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Thomas Paine

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

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

23 November - News Notes

The RSS SnapShots were taken twice - once in Firefox and once in Google Chrome - hours ago. The posts load as and if they do.

Yahoo! News - new site


Inflation rate rises sharply to 2.4 per cent

Canada has recouped all the jobs lost during the 2008-09 recession, the U.S. has only brought back about 15 per cent of the almost nine million jobs that vanished.


Shareaholic!


Canada gets duty-free beef quota to EU


( Just a reminder : a U.S. gallon is 3.74  l or 128 fl oz - and an Imperial gal is 4.55  l or 160 fl oz 
That should mean about 124 mpg / 2.812 = 44 km/l or 2.27  l per 100km. Tentatively ? Yes indeed.  ) 
Nissan says drivers will experience “a range of ranges.”
The EPA says annual electricity costs for the Leaf will be $561.

Ex-AIPAC official threatens to uncover mass spying at Israel lobby

A former foreign policy chief for the largest Israeli lobby in the US is threatening to provide evidence members of the organization regularly trafficked in classified US government information. 

“Put the Palestinians on a Diet”

Israel has been forced to reveal what Palestinians and other observers on the ground have known for a long time: that the blockade of Gaza is state policy intended to inflict collective punishment, not to bolster Israeli “security”. An Israeli human rights group has won a legal battle to compel the Israeli government to release three important documents. These outline state policy for permitting the transfer of goods into Gaza prior to the May 31 attack on the peace flotilla in which nine people were killed by Israeli forces. 

The released documents, whose existence Israel had denied for eighteen months, reveal that the state approved “a policy of deliberate reduction” of basic goods, including food and fuel, in the Gaza Strip.

“Instead of considering security concerns, on the one hand, and the rights and needs of civilians living in Gaza, on the other, Israel banned glucose for biscuits and the fuel needed for regular supply of electricity – paralyzing normal life in Gaza and impairing the moral character of the State of Israel. I am sorry to say that major elements of this policy are still in place.” (Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, ‘Due to Gisha’s Petition: Israel Reveals Documents related to the Gaza Closure Policy’, October 21, 2010;  http://www.gisha.org/index.php?intLanguage=2&intItemId=1904&intSiteSN=113)
As Saeed Bannoura of the International Middle East Media Center reports, the Israeli government imposed a deliberate policy:
“in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level. This documents the statement made by a number of Israeli officials that they are ‘putting the people of Gaza on a diet’.” (Saeed Bannoura, ‘Israeli government documents show deliberate policy to keep Gazans at near-starvation levels’, International Middle East Media Center, November 6, 2010 21:32;  http://www.imemc.org/article/59843)

 Small-time addicts don’t belong in jail: U.S. drug czar

Kerlikowske, whose official title is Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, pointed to a move last month to change mandatory minimum sentencing laws for possession of crack cocaine — “the first mandatory minimum to be changed in 40 years by Congress.”
It raised the bar on when a five-year mandatory sentence for crack cocaine possession would kick in, from possession of five grams to up to 28 grams. It had bipartisan support and was changed to bring the law more in line with sentences handed down for cocaine powder possession.
Canada’s Conservative government has adopted a strikingly different “tough-on-crime” approach, proposing stiffer sentences and many more mandatory minimum terms for a whole range of offences, including drug crimes.

Video Report From Afghanistan: How the U.S. Counter-insurgency Campaign Is Failing


Fmr. Marine, State Dept. Official Matthew Hoh Is First US Official to Resign over Afghan War

I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.

Rep. John Conyers and Out of Afghanistan Caucus Oppose Obama Admin’s $33B Escalation of Afghan War


Tanks to Afghanistan – Analysis

From Kabul to Kandahar, the Afghan countryside is dotted with the burned-out hulks of Soviet tanks. They are an obvious reminder of failed strategy, a nimble foe able to outfight big armored vehicles on rough terrain, and a lost war.

The news that American tanks are en route to southern Afghanistan does not come out of the blue. The deployment – which is small, at fourteen tanks – mirrors those by similar numbers of Canadian and Danish tanks to the same region since 2006.
In Helmand Province, where the American tanks are headed, a detachment of Danish tanks has supported British infantrymen since 2007. In next door Kandahar province, Canada’s twenty tanks have played a similar role for the past four years.
Operating on the roads of rural, relatively flat provinces — starkly unlike the mountains of the Afghan east — the German-built Leopards used by both countries have provided welcome firepower to infantrymen pushing through poppy and grape fields.

HIV epidemic 'halted', says UN

Koreas in border artillery clash

Why Desperate Haitians Want to Kick Out UN Troops


The crisis in Haiti follows decades of economic exploitation and gifts with chains attached – no wonder its citizens are angry.

Musical Exercise Program Cuts Falls in Elderly

Study Shows Benefits of Exercising to the Sounds of a Piano

The Fear of Sicko: CIGNA Whistleblower Wendell Potter Apologizes to Michael Moore for PR Smear Campaign; Moore Says Industry Was Afraid Film Would Cause A 'Tipping Point' for Healthcare Reform

We now have more than 51 million people who don’t have care or access to care because they’re uninsured. But even almost a worse problem, to a large extent, is the fact that a lot of people do have insurance. They’re paying premiums to insurance companies every month and they’re finding out when it is too late that the insurance is often either inadequate, or they’re told by an insurance company bureaucrat, that what they need is not going to be a covered benefit.

Pushing America Off A Cliff

Mike Tedesco's links to the Potter/Moore videos
It is not every day that one get’s to witness an historic public admission of guilt by someone who was a principle in a campaign of willful deceit that leads to the death of 45,000 Americans every year let alone see that person apologize before your eyes live on International television.  Michael Moore has much more on the topic at his blog.

Inside the race to hack the Kinect

For elite hackers, the Kinect's release was a rare opportunity to take a piece of big-name consumer tech and see what it could really do. If the device could be made to work with any computer, radical new applications were sure to follow.

 Flying Snakes, Caught on Tape



Posted by opit at 1:35 PM
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