreadful, a deadly catastrophe of Biblical proportions. So many Americans have supported relief efforts because in a disaster we are all one world. The corporate mainstream media was Johnny on the spot with 24/7 coverage of the "drama" of dea ...
  
• Sanders Says Democrats Must Decide on Bernanke, Wi ...
  BUZZFLASH ALERT From Senator Bernie Sanders Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said today (January 24) that a second term for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would give Wall Street a green light to continue the reckless behavior that dragged the economy to the brink of collapse.   “Democrats and Pres ...
  

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

• Salon Radio: ACLU Executive Director Anthony Rome ...
  In October, 2008, the ACLU issued a report outlining the policies needed to restore civil liberties and America's constitutional framework in the wake of the Bush assault, entitled "Actions for Restoring America."  On the one-year anniversary of Obama's inauguration as President, the ACLU has issue ...
  
• Transcript: ACLU's Anthony Romero
  To listen to this discussion, click PLAY on the recorder at the bottom of this post : Glenn Greenwald : My guest today on Salon Radio is the executive director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, and we are here to discuss a new report, issued by the ACLU, analyzing Obama's civil liberties record after th ...
  
• The price of our Middle East policy
  In a newly released audio message, the-still-not-dead Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attempted bombing and said this about why Al Qaeda continues to target the U.S.: Bin Laden also warns the US there will be more attacks if it continues to support Israel. . . . Dire ...
  
• Follow-up on the Citizens United case
  As one would expect, a substantial number of commenters yesterday disagreed with the Supreme's Court ruling in the Citizens United case case and with my partial defense of it .  I say that's to be expected because, in our political discourse, it's virtually always the case that opinions about court ...
  
• What the Supreme Court got right
  (updated below - Update II) The Supreme Court yesterday, in a 5-4 decision, declared unconstitutional (on First Amendment grounds) campaign finance regulations which restrict the ability of corporations and unions to use funds from their general treasury for "electioneering" purposes.  The ca ...
  

The BiPartisan Report

• Nihilism 1 American People Nil
• 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 ...

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

• Sanders Says Democrats Must Decide on Bernanke, Wi ...
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 24, 2010 Senator Bernie Sanders Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said today that a second term for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would give Wall Street a green light to continue the reckless behavior that dragged the economy to the brink of collapse. "Demo ...
  
• Obama Should Seize Moment to Push for Medicare for ...
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 22, 2010 Physicians for a National Health Program A spokesman for a national physicians' group says it would be a mistake for President Obama to conclude from Tuesday's vote in Massachusetts that he needs to "tack more toward the right," as some pundits have advised, or ...
  
• Obama in Ohio
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 22, 2010 Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) AMY HANAUER read more
  
• Business Leaders Speak Out on Citizens United
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 22, 2010 Common Cause Forty-one business leaders from a diverse cross-section of industries sent a letter to Congressional leadership in response to the Roberts' Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC. According to the distinguished group, the Fair Elections Now Act i ...
  
• Planned Parenthood Federation of America President ...
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 22, 2010 Planned Parenthood "Thirty-seven years ago today, the Roe v. Wade decision solidified the right to choose for American women.  Today, as we celebrate and reflect on the landmark ruling, we are reminded that deciding whether and when to become a parent is one of ...
  

Common Dreams-Views

• Personal Corporatehood: Coping With the Reason Div ...
  by Randall Amster There's great consternation brewing over the recent Supreme Court decision that cements and extends the misbegotten logic of "corporate personhood," and rightly so. Surely one of the most farcical and tortuous doctrines ever established in our system of jurisprudence, this conflate ...
  
• Time to Rein in Out-of-Control Corporate Influence ...
  by Ralph Nader Thursday's 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. It is outrageous that corporations already att ...
  
• A Nation Cheated in the Name of Profit Must Now Re ...
  by Barbara Rhine We were eating dinner in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12 when the earthquake struck. As Californians we knew the meaning of the distorted room with plates sliding from the table and pictures tumbling from the wall. We grabbed hands and ran outside. The building held, unlike countle ...
  
• The Woman Democrats Need
  by Ethan Porter On the day after Tuesday's electoral loss, the Obama administration brought an unfamiliar face to the White House -- Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor noted for her staunch advocacy on behalf the middle class and fierce criticism of the bank bailouts. Perhaps the administra ...
  
• Americans Fear Losing Affluence After Decades of D ...
  by Pierre Tristam Polls don't lie. If anything, they tell too many truths. But news editors present front-page results in fragments, usually picking the most sensational numbers at the expense of more telling ones. It's not malice. It's not journalism, either. It's a form of narrative herding that f ...
  

Karl Burkart

• Apple gadgets going solar?
  3 new patents just filed by Apple indicate the company is getting into the clean energy business.
  
• Subterranean spectacle: the crystal cave
  BBC takes you on a video tour of the breathtakingly beautiful (and deadly) Naica Crystal Cave in Mexico.
  
• Top 7 disappearing glaciers
  Here for 10,000 years. Gone in 10. Seven glaciers that are melting before our eyes.
  
• Top 7 disappearing glaciers, Part 1
  Here for 10,000 years. Gone in 10. Seven examples of how a warming climate is melting the world right before our eyes.
  
• Himalayan Glacier Goof-up: more fake ammo for the ...
  New Scientist runs story with misquoted scientist then falsely claims IPCC ‘debate.’
  

Water Privatization

• Upfront: Witness for the prosecution? (Pacific Sun ...
  It didn't take long. Just days after the lone opposition candidate to win a spot on the Novato Sanitary District took his seat, the first confrontation erupted in a district that has been wracked with dissension. by Peter Seidman
  
• Canada-E.U. Talks an Attack on Democracy: Environm ...
  OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Jan. 22, 2010) - As a second round of Canada-European Union free trade talks wraps up in Brussels, Belgium today, Canadian civil society organizations are demanding full transparency from the Harper government, and a halt to negotiations while countrywide public consul ...
  
• 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.
  
• Background Note: Kenya (Scoop.co.nz)
  Geography Area: 580,367 sq. km. (224,080 sq mi.); slightly smaller than Texas. Cities: Capital --Nairobi (pop. 2.9 million; 2007 est.). Other cities --Mombasa (828,500; 2006 est.), Kisumu (650,846; 2005-6), Nakuru (1.3 million; 2005-6), Eldoret (193,830; 1999).
  
• NDP health critic Judy Wasylycia-Leis mulling runn ...
  WINNIPEG - The federal NDP's health critic is considering triggering a Manitoba by-election by trading in her long-held Winnipeg seat to run for mayor of the city.
  

Guardian

• Lord Myners calls time on 'greed is good' bank cul ...
  City minister tells industry it cannot rely on taxpayers' 'charity' and calls for independent review of investment banking arm Lord Myners, the City minister, has called for an independent review of the investment banking industry and the "greed is good" culture that he says has ­permeated many ar ...
  
• Schools face biggest influx in decade
  Scores of extra classrooms created as demand for places soars Cities and towns across England are ­creating scores of extra classrooms to ­prepare for the largest influx of pupils starting primary school for more than a decade. Demand for state primary places this September has soared because of a b ...
  
• Evidence to turn up heat on Blair
  Panel under pressure to call former PM's political advisers to give evidence after senior lawyers testify that invasion was illegal The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war will come under pressure this week to ­summon Tony Blair's close political friends after it hears explosive evidence from his ­gov ...
  
• Religion fills void after Haiti disaster
  Haiti's evangelical and voodoo priests are providing spiritual and material aid to the homeless and injured A fierce gust of wind lashes across the sprawling camp, carrying with it the ­bitter aroma of pepper spray and faeces. Above, Black Hawk helicopters clatter through the cobalt blue sky. On the ...
  
• 'Sexism is stronger than before'
  The author of The New Feminism talks about challenging the resurgence of sexism in her new book, Living Dolls – and not being an angry feminist I'm trying to establish just how ­often the feminist writer Natasha Walter gets angry. Is she ever in a rage before breakfast? "Rarely," she says. Does she ...
  

McClatchey

• Found in minivan: Pantless, sleeping, intoxicated ...
  A 21-year-old Bluffton, S.C., man was arrested last week after a resident found the man — a stranger — pantless, asleep and intoxicated in the back seat of her minivan, which was parked in the driveway of the woman's Hidden Lakes home, according to a Bluffton Police Department report released Saturd ...
  
• GOP lawmakers cry foul over failing grades on raci ...
  OLYMPIA — Republicans in the Washington state Legislature railed against a report published by a progressive group claiming they "failed" in supporting racial equality.
  
• Recession drives more California lawyers to cheat, ...
  The recession has driven an increasing number of California lawyers to cheat and steal, say State Bar officials, who expect to discipline or expel hundreds of them in coming months.
  
• Consumer groups question insurers' use of credit s ...
  Coastal policyholders are well aware a hurricane is guaranteed to increase insurance rates, but fewer realize their credit reports also are factored into homeowner and automobile insurance premiums.
  
• Goodbye, Africa: Reflections on a continent
  WASHINGTON — Before I left Africa, I paid one last visit to the house where Joyce had lived. I took some photographs I'd taken with her family and other stuff I was unloading as I emptied my apartment: a mattress and a couple of TVs for her mother, a few clothes and kitchen appliances for her husban ...
  

BBC - Richard Black's Earth Watch

• Reflections on a hugely changed climate
  It's hard to overstate how much the events of the last two months have altered the global picture of climate politics. Picture the scene you'd have found on any day towards the end of last year: more prime ministers and presidents talking publicly about climate change than ever before; the vast maj ...
  
• The attack of the killer everything
  About two decades ago, the world's frog experts realised they were characters in the opening chapter of a detective novel. It wasn't so much a whodunnit as a wotisdoinit - killing, that is, frogs and salamanders in different parts of the world at a rate that merited the description "dramatic" . Th ...
  
• 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 ...
  

Afghanistan Sun

• Afghan workers protest maltreatment by US military
  Kabul, Jan 24 (IANS) Afghan workers at Bagram Air Base have staged a protest against maltreatment by the US military, a media report said Sunday.
  
• Taliban blow up girls' school in Pakistan
  Islamabad, Jan 24 (IANS) Taliban militants have blown up a private school of girls in northwest Pakistan, the police said Sunday.
  
• Three US soldiers killed in Afghanistan
  Kabul, Jan 24 (IANS) Three US soldiers were killed Sunday in separate landmine bomb explosions in southern Afghanistan, officials said.
  
• Pakistan reaching out to Afghan Taliban, says offi ...
  Islamabad, Jan 24 (IANS) Pakistan is reaching out to 'all levels' of the Afghan Taliban in a bid to encourage reconciliation with its war-torn neighbour, a foreign office spokesman said.
  
• Afghanistan polls postponed due to lack of funds
  Kabul, Jan 24 (DPA) Afghanistan's election commission said Sunday that it had to postpone parliamentary elections from May to September due to insufficient funds and security arrangements.
  

Futurismic

• How fanfic starts
  Does Not Equal is a webcomic by Sarah Ennals – check out the pre-Futurismic archives, and the strips that have been published here previously. [ Be sure to check out the Does Not Equal Cafepress store for webcomic merchandise featuring Canadians with geometrically-shaped heads! ] Project Wonderful ...
  
• Will Gillis on sf’s changing face
  I don’t know whether William Gillis wrote this little screed about the changing face of science fiction as a response or reaction to Jo Walton’s piece about the reading protocols of the genre, but it certainly serves as an interesting counterpoint to it. I like to read the viewpoints of smart reader ...
  
• The auroch revival: bringing back the big beef
  It’s not often that we get to hear about people working on a scientific project previously instigated by Hitler and the Nazi Party of Germany… though this is thankfully a far more benign application of eugenic theory than the atrocities of the Second World War. Italian scientists are trying to recre ...
  
• Interpreting facts as failure: the neuroscience of ...
  There’s a fascinating essay at Wired UK about a guy called Kevin Dunbar, who studies the science of science. The philosophy and theory of science – the seven-step method you had drilled into you at school, for instance – is very elegant, but it doesn’t reflect the way that real science gets done, an ...
  
• Amazon, ebooks and piracy – tipping points ahoy?
  Sticking with the piracy theme for a moment (yeah, I know, so out of character, right?), here’s an article at TechRadar that features an interview with one George Walkley, head of digital developments for publishers Hachette UK, talking about ways in which the publishing industry has tried to learn ...
  

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

• Attorneys Issue Response to Inspector General Repo ...
  Key FBI Whistleblower Urges Strong Corrective Action Washington, D.C.  January 20, 2010. Today at 10 a.m. the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General released a report that confirms the allegations regarding an illegal FBI domestic surveillance program, which were reported on the ...
  
• FBI Whistleblower Instrumental in Exposing Constit ...
  In a front-page article today, the Washington Post reported that between 2002 and 2006 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, accordin ...
  
• Cooper Brown joins Department of Labor's ARB
  Today was the first day on a new job for E. Cooper Brown as he begins his service as Vice-Chair of the Department of Labor's Administrative Review Board (ARB). Brown had served on the ARB in the 1990's, until the Bush Administration swept out the old Board members in 2001.  I particularly appreciate ...
  
• Ohio Governor and public servant disagree on the " ...
  The governor of Ohio and an attorney working for Ohio's Bureau of Workers Compensation are disagreeing about what is a "typical whistleblower situation." According to the Columbus Dispatch , attorney Joseph Sommer sent an email to the Governor last May. He asked for an official state investigation o ...
  
• Renner speaks at King Day event in Ohio
  I had the privilege of speaking at the Tuscarawas County, Ohio, commemoration of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. It has been 22 years since Rev. Christopher Lowery and I started these local commemorations. Here I am with my friend, Rev. Archie Jackson. The event gave me an opportunity to s ...
  

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

• Low-tech Radios Helping to Connect Haitians
  In the every day world people love their cell phones, computers and other forms of communications but the people of Haiti found out after their January 12th Earthquake that low tech became the only tech way to communicate.
  
• Peter Schiff: Bernanke has done a terrible job as ...
  Peter Schiff, President of Euro Pacific Capital and Republican Senatorial candidate, spoke on CNBC on Friday to discuss the current financial state of China and Ben Bernanke's performance as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
  
• Toronto Bike Awards 2009 Winners Announced
  The annual Toronto Bike Awards took place on Tuesday January 19th to a packed room at the Gladstone Hotel. It was the who's who of the cycling community, either there to be recognized or to support the work of those making a difference in the city.
  
• Canada's Tall-Grass Prairie Vanishing Faster Than ...
  The "Sea of Grass" which greeted European explorers when they ventured into the heart of North America was long ago reduced to a fraction of its original extent. But a new study shows that what remains in Canada is shrinking fast.
  
• Pedestrian in critical condition after being hit b ...
  A person that appeared to be talking on a cell phone while crossing Queen Street East close to Broadview Avenue after midnight on Sunday was struck by a Queen Street streetcar.
  

End Homelessness | Change.org

• Should Stores Be Held Responsible for Homeless Loi ...
  A woman in Chicago who was attacked by two homeless men outside a grocery store is suing the store , trying to establish a precedent that businesses are responsible for people who loiter on their property. The woman, Jennifer Hall, went through a terrible ordeal. As she left the store in August 2008 ...
  
• Homeless Female Veterans To Get a Home
  As more women join the United States Armed Forces (the Army is now 15 percent female) and more of them see combat, it's an unfortunate truth that the number of homeless female veterans continues to grow. What's truly frightening is that female veterans are becoming homeless at a faster rate than mal ...
  
• Wishing He Could Turn Back the Hands of Time
  Before winter hit in St. Paul, Minnesota, I met Darryl. He's been without a home since October, and he's recently run into a new round of problems as his son needs assistance as well and he goes through a divorce from his wife. He's tried to return to live with his family a few times, but it has nev ...
  
• Homeless Activists Converge on San Francisco
  Yesterday marked a coming together of housing advocates up and down the West Coast as grassroots organizations converged on San Francisco to ask the federal government to adequately fund affordable housing and ensure that city governments around the U.S. uphold the basic civil rights of individuals ...
  
• Mocking the Homeless is So Chic!
  It used to be so much easier to make fun of the homeless, y'all. When big-time spikes in joblessness, foreclosures and even hunger were still only a twinkle in a banker's eye, it was a breeze to mock families too poor for the privilege of shelter. True, it was harder to laugh at the homeless kids (n ...
  

Ceasefire.ca

• Canadian Auto Workers support Ceasefire.ca
  The Canadian Auto Workers’ Social Justice Fund has made a $15,000 donation to the Rideau Institute’s Ceasefire program. The CAW and the Rideau Institute “have worked together on important issues and expect to do so in the future,” said Annie Labaj, the Director of the CAW’s International Department, ...
  
• Anti-prorogation group should not be ignored: stud ...
  A study released today by the Rideau Institute finds that Facebook has been adopted by older, politically engaged voters to express frustration over the government’s decision to prorogue Parliament. A survey conducted by online public engagement strategist Pierre Killeen suggests that a majorit ...
  
• Army shelves Close Combat Vehicle purchase
  The Ottawa Citizen reports (David Pugliese, Combat vehicles for army on hold, document shows, Ottawa Citizen, 21 January 2010) that the purchase of a new fleet of Close Combat Vehicles (CCVs) for the army has been postponed by the Harper government. Although the CCV purchase had been promised as a t ...
  
• Military budget facing more “adjustments”
  David Pugliese reports that the Department of National Defence is facing another $233 million in budget “adjustments” by the end of March.  However, like the $190 million in “adjustments” reported earlier, the money DND plans to save will not be removed from the overall military budget. Instead, it ...
  
• 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 ...
  

Kevin Trudeau Show

• Central Banks Involved With Robbing Middle Classes
  January 22, 2010 Zero Hedge By Tyler Durden We apologize in advance for the NY Magazine-style headline, but this is a report that has to be read by all Senators who are preparing to reconfirm Bernanke for a second term. When voting for the Chairman, be aware that all of America will now look at you ...
  
• Government Asks To Raise Debt Limit to $14.3 Trill ...
  January 22, 2010 Bloomberg By Alison Fitzgerald and James Rowley The U.S. debt limit would be raised by $1.9 trillion to $14.29 trillion under an amendment proposed in the Senate. The chamber began debate yesterday on raising the debt ceiling for the fifth time in two years after lower tax revenue f ...
  
• Congress Curbs on Fed Undermining U.S. Economy in ...
  January 22, 2010 Bloomberg By Rebecca Christie Investors say Congress would undermine the U.S. economy by clamping down on the Federal Reserve and predict that taxes on bank bonuses would persuade companies to move to friendlier jurisdictions. More than half the respondents in a quarterly poll of in ...
  
• Girl Becomes Blind After Taking TamiFlu
  January 22, 2010 Mail Online By Cher Thornhill A teenage girl left disabled by the swine flu treatment Tamiflu did not even have the virus, it was revealed today. Samantha Millard, 19, became critically ill after suffering a severe allergic reaction to the tablets, which she took on the advice of th ...
  
• School Staffers Received Insulin Instead of Swine ...
  January 22, 2010 ABC News By Joseph Brownstein When staff members at a Wellesley, Mass., school went to the nurse last Friday, they expected to be injected with a vaccine for theH1N1 flu. What they received instead was a shot of insulin resulting in a bout with low blood sugar. While the staffers se ...
  

Pambazuka News

• US: System owes Troy Davis another day in court
  It is wrong to execute an innocent man. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit will now consider whether it is constitutional. Troy Anthony Davis, convicted of murder, is asking the courts to hear evidence that key government witnesses have r...
  
• Caribbean: Civil society demands Haiti debt cancel ...
  Organizations representing Caribbean civil society organizations and social movements have written to G8 finance ministers, the World Bank, and the IMF, to demand an immediate and unconditional cancellation of Haiti's external debt....
  
• USA: Uhuru movement endorses McKinney/Clemente tic ...
  The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) has endorsed the McKinney/Clemente ticket in the U.S. presidential race. The endorsement was based on the support that Green Party V.P. candidate Rosa Clemente’s expressed for InPDUM’s “Re...
  
• Haiti: Women and girls require life-saving assista ...
  More than 800,000 people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance in Haiti in the wake of hurricanes Fay and Gustav and tropical storm Hanna. Houses, medical facilities, main roads and bridges have been destroyed, and an estimated 100,000 people h...
  
• Haiti: Lula visit prompts protests in Brazil, Mex ...
  Demonstrators in many Brazilian cities and San Francisco denounced Brazil's brutal 4-year military occupation of Haiti -- on the occasion of the May 28th visit to Haiti by Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva, marking the 4th anniversary of the arr...
  

War in Context

• Israel at war
  Israel at war By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 24, 2010 Yesterday I called attention to an article in Hebrew (appearing on an Israeli website) with the extraordinary headline: “The painful truth: Haiti’s disaster is good for the Jews.” Shmuel Sermoneta-Gertel has now translated the whole ar ...
  
• How Israel saved the world
  How Israel saved the world By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 24, 2010 Dr Ariel Bar speaking from the Israeli field hospital in Haiti: “When we save the life of one person, we feel that we saved the world. So we saved the world several times in this mission.” “No one but the Israeli’s have c ...
  
• Securing disaster: The US repeats past mistakes in ...
  Securing disaster: The US repeats past mistakes in Haiti By Peter Hallward, The National, January 21, 2010 One week after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, it’s now clear that the initial phase of the US-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies ...
  
• The return of the neocons
  The return of the neocons By David Margolick, Newsweek, January 22, 2010 Technically, there is nothing “neo” about conservatives like Robert Kagan, the historian and another Washington Post columnist, or John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary; each is a son of one of neoconservatism’s founding fat ...
  
• IDF to finally engage Goldstone, day late dollar s ...
  IDF to finally engage Goldstone, day late dollar short By Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, January, 2010 Ethan Bronner writes a N.Y. Times report on a new propaganda offensive by the IDF against the Goldstone Report. It seems Israel has finally decided to engage with the document’s claims that Isra ...
  

Watts Up With That?

• “Pachauri must resign – his position i ...
  Here in the USA, WUWT readers probably don’t have a true handle on the firestorm that is going on in India over Pachauri’s “glaciergate”.  It is making headlines and the people there are quite angry, becuase they’ve been led to believe that their Himalayan water supply was seriously threatened in t ...
  
• The scandal deepens – IPCC AR4 riddled with ...
  All the years I’ve been in TV news, I’ve observed that every story has a tipping point. In news, we know when it has reached that point when we say it “has legs” and the story takes on a life of it’s own. The story may have been ignored or glossed over for weeks, months, [...]
  
• The purge continues
  Last night I pointed out how NASA had quietly purged IPCC AR4 referenced glacier melting claims from its climate.nasa.gov website, especially since they upped the year from 2035 to 2030 on their own. Now Roger Pielke Jr. points out that another curious purge has been spotted: Excerpts: There is anot ...
  
• For the IPCC AR4, “weather events are climat ...
  We’ve been admonished by others in the blogosphere when we report on record cold weather or record snow stories of interest by hurling the maxim: “weather is not climate“. Yet when the IPCC does that, linking specific weather events in the IPCC AR4 report, such as a single heatwave, the same people ...
  
• Well, at least they didn’t use a lizard
  Now that Dr. Rajenda Pachauri has blown all his (and the IPCC’s) credibility with denouncing complaints about the flawed glaciers melt date as “voodoo science”, the pundits, both serious and silly, are getting to work. On the serious side we have Geoffry Lean, the father of environmental reporting ( ...
  

Dandelion Salad

• Elizabeth Warren: How Wall Street Got Away with Mu ...
  http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ mmflint January 24, 2010 ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ DVD Extra – Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren on How Wall Street Got Away with Murder Extended interview with top TARP cop, Harvard Professor, Elizabeth Warren. Shes sassy and real and tells it like it is, we ...
  
• Avatar is real: Pandora is in Central and South Am ...
  http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ Posted with permission from Green Left Weekly by Carlos A. Quiroz Green Left 24 January 2010 Avatar is real: the fictional planet of Pandora exists in South and Central America, and the Na’vi peoples are being displaced and killed right now. The names are diff ...
  
• Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly Owned B ...
  by Dr. Ellen Brown Featured Writer Dandelion Salad webofdebt.com Jan. 24, 2010 The story goes that Churchill offered a woman 5 million pounds to sleep with him. She hedged and said they would have to discuss terms. Then he offered her 5 pounds. “Sir!” she said. “What sort of woman do you think I ...
  
• Obama at One by Howard Zinn
  by Howard Zinn Featured Writer Dandelion Salad www.thenation.com January 22, 2010 I’ve been searching hard for a highlight. The only thing that comes close is some of Obama’s rhetoric; I don’t see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies. As far as disappointments, I wasn’t terribly di ...
  
• Myth America II: Making Sanity The New Normal by C ...
  by Cindy Sheehan Featured Writer Dandelion Salad Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox January 22, 2010 Myth America II: 20 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution Since Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution was publis ...
  

Your New Reality

• No title
  For those who enjoyed 2008's blurry, dodgy-camera, light-trailing New Year's Eve fireworks photos, here's some from NYE 2009 : Photos by Darryl Mason
  
• No title
  An impressive series of ads promoting Russia Today , banned in American airports, but turning heads in the UK : More Of The Ads Can Be Seen Here
  
• No title
  Google Suggest self-censors "Islam is...." . But look what comes up for "Christianity is..." :
  
• No title
  Mass Graves For The Victims Of Nature's Fury The above photo, by Olivier Laban Mattei , is from 'Haiti : Six Days Later' at The Boston Globe's The Big Picture . Do you really think it would be any different in your city if 200,000 people died an earthquake? They'd be digging mass graves in New ...
  
• No title
  Demi Moore, the same photo shoot, before and after the digital retouching : I don't get it. She clearly is far more beautiful in the 'before' shot. Who are the advertisers trying to appeal to with such a plastic-face makeover? Robots? More Here
  

Wired - Science

• Bigger, Better Telescopes Needed to Find Near-Eart ...
  If we’re going to protect the Earth from an asteroid, we need to find the dangerous ones whizzing about in the emptiness of space. Unfortunately, the United States will not complete the survey of large near-Earth objects by 2020 as mandated, but not funded, by Congress in 2005. That’s the conclusio ...
  
• Removing Part of the Skull Makes for Better Brain ...
  Removing a chunk of the skull can make way for stronger, clearer signals from a common method for monitoring brainwaves.The skull-free electroencephalography (EEG) could make neural prostheses like bionic arms or eyes less invasive. “It’s notoriously hard to have a long-term electrode implanted in ...
  
• New Hi-Res Flyover of Haiti Will Aid Recovery and ...
  New three-dimensional radar and hi-resolution aerial images of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas to be released starting Friday could boost both recovery and research efforts in Haiti in the wake of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck on Jan. 12. Satellite images and aerial photos have ...
  
• Slime Mold Grows Network Just Like Tokyo Rail Syst ...
  Talented and dedicated engineers spent countless hours designing Japan’s rail system to be one of the world’s most efficient. Could have just asked a slime mold. When presented with oat flakes arranged in the pattern of Japanese cities around Tokyo, brainless, single-celled slime molds construct ne ...
  
• Haiti Aftershocks Will Continue for Months, Maybe ...
  A preliminary U.S. Geological Survey assessment has found that the sequence of aftershocks following the magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12 is likely to continue for months, possibly years. Though the frequency of aftershocks will decrease over time, there is s ...
  

Israeli Occupation Archive

• Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations – updated 24 Jan 2010
  Sheikh Jarrah - weekly protest The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, now in its fifth decade. Go to the IOA website for much more...
  
• Nimer Sultany: “Jerusalem is in danger”
  The attempt to change the geography and demography of Jerusalem has been a relentless Israeli project since the occupation of the city in 1967 and its subsequent de jure annexation. While this... The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, now in ...
  
• Netanyahu plants tree in settlement
  "The message is clear -- we are here, and we will stay here," Netanyahu said in Kfar Etzion. "We plant and build -- this is an inseparable part of the State of Israel forever." The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, now in its fifth decade. ...
  
• Ariel College student says taken off bus for speak ...
  An Arab-Israel student at the Ariel College in the West Bank was told to get off a bus because she "dared" to speak Arabic on her cell phone, and was also subjected to a full body search. IOA... The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, now ...
  
• Israeli drones take over skies of Afghanistan
  While Israeli soldiers can't fight in the war in Afghanistan, Israeli drones can. Starting next week, five NATO member countries will be operating unmanned aerial vehicles produced in the Jewish... The Israeli Occupation Archive (IOA) covers Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands, now ...
  

Ria Novosti - Military

• Putin prioritizes weapons procurement for Russian ...
  The Russian defense industry should focus its efforts on the production of modern weaponry, including tanks and armored vehicles, for the Russian Armed Forces, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
  
• Russia's MIG company confirms delivery of naval fi ...
  Russia's MiG aircraft maker said on Tuesday it has delivered the first four MiG-29 Fulcrum-D carrier-based fighter jets to India.
  
• Ukraine strikes $2.4-bln arms deal with Iraq - med ...
  
  
• Russian paratroopers to receive new weaponry in ne ...
  The Russian Airborne Troops will receive a variety of advanced weaponry, including BMD-4M airborne infantry fighting vehicles (AIFV), in the next few years, the Airborne Troops commander said.
  
• Russia, U.S. to discuss prevention of incidents at ...
  A U.S. Navy delegation will visit Russia on December 10-12 to discuss the prevention of incidents at sea and future bilateral cooperation.
  

NewsWise

• Music Stars Ask "How Big is Your Heart"
  Some of the nation's rising music stars have joined Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), the nation's first cancer center, in an effort to show young people that they can help build a world without cancer.
  
• Engineers Seek to Stem Massive, Deadly Flow of Hea ...
  Virginia Tech researcher Pavlos Vlachos and his students in the College of Engineering have a tall order to tackle: Stem the grim progression of heart disease. Projects include better understanding the flow of blood in and out of the heart; improving artery stents; and creating a system that can mim ...
  
• Traffic Pollution Exposure Causes Cardiac Changes
  Even healthy people exposed to ultrafine particulate pollution associated with traffic and fossil-fuel combustion for just two hours show changes in heart rhythm and evidence of clot formation that may herald the potential for serious cardiac events, according to research from the Environmental Prot ...
  
• Fighting Childhood Obesity at Home
  Tips for parents looking to reduce their children's risk of becoming overweight or obese.
  
• Genes Linked to Breast Cancer Drug Resistance Coul ...
  Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers have discovered a gene activity signature that predicts a high risk of cancer recurrence in certain breast tumors that have been treated with commonly used chemotherapy drugs. The findings could lead to a genetic test that directs the best initial treatment.
  

Intel Trends

• IntelTrends 24-JAN-2010
  Full-body scanner blind to bomb parts Register, 24 Jan Most of the uproar over full-body scanners has focused on privacy concerns. There's one larger question, however, that hasn't received much scrutiny by the chattering classes: do the damnable things work? The Blair Snitch Project: CIA, FBI seek ...
  
• Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: What the Coloniali ...
  The following commentary is reprinted with permission from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. What the Colonialists Do to Occupied Nations Source:  Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan January 23, 2010   14:16   administrator The imperialist and colonialist powers, as their official policy, kill scien ...
  
• Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) comments on F ...
  The following comment is from the MILF Central Committee on Information. Terror suspect Basset Usman really dead? MILF does not rejoice at people’s death Source:   Luwaran.net  (Official MILF website) January 23, 2010 The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has first heard of a news of Abdulbasse ...
  
• IntelTrends 23-JAN-2010
  'Bomb detector' maker Jim McCormick arrested BBC, 23 Jan BBC Newsnight investigation reveals that the special "computer cards" inserted into McCormick's ADE-651 bomb detectors contain only a tag used by shops to prevent theft. There are concerns the detectors have failed to stop bomb attacks which ...
  
• Uproar in Pakistan Senate over Blackwater presence
  The following article is from Geo TV, Pakistan. Uproar in Senate over Blackwater row ©   Geo TV January 22, 2010   19:16 ISLAMABAD:  The situation took a chaotic turn in the Upper House on Friday when the issue of presence of Blackwater in Pakistan was raised. State Minister on Interior Affairs e ...
  

Organic Consumers.org

• Justice Department Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against ...
  The Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit today against Dean Foods Company challenging its April 2009 acquisition of Foremost Farms USA's Consumer Products Division. The department said that the merger eliminates substantial competition between the two companies in the sale of milk t ...
  
• Embattled Farm Refused To Let MDE Gather Samples
  Despite the refusal of the Hudson Farm owner to allow a state agency to take samples of potentially polluting materials from his land, the state says it still has a case for enforcement action against the chicken farm. Click here to read this article
  
• Good Fish, Bad Fish
  A new study by The Environmental Health Perspectives journal points out the dangers of persistent organic pollutants in farmed salmon. Yet the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program just approved one kind of salmon farming. Click here to read this article
  
• One Quarter of US Grain Crops Fed to Cars - Not Pe ...
  New analysis of 2009 US Department of Agriculture figures suggests biofuel revolution is impacting on world food supplies. Click here to read this article
  
• Book Review: Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domest ...
  Mother Nature has shown her hand. Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities. ...
  

fotoFrontera

• Inigualables imágenes de Akika7 en Zooomr
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. Akika7 , es uno de los tantos apasionados por la fotografía que tienen sus colecciones alojadas en Zooomr . Fue hoy cuando descubrí a este talentoso fotógrafo que me ha dejado con la boca abierta ante las más de 1,000 im ...
  
• 9,999 fotografías de David Kleinert
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. Jamás había yo visto tantas imágenes de aves o pajaritos como las que ha logrado coleccionar David Kleinert . Este fotógrafo extraordinario , no sólo tiene fotografías de aves, sino que dentro de su repertorio, se pueden ...
  
• Tales from a San Francisco shutter-bug
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. Tales from a San Francisco shutter-bug , es un hermoso fotoblog que recientemente fue nombrado como Blog of Note por Blogger en base a la gran cantidad de fotografías que su autor ha ido colocando al paso de los días. Re ...
  
• 35 fotos realmente lindas en SmashingMagazine
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. SmashingMagazine , es uno de los mejores sitios que conozco sobre la difusión de contenidos selectos en la red . Esta vez no será la excepción y conoceremos a través de este medio, una hermosa colección de 35 fotografías ...
  
• Bonita colección de fotos en Art.Transindex.Ro
  Nota: Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para entrar y ver todas las fotografías. Art.Transindex.Ro , es un sitio que me ha dejado muy satisfecho por la enorme cantidad de fotografías que tiene. Además, debo enfatizar que las fotografías tienen una calidad muy aceptable por lo que resulta fácil apreci ...
  

Executive Intelligence Review

• The LaRouche Show, January 23, 2010
  The East Goes Nuclear; the West? Out of the Caves with the LaRouche Plan!
  
• LaRouche Meets with European LYM: What Are Your Pl ...
  Dialogue with Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 22, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 3
  
• The Case of AIG: We, The People, Demand Answers!
  By John Hoefle Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 22, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 3
  
• Obama's Health-Care Plan Will Impose Genocide on Y ...
  By Tony Papert Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 22, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 3
  
• New Kelly Revelations Can Sink Tony Blair
  By Jeffrey Steinberg Reprinted from Executive Intelligence Review, January 22, 2010, Vol. 37, No. 3
  

Center for a Livable Future

• Vegetarian and low-carbon diets emerging in China?
  Yesterday I spotted a segment on the China Central Television (CCTV) web site describing the vegetarian restaurant scene in China and the emergence of a low-carbon diet trend. Meat consumption has risen dramatically in China in the last few decades; research by Barry Popkin at the University of Nort ...
  
• Study Finds Menu Labels Including Daily Caloric Re ...
  Last week I discussed why obesity experts, such as Drs. Kelly Brownell and David Kessler, believe highly processed foods are leading to excessive overeating. Until healthier unprocessed foods are more readily available and affordable, today I want to focus on one way we can thwart the cravings belie ...
  
• 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 ...
  

Norwegianity

• 71 links about egotism and fascism
  Finally did my first session with the trainer. Seemed pretty easy but he promised me I would hurt all over tomorrow. That sounds familiar. He was also (again) surprised by my physical condition. I asked him if he’d ever worked with a blue collar type before and then he said yes, once, and under the ...
  
• An anniversary rant
  Another anniversary of sorts this morning. It was a year ago today I re-kickstarted this blog back into daily rant mode, and since then the collective you have looked at this page 153,477 times. I’ve had more readers, I’ve had fewer. Over the past ten years I have no clue how many people have been [ ...
  
• Emotional blackmail
  Here’s the latest TPM note from a reader as to why everyone has to support the shitty Senate bill: Like everyone I have a sob-story to tell about health care. After telling it to countless liberals who oppose the Senate’s health-care reform bill, I still haven’t heard a good reason from them why t ...
  
• Quick, more rubble!
  Bob Herbert: How loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long-term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves a ...
  
• Left divided over healthcare
  An industrious blogger (i.e., not me) would be checking out all the A-list lefty bloggers to compile a list of who’s saying what about how to wrap up healthcare reform. Jane Hamsher’s got a petition for you to sign telling House members to hold their ground and not pass the Senate bill. This post fr ...
  

The Seferm Post

• Benjamin Netanyahu: 'Israel Will Keep Parts of Wes ...
  "We are here and we will stay here and build here as part of sovereign Jerusalem," Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister said.
  
• John McCain Says Campaign Finance Reform Dead
  John McCain spoke Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." - campaign financing, sen. russ feingold
  
• Scorpions German Rock Band To End Career
  Guitarist Rudolf Schenker founded the band in Hannover in 1965. Singer Klaus Meine joined a few years later. Both men are 61. On their website, the following 'Important Message to our Fans' announced Scorpions career end:
  
• Would You Pay More For A Eco-Friendly Computer?
  A survey of 4,000 U.S. adults found that 45% are willing to pay extra for electronics that use less energy or are made by an environmentally friendly company. Companies think this number will grow.
  
• Female Genital Mutilation Banned By Muslim Leaders ...
  The process, also called female circumcision, is common in parts of Africa and involves the surgical removal of the clitoris or other genital parts.
  

The World We Live In

• War Begets War, Don’t Call it Terrorism
  Slate | By William Saletan | 11 January 2010 Traitor, Bomber, Soldier, Spy Stop crying “terrorism” every time we’re attacked. Afghan police officers inspect the site of a blast in Khost province Photo: REUTERS Two weeks ago, a Jordanian suicide bomber blew up seven CIA employees at a U.S. m ...
  
• 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 ...
  
• Freedom of Speech for a Fiction
  By CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM I often correspond with a long-time Washington DC operator named Leigh Ratiner, who spent 40 years in government, serving under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Reagan, with cabinet-level posts in the Defense Department, under the Secretary of the Interior, in the ...
  
• War Begets War, Don’t Call it Terrorism
  Slate | By William Saletan | 11 January 2010 Traitor, Bomber, Soldier, Spy Stop crying “terrorism” every time we’re attacked. Afghan police officers inspect the site of a blast in Khost province Photo: REUTERS Two weeks ago, a Jordanian suicide bomber blew up seven CIA employees at a U.S. m ...
  
• 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 ...
  

Center for Food Safety

• Farmers and Conservation Groups Seek to Halt Plant ...
  Earlier Court Decision Found Federal Approval of GE Sugar Beets to Be Unlawful Earthjustice and Center for Food Safety announced today that they filed court papers seeking a ban on genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets and sugar beet seeds. The motion was filed in Federal Court on behalf of a coal ...
  
• A Message from Anna Lappé: Help Us Fight for a New ...
  Bestselling author of Grub and Hope’s Edge, television host, and public speaker, Anna Lappé has devoted herself to ensuring a safe and sustainable food supply for both farmers and consumers, for this and future generations. Like you, Anna knows the value of an organic and truly sustainable food syst ...
  
• New Report Reveals Dramatic Rise in Pesticide Use ...
  GE crops increase herbicide use by 383 million pounds from 1996 to 2008, with 46 percent of the total increase occurring in 2007 and 2008 Genetically engineered (GE) corn, soybeans and cotton have increased use of weed-killing herbicides — a type of pesticide — by 383 million pounds in the U.S. from ...
  
• A Message from Michael Pollan: Help Protect Our Fa ...
  Please help us reach our goal of $100,000 by donating to our special Fall Fund Drive today! If you saw the film Food Inc., you heard Michael Pollan talking about the prosecution of farmers across the country by Monsanto for patent infringement. Starting several years ago, CFS discovered that Monsan ...
  
• Groups Deliver the Concerns of 90,000+ Citizens to ...
  Siddiqui would represent industry, not best interests of the American people A broad coalition of groups delivered a petition today to the White House and Senate leaders opposing the nomination of Islam Siddiqui for Chief Agriculture Negotiator with the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. More than ...
  

Angry Indian Op-Eds

• Haiti looting horror: Girl shot dead by police for ...
  guardian.co.uk : "The horrifying aftermath of Haiti's earthquake has claimed another victim in the form of a 15-year-old girl, an apparent looter, shot dead by police. Fabienne Cherisma was killed with a bullet to the head after taking paintings from a wrecked shop in downtown Port-au-Prince on Tues ...
  
• Immortal Technique: (Reflections on the Haitian Re ...
  By Immortal Technique Courtesy of : everydropchi.com and FTP Movement Since the recent tragedy that has befallen the proud and persevering nation of Haiti , there has been an outpouring of support followed by a few disturbing falsities being spread about the history of the island and its people. ...
  
• Kathleen Cleaver: The Fugitive: Why has the FBI pl ...
  assatashakur.org Twenty-eight years ago, in a highly disputed trial, an all-White jury convicted former Black Panther Assata Shakur of the murder of a New Jersey state trooper. In 1979, while serving a life sentence, she escaped from prison and eventually resurfaced in Cuba, where she was grant ...
  
• Anishinaabekwe: Poem: Indigenous Is
  Anishinaabekwe : Indigenous Is 11-09-09 Indigenous is not a skin color, Indigenous is not my nose, Indigenous is not my eye color, Indigenous is not my lips, Indigenous is not romanticizing ancient teachings, To appropriate, To disseminate, To cut to pieces, And abbreviate in a research document, ...
  
• Marwa El-Sherbini Killed In Germany For Being A Mu ...
  Marwa el-Sherbini decided to take her two-year old son, Mustafa, to a children's playground in the city of Dresden, Germany, one afternoon in August 2008. Mrs Sherbini (31), an Egyptian born pharmacist who worked for Dresden University, was dressed in blue jeans, a white blouse, and a small headsca ...
  
  
  
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  To Do

  renewable recycling conservation

  Renewable power is an expensive proposition for Seattle

  Seattle Post Intelligencer

  - Jan 24, 2010

  - 1 hour ago

  By LARRY LANGE Getting energy from garbage reflects a new environmental truth: renewable power is more valuable because we've made it so. ...

  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  With Colorado Solar Array, Pay Less Now, Pay Less Later

  Sunpluggers.com

  - Jan 24, 2010

  - 3 hours ago

  By Dan Fink Ask any professional renewable-energy “wrench” — install a photovoltaic array, and cloudy weather never fails to set in, spoiling the ...

  Related Articles »

  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Senate Democrats eye options on climate change

  MyWestTexas.com

  - Jan 24, 2010

  - 10 minutes ago

  The House-passed jobs package already includes $2 billion for Energy Department loan guarantees to speed renewable energy and electric transmission projects ...

  Related Articles »

  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Expanding Use of Wind Power Feasible, but May Be Costly

  New York Times

  - Jan 20, 2010

  - Jan 20, 2010

  The Energy Department under President Obama has been a proponent of renewable energy, and the study tackles one of the biggest questions involving wind ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010

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  Human Habitat

  ecology water energy

  In Yakima, there's no where to recycle glass

  Seattle Times

  - Jan 24, 2010

  - 9 hours ago

  "Glass is a tough one, especially here in Central Washington," laments Chris Piercy, a solid waste planner for the state Department of Ecology. ...

  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Ecology Project receives $20000 grant

  Billings Gazette

  - Jan 23, 2010

  - Jan 23, 2010

  BOZEMAN — The National Forest Foundation has awarded a $20000 grant to Ecology Project International to expand a youth education program on the ecology of ...

  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Avatar vs realism

  The Guardian

  - Jan 24, 2010

  - 19 hours ago

  But there is something grotesque in a film purportedly about ecology in which money, need, and economics play no part except to motivate the bad guys. ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010

  Panel upholds Turk plant permit

  Texarkana Gazette

  - Jan 23, 2010

  - Jan 23, 2010

  The Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission affirmed the air permit on Friday for the John W. Turk Jr. Power Plant under construction near Fulton, ...

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  Water Power

  water floods pollution
  National science panel convenes on Calif. delta

  San Francisco Chronicle

  - Jan 24, 2010

  - 9 hours ago

  "I view this as the thorniest water environmental issue in the West," said Jeffrey Mount, a professor at the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010
  Robert Pattinson to Star in 'Water for Elephants' with Sean Penn

  Gather.com

  - Jan 24, 2010

  - 5 hours ago

  Robert Pattinson and Sean Penn are set to join Reese Witherspoon in the film-adaption of Sara Gruen's bestseller Water for Elephants. ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010
  Nimitz Reopened, Water Main Break Repaired Overnight

  KHON2

  - Jan 24, 2010

  - 6 hours ago

  All lanes of Nimitz Highway reopened Sunday morning after repairs were completed on a water main break. Westbound lanes were closed Saturday after a 16-inch ...

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  clipped from Google - 1/2010
  Despite downpour, drought still with us
  San Francisco Chronicle
  - Jan 23, 2010
  - Jan 23, 2010
  The recent downpours have temporarily brought the state back from the dusty brink, but officials with the California Department of Water Resources claim ...
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