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Thomas Paine

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

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

21 December - RSS SnapShot! Pt 2

View from Mount Sinai, Egypt.Image via Wikipedia

Ian Welsh

  • Because a lot of so-called Liberals don’t seem to ...
    Governments and individuals are different types of entities.   The presumption for government is that its proceedings and actions should be transparent to its citizens because it exists to serve its citizens, and they can only know that it is doing so, and doing so in ways they would approve of, if ...
  • Why DADT Repeal Will Pass and Dream Won’t
    Gays dropped their votes to Dems significantly from 2008 levels.  Hispanics voted for Democrats at about 2008 levels despite horrible policies against them.  You only have leverage if you are willing to defect in a high profile fashion.
  • Afghanistan’s 22% GDP Security Services
    If any nation that the US did not like and was not propping up spent 22% of its GDP on defense and projects to continue to spend at that level for most of a decade when its only enemy is an internal light infantry insurgency, the American foreign policy establishment would be very quick to [...]
  • The Torture Culture
    Ok, here’s the deal.  Torture does not work to get information.  Period.  You do not torture people to get information, you torture people to send information, or rather, to send a message. What is that message? We Torture People That’s all the message is. America is a torture culture.  The majo ...
  • The Torture Culture
    Ok, here’s the deal.  Torture does not work to get information.  Period.  You do not torture people to get information, you torture people to send information, or rather, to send a message. What is that message? We Torture People That’s all the message is. America is a torture culture.  The majo ...

Age of Autism

  • Winner! Enjoy Life Foods Boom Choco Boom Bars at A ...
    Heather Borden has won a sample of the new, yummy chocolately bars called Boom Choco Boom from Enjoy Life Foods, makers of allergy friendly foods. The rice milk bar is a wonderful change from dark chocolate. Add gluten free rice...
  • BREAKING NEWS: Dodd's Draft Falls Short of Necessa ...
    Breaking News: The Combatting Autism Act Reauthorization Bill from Senator Dodd's Office (D-CT) will be introduced this afternoon, and it will include some changes from draft we saw on Tuesday. Over 70 autism organizations representing thousands of autism families across...
  • Katie Wright: Mt Sinai Autism Environment Conferen ...
    “No questions!” bellowed Dr. Phil Landrigan. “We just listened to a very lengthy speech and I would like to ask a question,” I said into the microphone planted in the aisle of the auditorium (ostensibly so people COULD ask questions.)...
  • State Legislatures: “Overwhelmed by Autism”
    By Anne Dachel While I’m not an expert on economics or politics, I’m getting a pretty clear idea of what the future will be like for autism in America. Consider that no U.S. health official has expressed alarm over the...
  • Man with Autism Beats Mother: We Can Not Remain Si ...
    Managing Editor's Note: For countless families whose kids are getting older, autism may be the norm in their household, as it is in my own, but it is hardly normal when you live in fear of violence at the hand...

Global BDS Movement

Farm Wars

  • Bribery and Graft abound as Reid attaches S.510 to ...
    S.510 Fake Food Safety bill was passed quickly late Sunday afternoon; a vote taken when the Senate could be assured few were watching or even aware that the vote on the criminalization of independent and family agriculture was taking place.
  • Food Safety Sneak Attack! Passed by Unanimous Cons ...
    As reported above, the Senate on Sunday night simply took the revised food safety language that was approved by the House in the CR, substituted it to the language of HR 2751, one of the original "Cash for Clunkers" bills from last year, and approved it by unanimous consent.
  • Conservation Easements (CEs)*:Read the fine print ...
    A basic Constitutional tenet of private property ownership in America is the landowner’s right to determine the use and disposition of his or her land. This ownership gives the property owner the right to occupy, use, lease, sell, develop, and deny public access to his or her land. Today, lando ...
  • Truth Squad Radio – Guardian Abuse!
    The legal abuse and exploitation of Gary Harvey: What happens when the state steps in and takes custody and control of an adult? Does the family have any rights?
  • Grandma Got Molested At The Airport – Funny Video
    TSA strikes again!

Open Your Eyes News

  • Better HIV screening worthwhile in U.S., study fin ...
    Reuters – Expanding screening for the AIDS virus to include every American at least once and the highest-risk people once a year could prevent more than 80,000 infections over the next 20 years, researchers projected on Monday. And if treatment for infected people were integrated into such a program ...
  • U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan
    New York Times – Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistanâs tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistanâs efforts to root out militants there. The pro ...
  • US Federal Government Cuts Off Recession Relief Mo ...
    Huffington Post – Despite soaring unemployment and the 19 million Americans currently living in “deep poverty,” federal funds for the Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) program have entirely dried up for the first time since 1996, leaving states with an average of 15 percent less federal ...
  • Denufosol helps cystic fibrosis patients, so does ...
    FoodConsumer – There is no cure for cystic fibrosis. Each year, about 1,000 Americans are diagnosed with the disease. Now a new ion channel-regulating drug may help kids with cystic fibrosis breathe easier, according to a phase III clinical trial featured online in the American Journal of Respirator ...
  • $2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US ci ...
    The Guardian – Overdrawn American cities could face financial collapse in 2011, defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowings and derailing the US economic recovery. Nor are European cities safe â Florence, Barcelona, Madrid, Venice: all are in trouble Read Article

L.A. Times - Greenspace

  • Chromium-tainted drinking water: Time for a federa ...
    A type of chromium linked to cancer is turning up in tap water in more than two dozen cities, including Riverside, according to a study that urges federal regulators to adopt tougher standards. Even though scientists at the U.S. Environmental...
  • Treasury grant program for renewable energy projec ...
    The 1603 Treasury grant program -– a popular government incentive for renewable energy projects -– was extended Thursday night as Congress passed a major tax cut deal. The measure, which covers up to 30% of the cost of solar, wind...
  • San Gabriel Dam opened for tests
    San Gabriel Dam operator Herbert Romero led 16 engineers clad in hard hats and yellow vests down a long flight of metal stairs on Wednesday to a cast-iron wheel on a ledge overlooking a streambed a few miles above Azusa....
  • Columbia River coal export facility challenged on ...
    Plans to open the first major coal export facility on the West Coast are likely to be delayed until next year because of an appeal filed by a coalition of environmental groups, which say shipping coal to Asia throws a...
  • Global warming protesters ramp up with climate tal ...
    The failure of global climate negotiations to slow greenhouse gas emissions is fueling protest movements in the U.S. and other countries, as the effects of sea level rise, longer droughts and stronger storms begin to take a toll. More than...

water.org

  • Water.org on YouTube’s Project4Awesome (YouT ...
    Water.org on YouTube’s Project4Awesome (YouTube P4A)  P4A: John & Hank Green Discuss Poverty & Water.org   P4A: Water.org with John and Hank Green (Part 1) P4A: Water.org with Mike McCamon, John and Hank Green (Part 2) Project for Awesome : WATER.org (Alex in the Shower) More Project for Awe ...
  • Water.org creating lasting change in Kenya (NGONew ...
    Kenya: Curbing Water Crisis (NGO News Africa) Kenya – Fortunately, there are a number of organizations that are picking up the challenge, providing water solutions. Water.org is working in the urban city of Kisumu and rural Eastern Province, offering both grant and WaterCredit programs. More than 60 ...
  • David Letterman “Water.org, now that’s ...
    Letterman Looking at Bottle: “Water.org, now that’s simple” (The Frager Factor) – Water.org co-founder and actor Matt Damon appeared on David Letterman’s show tonight to promote his new film True Grit, and his passion, Water.org, whose goal is to deliver fresh, clean drinking water around the world ...
  • YouTube stars will host telethon for charity (Mash ...
    YouTube Stars Will Host Live Stream Telethon For Charity (Mashable) – The three-hour program is part of âProject for Awesome,â an annual event the vlogbrothers (Hank and John Green) started three years ago to raise awareness for important causes. In past years, the brothers have asked viewers to upl ...
  • Colbert tells Damon and Water.org to go to… ...
    Stephen Colbert Tells Matt Damon And Water.org To âGo To Hellâ (Ecorazzi) – The comedian sat at his desk and checked emails, saying, âI received an actual email from Matt Damon⦠letâs see what he says here.â He then read the email, ââHi Stephen, Iâm writing to ask you for your voice to help water.o ...

Before It's News

Energy Probe - Nuclear Power,Utility Reform

  • The Deniers on CBC Radio's 'Ideas'
    The science is settled - is now the mantra of climate change activism? Those who disagree are either in denial or in the pay of an oil company. But long time environmentalist and energy activist Lawrence Solomon says no, the science is not settled on global warming. Ideas producer David Cayley break ...

Margaret's News

  • Republicans have now been shamed after Jon Stewart ...
    Momentum Building Toward A Christmas Miracle For Our 9/11 HeroesSubmitted by Joseph M. to US Politics & Gov't �|� �Note-it! �|� �Add a Comment
  • Wikileaks Reveals U.S. Tax Dollars Fund Child Sex ...
    Wikileaks Reveals U.S. Tax Dollars Fund Child Sex Slavery in AfghanistanSubmitted by Mari Basque to US Politics & Gov't �|� �Note-it! �|� �Add a Comment
  • Fear and loathing in Israel 2010
    This isn�t the place I grew up in. Where is that place? Where did it go? Racism has always existed in Israel, but something about the ease in its surfacing, something about how violent it is is different. It�s all out it the open, and nobody cares anymoreSubmitted by Margaret Mayer to World �|� �No ...
  • Demonstrators Scale the Separation Wall in Niilin
    Demonstrators scaled the 8 meter high barrier and flashed peace signs to the soldiers on the other side. As soldiers entered the agricultural land they used tear gas projectiles as large bullets, firing them directly at demonstrators.Submitted by Margaret Mayer to World �|� �Note-it! �|� �Add a Com ...
  • Introducing the no-state solution
    The Palestinians, on the other hand, owe us nothing. They had no part in the Holocaust that caused us to escape to their shores, they never kept us occupied under martial law, bereft of human rights, labor rights and all other imaginable rights. Submitted by Margaret Mayer to World �|� �Note-it! �| ...

Solar Energy / Energy Boom

News Blaze

Historical Notes

libcom

  • Cloth dyed in blood
    Bangladesh_min-wage_protest-12-Dec-2010-Chittagong.jpg Recent worker deaths in the Bangladeshi garment industry from police repression and from a factory fire. After lengthy negotia ...
  • WE’VE GOT THE RAGE! Nationwide report from the Gen ...
    15-peaceful_1786024i1.jpg No doubt remains, not even for the most naive, that the State – in close cooperation with all its supporters and mechanisms – has decided to wage a full-scale war against societ ...
  • The Tea Party: How the right is using them, and wh ...
    3966997161_eb5f4903e4.jpg For the full, original article, feel free to visit the Trial by Fire. The American conservative movement known as the Tea Party has caused quite a stir since its first protests ...
  • The day after…update on student protests
    0101214104038916_20101214.jpg The Senate has confirmed today – The Gelmini reform will be discussed next Monday 20th December, the final vote will be on the Wednesday. Today there have been more protests ...
  • Hope Against Hope: A necessary betrayal
    millbank.jpg Comments on some of the contradictions within the 2010 UK student movement and its claims for a 'right to education'. What has been taken from them to make them so angr ...

Free Range International

  • You Can’t Handle the Truth
    The efforts of the international community to bring aid to Afghanistan, help develop the infrastructure with the goal of allowing Afghanistan a chance at self sufficiency are failing dismally.  That should not be a surprise to anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the international aid racket ...
  • Afghanistan’s Forgotten Province
    There are a couple of recent articles in the flood of coverage about Afghanistan which caught my eye last week.  The first is factually wrong but I understand what the author was saying and he is, in a sense correct.  The second is factually correct, I understand what that reporter was saying too an ...
  • Rules of Engagement
    I have written in the past about night raids and aggressive ISAF convoy tactics causing unnecessary civilian casualties.  I have also written on the importance of not allowing enemy fighters who attack ISAF units to live and fight another day.  Counterinsurgency requires adaptation and my annoyance ...
  • Healing Ulcer
    After only 90 days of fighting to root the Taliban out of a place they have owned for over a decade  Gen McChrystal called Marjah a bleeding ulcer. That was an unbelievably stupid assessment given the nature of the enemy, the rules of engagement placed on the Marines by the General, and the paltry a ...
  • Afghanistan Summary
    This summary comes from Sami the Finn a.k.a Sami Kovanen, the Senior Information Analyst at Indicium Consulting. Sami has been in Afghanistan for over six years now and is one of the best informed analyst working outside of the ISAF security bubble.  He was kind enough to let me post this update and ...

The Story Behind the Story

  • The Bursting Debt Bubble – Power Point
    To see Dr. Ott’s newest power point – and to follow along with his radio broadcast, click here:   The Bursting Debt Bubble This is clearly THE BIGGEST STORY in American History. Spread the word — and Merry Christmas – (no thanks to the treasonous traitors at Goldman Sachs.)  
  • UTAH SOUND MONEY ACT (Brilliant!!!)
    Today I was introduced to Mr. Larry Hilton, JD, MBA – the author of a brilliant piece of much needed legislation that hopefully will pass the Utah legislature, and then each and every other state in this union. Here is his introduction to me for the “Utah Sound Money Act” —- Click here:  Sound Mone ...
  • Long Live King and Queen Obama!!!!
    Barack Obama enjoys living like a king, so why shouldn’t Michelle Obama live like a queen? The First Lady was photographed last night in Hawaii wearing $635 per pair designer shoes by Maison Martin Margiela. A woman lucky enough to have a job in this economy and working for the federal minimum wage ...
  • Remember November 22, 1963 – The Assassinati ...
    To honor the memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I think it important to post the following correspondence with independent researcher and film-maker John Hankey. This written dialog was first posted on Rense.com by Mr. Hankey back in 2007. A. True Ott, PhD The Reason JFK Jr Was Murdered From John Ha ...
  • COLD FUSION IS HERE!!!
    Understanding Lightning âNeltronsâ is Key to Cold Fusion One manâs study of lightning and itâs effects led to his discovery of the Neltron – tiny negative particles of matter smaller than electrons. The Van Allen Magnetic belts discharges tiny negative particles into the part of the air where helium ...

du la bab - Now is the Time

  • Downsizing – downscaling? See these tiny hou ...
    Here’s a great company doing inspiring work www.tumbleweedhouses.com The company creator, Jay Shafer started off making a super small mobile home for himself measuring  just 89 square feet! Their video is a testament to less being more – they’re now selling ready made mobile cabins and the plans fo ...
  • Air powered environmentally friendly car being pro ...
    Sounds a little strange right – an air powered car – why isn’t this big news I wonder… There’s a great company in France operated by a former Formula 1 engineer now producing cars running on compressed air. They’re not great to look at, super fast, or I’m guessing really comfortable, but they’re in ...
  • Deforestation – environmental & human effect ...
    There are many types of forest in the world from Temperate Forest to Tropical forest. The one thing all forests have in common is that the trees in them act as the lungs to our planet converting CO2 to Oxygen.  In addition, forests provide a canopy or shading of the earth which helps maintain temper ...
  • Could cancer be Fungus? If so, maybe here’s ...
    Recently I visited a dear friend who has been dealing with breast cancer for over ten years. After a long attempt to avoid surgery and medication, she was forced to have a double mastectomy. She has chosen to avoid the chemo treatments. This takes a lot of courage given that the standard thing to do ...
  • Doctors Warn about GM Food Risks
    It’s barely been a week since I wrote about the dangers of genetically modified (GM) foods and now the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has released a strongly-worded warning about the health dangers associated with Frankenfoods. Calling for a moratorium on GM foods, the AAEM says t ...

Mansbridge One on One - CBC

  • Pervez Musharraf, former President of Pakistan (No ...
    He's been a general and a president, leading Pakistan while wearing those both hats in the tense days following 9-11. Now Pervez Musharraf is out of office and exiled from his country. But that hasn't stopped him from wading into the debate about Pakistan, Afghanistan and how countries like Canad ...
  • Colm Feore (encore)
    His acting career is prolific, his roles varied, his talent immeasurable. Whether on the Shakespearean stage or the big or small screen, he's one of the most recognizable Canadian faces in the business. In this encore broadcast from 2001, Colm Feore discusses "acting is acting is acting".
  • Mark B. Salter, Aviation security expert (Nov 13, ...
    The shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the ink cartridge bomber: those incidents have changed the way we fly. But have the precautions actually worked or are they simply too much? Today we find out with aviation security expert Mark Salter.
  • Tim Cook, War Historian (Nov 6, 2010)
    Another year, another Remembrance Day and another chance to remind ourselves Canada's military past. This week we look back at some of that past that is often forgotten.
  • Malalai Joya, Afghan activist (October 30, 2010)
    She is a hard core activist in Afghanistan and has paid the price for it. Her life constantly threatened, banished from her seat in the Afghan parliament, Malalai Joya never stops. She wants foreign troops, including Canada's, out of her country and warlords out of government. This week she's our ...

Scotts Contracting

  • Oil News:No New Drilling in East Coast Waters 7 Yr ...
    On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 10:34 AM, Scott’s Contracting wrote: The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it would not propose any new oil drilling in waters off the East Coast of the United States for at least the … Continue reading →
  • Solar= Hot Spot for U.S. Exports- Creates JOBS
    On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Scott’s Contracting wrote: Another study released this week shows that solar jobs in the U.S. are responsible for some very positive export news. The report, U.S. Solar Energy Trade Assessment 2010, … Continue reading →
  • What the 112th Political Leaders Bring?
    On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 10:39 AM, Scott’s Contracting wrote: What the 112th May Bring December 15, 2010The 111th Congress did so little to distinguish itself in preparing us for our energy future that itâs hard to imagine … Continue reading →
  • Is a 35% Increase In Solar Cell Productivity Possi ...
    -Scientists Generate Two Energetic Electronic States from One Photon – Double yield via singlet fission could mean 35% efficiency boost for solar. By NREL News Office | December 2, 2010 Golden, Colorado, USA — Researchers from the U.S. Department of … Continue reading →
  • Solar Panel-Winter-Special Offer-
    Get complete Westinghouse Solar Power Systems (Panels, Racking, and SMA, Fronius or Xantrex inverters included) as low as $2.86 per watt. Westinghouse Solar Power Systems Details: Westinghouse Solar Panels â DC Includes: Built-in Racking, Wiring and Grounding. Stainless steel splices, … Continue rea ...

The View From Abroad

Foreign Policy in Focus - Military (US)

Law.com

Iranian.com

  • “Javad Larijani Does Not Understand Human Rights A ...
    Shirin Ebadi also reacted to recent statements made by Mohammad Javad Larijani, Head of Iran’s Human Rights Council. “Mr. Larijani who heads the Human Rights Council of the Iranian Judiciary, stated in one of the last interviews he had outside Iran that he had been willing to “compromise” in the are ...
  • Interrogators Tell Lawyer They Control Her Trial O ...
    “Ms. Sotoudeh told me the last time that her prison interrogators have told her ‘we won’t let the judge give you less than ten years in prison.’ During her call today, she also said that her interrogators have said she will be sentenced to serving her prison term in exile in Karaj’s Rajaee Shahr Pri ...
  • Frédéric Mitterrand firmly denounces Jafar Panahi' ...
    Le ministre de la Culture Frédéric Mitterrand "s'élève vigoureusement"contre la condamnation à six ans de prison du cinéaste iranien Jafar Panahi, indique lundi un communiqué.read more
  • Iran rises because America retreats
    A leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard has threatened to murder American generals to retaliate for the apparent assassinations of two Iranian nuclear scientists. It may sound like an empty threat, or an unhinged response -- like sacrificing a rook to take a pawn in chess.
  • Khamenei has his own woes to solve
    Last week, of course, Iran’s diplomacy had suffered a major embarrassment as Ahmadinejad fired Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki while the career diplomat was on an official visit to Senegal.

Most Revolutionary Act

  • Britain: Coldest December in 100 years
    Record Cold Predicted Back in June There was a massive blizzard in Britain yesterday, closing both London airports. I find it very intriguing that the UK is experiencing its coldest December in 100 years  especially as this is what Dr Gianluigi Zangari predicted in July, when he first reported that ...
  • The Politics of Traffic Taming
    Street reclaiming is a global, bottom-up movement to reclaim our neighborhoods from the automobile. David Engwicht, inventor of the Walking School Bus and author of Mental Speed Bumps: the Smarter Way to Tame Traffic, views traffic as a social problem, not a design problem. Instead of looking to ...
  • Reclaiming Our Streets: A Model for Social Change
    I have recently joined a growing worldwide initiative to reclaim neighborhood streets from the automobile. It’s a movement driven both by climate change activists seeking to reduce carbon emissions – and by social change advocates seeking to reverse the steep drop-off in civic engagement. The aliena ...
  • An Alternative to Corporate Insurance
    The health insurance lobby’s aggressive corporatization of health care – which started in the 1980s when Reagan deregulated the insurance industry- has had devastating effects on the US health care system. As Michael Moore portrays in the film Sicko, it has bankrupted thousands of families. He intro ...
  • Ending the Obesity Epidemic
    At the moment I don’t sense major commitment on the part of either the public or government to end the obesity epidemic. Given society’s unwillingness to address issues that threaten the survival of the human species – namely climate change and water and resource scarcity – it’s unrealistic to expec ...

Doug's Darkworld

  • Another Symptom of the Colonial Mind Set: Internat ...
    Last week the “International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act” failed in the House of Representatives, despite passing unanimously in the Senate. This was a “bipartisan” bill ostensibly designed to “require the federal government to develop a plan to combat child marriage with the g ...
  • GIANT GAMMA RAY EMITTING BUBBLES DISCOVERED NEAR M ...
    Yes, it’s true, scientists have discovered two huge gamma ray emitting bubbles emerging from the Milky Way. The above image is what they look like … if the viewer is considerably outside the galaxy and can see gamma rays. People can’t see gamma rays, so the above image is “false colour” so to speak. ...
  • George Armstrong Custer meets Buffalo Calf Road Wo ...
    Ah, the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Or the Battle on the Greasy Grass. Or the Battle of Greasy Grass Creek. Or as us white people call it, the Battle of  the Little Bighorn or Custer’s Last Stand. It’s in the news lately, because a military flag that was carried into the battle by Custer’s [...]
  • Is America on the Road to Fascism?
    “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”    — George Orwell   When I was a child and a young man, I lived in a free country. Now the government sticks its hands in my pants and searches my crotch if I want to fly a  plane. And already happening, [...]
  • Ron Paul on Wikileaks: Lying is Not Patriotic
    I normally don’t publish guest articles, but this week I’m on a  roll. The Time Traveller post was just for fun, today’s post is deadly serious. I was writing my own post on Wikileaks, when I came across Congressman Ron Paul’s latest words on the subject. He covers the situation quite nicely, and s ...

FourWinds10

Crisis Maven

  • Economic Musings VI: Modern Economies – Dyin ...
    There is a great debate in the history of economics whether there can be under-consumption in any real historic moment of the state of an economy and if so, whether it has detrimental effects and if so, what is to be done about it. And modern economists seem to have found a magic wand with [...]
  • Blogs and Web Sites you may want to follow
    The following is a list of blogs and websites that CrisisMaven has followed and observed over the last few months and that readers may want to check out from time to time. Note: neither the sequence of how the blogs are listed here nor any comments by CrisisMaven are an endorsement nor criticism of ...
  • Economic Musings VII: Marketing doesn’t adve ...
    Have you ever wondered if marketing and advertising are the same, if not, what’s the difference and which is the more important of the two? And why should you care? The most successful economic model is without doubt the market economy. It is the consequence of the wealth effects of the division of ...
  • CrisisMaven’s Blog News 2010-03-07: Over 25,000 We ...
    Yesterday around 16:37 GMT we passed the 25,000 threshold … - next report will probably be posted when we’re past the 50,000 mark. Thanks to all avid readers: on 2010-03-18 at around 19:25 GMT we went past our first 20,000 views on our blog in about eight weeks since we began publishing! After that, ...
  • Economic Musings VIII: Is there a limit to economi ...
    Something which puzzles many thinkers and frightens many young people concerned about waste or the pillaging of our natural resources is the question: can “an economy” (whatever that is – we’ll come to that in a minute) grow indefinitely? How can there be unlimited economic growth if we’ve never hea ...

Capital Flow Analysis

  • Stock buybacks are bad for investors: Further evid ...
    In the working paper “The Buyback Monitor - July 2009: Corporate Stock Buyback Profits of 273 Firms from 2000 into 2009“, published on the Social Sciences Research Network, M.A. Gumport, CFA, provides further evidence that stock buybacks are not as good for investors as often touted. The following ...
  • Why Obama’s healthcare scheme portends stagflatio ...
    The trillion-dollar Obama health care plan increases the odds that US economic recover will be delayed, and that unemployment and inflation will increase. The main thrust of the Obama plan is to increase taxes on individuals earning more than $250,000 a year, while forcing all but the tiniest bus ...
  • How long would it take to work off the US trade de ...
    The rest of the world holds $16.8 trillion in US financial assets, according to Federal Reserve release Z.1, as of Q1 2009. [...]
  • Why Bernanke’s flawed “exit strategy” policy porte ...
    In a lead op-ed editorial in the Wall Street Journal on July 21, 2009, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke revealed the Fed’s exit strategy with regards to the inflationary effects of the Obama “spending is stimulus” packages and other government measure to contain the current crisis. This articl ...
  • Stocks surge on spurious earnings reports: Q2 2009
    No one knows for sure the real earnings of American corporations. In Q1 2009, according to the Federal Reserve flow of funds table F.102, after-tax profits of US non-financial, non-farm corporations, on an annual basis, were about $589.9 billion. However, about 50% of these after-tax earnings were ...

R-Squared Energy Blog

  • Borrowing For the Present at Our Children’s Expens ...
    Join the forum discussion on this post Dreams of a Child This past week my youngest son told me that he wanted to be president when he grows up. I still remember when I felt that way. As a child, I thought “I would make a good president.” I thought I had the qualities that you [...]
  • Guest Post: Roof Shingles Meet Solar Panels
    Join the forum discussion on this post The following guest post was written by Daniel Fielding, a freelance writer who focuses on gadgets and the environment. He is the lead editor for Shades of Green, a Green Technology Blog. Roof Shingles Meet Solar Panels By Daniel Fielding “We have the te ...
  • Sustainability is the Key to Long-Term Energy Secu ...
    Join the forum discussion on this post Why We Love Trees I don’t often talk about my job, but I am going to today just a bit. I am the Chief Technology Officer for a renewable energy company. Our primary goal is to develop affordable and sustainable energy for a world that we believe will [...]
  • Critical Decisions Looming for Japan’s Nuclear Ind ...
    Join the forum discussion on this post The following guest post was written by the staff of Global Intelligence Report. SITUATION: Japan is advancing with plans to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and boost its external nuclear exports. These decisions will impact the conduct of Japan’s global non-p ...
  • How the RFA Wastes Your Tax Dollars – Part II: Bla ...
    Join the forum discussion on this post In Part I we saw that the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) pays for shoddy studies and then cites them to fear-monger into getting more tax dollars. Hypocritically, when they are challenged with a critical point on ethanol, they attempt to cast doubt by ques ...

Discovery Educator Network

  • LEGO Digital Designer : Virtual Building Software
    Comments:You can download for free software for PC or Mac to create your own Lego creations. - Dean MantzTags: lego, software, design, education, freewareby: Dean Mantz
  • Social bookmarking sites - Google Docs
    Comments:Here is a global collaborative Google doc with alternative ideas to replace Yahoo's removal of Delicious. - Dean MantzTags: socialbookmarking, googledoc, deliciousby: Dean Mantz
  • psdtechPD - Cell Phones
    Comments:Parkland School Division provides resources for successful integration/use of mobile devices. - Dean MantzTags: phones, cell, cellphones, psdtechpd, mobile, ipod, iPad, iPhoneby: Dean Mantz
  • Body Browser - Google Labs
    Comments:To use Body Browser, you'll need a Web browser with WebGL support. Click here to get the new Google Chrome beta, or visit khronos.org for more choices. - Fred DelventhalTags: google, body, anatomy, science, educationby: Fred Delventhal
  • Chemistry: It's "Element"-ary!!!: My Physics Blog
    Comments:Great example of a student blog. - Dean MantzTags: chemistry, physics, blog, education, 10thgradeby: Dean Mantz

Rodale News

  • Starting Today, Make This a Stress-Free Holiday We ...
    RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PAâEvery year, we eagerly anticipate an indulgent, relaxing, and revitalizing holiday break. Despite the fact that, for many of us, the holidays usually involve at least one frantic dash to finish last-minute shopping, entertain visitors, and cook like crazy. Whether you're g ...
  • Mind-Body-Mood Advisor: Leave Stress Behind with M ...
    RODALE NEWS, LENOX, MA—At Canyon Ranch, I use a variety of techniques to help people deal with stress, including biofeedback, hypnosis, meditation, abdominal breathing, and energy healing techniques. Perhaps the easiest of all the techniques I teach is mindful walking. Although remarkably simp ...
  • The Low-Cost Health Care Option You Never Heard Of
    RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Last week, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the requirement outlined in the Affordable Care Act of 2010 that all Americans purchase health insurance was unconstitutional. Legal experts predict that his decision will wind up being contested in the U.S. Supreme Court, ...
  • Food Safety Bill Likely Dead
  • Wikileaks Memos Reveal U.S. Gov't Pushing Gene-Alt ...
    RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Wikileaks has so far released just a fraction of the total 251,287 United States embassy cables in its possession, but the documents currently available provide interesting insights into how aggressively the U.S. State Department is pushing genetically modified organisms ( ...

big think

  • UK Students And The Spirit Of Guy Fawkes
    Hell hath no fury, than a scorned student, or rather the collective fury of scorned students. Now I can exclusively reveal that British students are busy working on a scheme designed to cause maximum discomfort to the Liberal Democrat politicians they believe have scorned them. The votes in the ...R ...
  • The National
    Brian O'Neill of Always Judged Guilty has an op-ed on Yemen and the future - post AQAP strikes on the Huthis - in the National. You should read it.I have been thinking a lot about the two suicide attacks, but the evidence is still too new and there are too many things in flux for me to know exactly ...
  • Moving Day
    Today marks Waq al-waq's last day on blogspot.com. After some thought and several discussions I have decided to move Waq al-waq to Big Think. I am incredibly excited about the move. I first interacted with Big Think back in January 2010, when they kindly had me in to their studios in New York to ...
  • Abandoning Yemen to al-Qaeda
    Friday December 17 marked the one year anniversary of the US air strikes in Majalla, which killed, along with some al-Qaeda operatives, a number of women and children. The incident has been utilized by AQAP over the past year to both gain recruits and to strengthen its argument that Yemen is no ... ...
  • Ash from Bromo disrupts flights in Indonesia
    I ran into this brief article that mentions that Monday night, flights between Australia and Indonesia were disrupted by an ash plume from an unknown volcano (well, unknown to the Virgin Blue spokesperson quoted in the article). Checking out the Darwin VAAC, it appears that the volcano in question . ...

Information Liberation

  • "Just Keeping You Safe": The Cheka Checks In
    "What are you doing here?" Paul asked the armed stranger who had materialized outside his workplace. "Just keeping you safe," replied the interloper, who had invaded the property without invitation or explanation. The visitor was clad in what...
  • Coda to a Killing: No Justice for Derek Hale
    The practice of police "accountability" generally consists of using money stolen at gunpoint to buy off victims and survivors of officially sanctioned criminal violence. Few better examples can be found than the $975,000 settlement paid by the Ci...
  • Who Has Integrity?
    In 2010 there were many campaign ads in which each candidate claimed to have "integrity." But as we have seen, campaign after campaign, election after election, most of the winning candidates are the ones who are merely the most skilled in rhetor...
  • Rap News 6 - Wikileaks' Cablegate: the truth is ou ...
    ...
  • Brad Manning Has Rights!
    At the culminating point of the movie A Few Good Men, Colonel Jessup, played magnificently by Jack Nicholson, angrily tells the truth and shockingly incriminates himself. The interrogating lawyer LT Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise), in his moment of ...

Be Responsible - Be Free!

  • Ozboy’s Bar And Grill Is Closed For Repairs
    It’s only temporary. A couple of weeks. But the recent shenanigans round here have forced me to do some thinking about how LibertyGibbert can run better in the future. I’ve spoken to a couple of you about this today, to … Continue reading →
  • The Dragon’s Dissent Part III: Naked Nationa ...
    The emergence of China as the world’s new superpower has raised many questions in the international community and across the blogosphere regarding the longer-range agenda of the Middle Kingdom. In a recent discussion on this forum, the question of Chinese … Continue reading →
  • U.S. Elections: Will Liberty Win?
    Well today’s the day. As just about every other blog in the sphere is covering the elections today, I thought I’d throw the forum open, and we can discuss the results as they come in, in real time. If as … Continue reading →
  • Libertarianism And Drug Liberalization
    G’day everyone, Just arrived back home safe and sound. Sorry there hasn’t been a new post in several days, but just at the moment my family needs me more than the Bar and Grill does. Dr. Dave has graciously stepped … Continue reading →
  • Stealing Democracy?
    G’day everyone, Ozboy here. The United States mid-term elections are just one week away, and the mounting resentment many Americans feel about the way their country is being governed appears certain to be made clear at the polls. One of … Continue reading →

FAS - Secrecy News

  • Shrink the Classification System
    Faced with release of hundreds of thousands of classified records by Wikileaks in recent months, what should the government do?  The best answer might be to release hundreds of millions of such records!  By stripping away the accretions of decades of overclassification, a wholesale reduction in clas ...
  • Classified Information Policy, and More from CRS
    Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “Classified Information Policy and Executive Order 13526,” December 10, 2010. “Screening and Securing Air Cargo: Background and Issues for Congress, ...
  • Goodbye, Mr. Bond
    Last year, Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO) told reporters that there is “a far Left-wing fringe group that wants to disclose all our vulnerabilities. I don’t know what their motives are but I think they are very dangerous to our security.” More hating on Wikileaks?  No, Senator Bond was actually ta ...
  • Support Secrecy News
    Many thanks to those readers who have already made contributions to help support Secrecy News.  If you are able and willing to join them, tax-deductible contributions can be made here (select “Government Secrecy” from the drop-down menu to direct your donation to Secrecy News). You can also write a ...
  • JASON: Science of Cyber Security Needs More Work
    “Cyber security is now critical to our survival but as a field of research [it] does not have a firm scientific basis,” according to the Department of Defense.  “Our current security approaches have had limited success and have become an arms race with our adversaries.  In order to achieve securit ...

Sciencebase - Breaking Science News

  • Sciencebase person of the year 2010
    Anyone can pick someone famous, a Zuckerberg, a Jobs, a Gaga, and call them their person of the year. But, how about a personal person of the year? Here’s my pick of the people who have had the biggest impact on me this year, whether through their retweet efforts on Twitter, their comments on my [.. ...
  • Periodic table of videos at the movies
    Regular Sciencebase followers will by now know only too well the Periodic Table of Videos from Nottingham University and my good friend Martyn Poliakoff. The creators of the video series recently ran a competition for viewers to create a movie-style poster to promote the videos and had an astounding ...
  • A few facts about asbestos
    Today, medical journal The Lancet has publicly criticised the Canadian government for its attitude towards asbestos, saying that although Canada will not expose its own citizens to asbestos, it will continue exporting the deadly substance to developing nations [Canada accused of hypocrisy, Lancet]. ...
  • What is nature worth?
    Each hour 3 species vanish forever, we’ve lost a fifth of the planet’s coral reefs, almost a third of its mangrove forests, and half of the world’s wetlands. But, how do you count the cost? Perhaps a business perspective is needed. If we considered the natural world as providing products and service ...
  • Searching for scientific abbreviations
    Ambiguous abbreviations and acronyms are annoyances when it comes to text search and data mining. As a writer-editor, I was always taught to spell out the long form (LF) of a short form (SF) at first mention in a document so that the reader would know that when I mentioned EBV I was referring to [.. ...

RFF Library

  • H.R. 5116: Reauthorization of America COMPETES Act
    US Senate http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr5116eas/pdf/BILLS-111hr5116eas.pdf House version of America COMPETES Act (passed May 2010): http://www.rules.house.gov/111/LegText/111_hr5116txt.pdf The Senate’s compromise is not nearly as generous in funding as the $84 billion bill that passed the ...
  • S. 3874: To Amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to R ...
    US Senate http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111s3874es/pdf/BILLS-111s3874es.pdf [Draft of this act available at http://rfflibrary.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/cbo-cost-estimate-s-3874-reduction-of-lead-in-drinking-water-act/] [From S.3874] For the purposes of this section, the term `lead free’ means (A ...
  • Renewable Energy in the South
    Nicholas Institute, Duke University / Marilyn A. Brown, Etan Gumerman, Youngsun Baek, Cullen Morris, Yu Wang http://tinyurl.com/2cfblcu [From report website] Transitioning away from increasingly scarce, carbon-intensive and polluting fossil fuels is one of the key challenges facing modern society. P ...
  • Turkey’s Role and Priorities in Enhancement of Sec ...
    Siyaset Ekonomi Ve Toplum Araştırmaları Vakfı (SETA) http://www.setav.org/public/HaberDetay.aspx?Dil=tr&hid=54240 [Website] Geographically located in close proximity to hydrocarbon-rich regions, Turkey forms a natural energy corridor between important source countries and big consumer markets, and s ...
  • @ Brookings Podcast: Climate Change: The Path from ...
    Brookings Institution / by Katherine Sierra http://tinyurl.com/2f67ttf With the multi-nation climate change talks in Cancun done, expert Katherine Sierra says the path forward will be difficult in these hard economic times. Nevertheless, she says leaders of nations from the most developed to the ver ...

Scientific American - News

  • What's the Catch? Researchers Wrangle over How to ...
    The global demand for seafood is high, and over the past several decades the harvesting of wild fish from the oceans has grown into a huge business. In the 1950s most of the world's commercial fisheries were concentrated in the northern Atlantic and Pacific, near the coasts of heavily industrialized ...
  • No Matter How You Spin It: Long-Term Information S ...
    Electrons are the trusty foot soldiers of electronics, dutifully carrying the electric charges that enable our everyday activities, from making mobile phone calls to listening to music to--ahem--reading online news stories. [More]
  • Mobile Phones for Women: A New Approach for Social ...
    Enas Salameh, a 24-year-old college graduate living in the Palestinian West Bank city of Jenin, needed a job this summer. But her family finds it unacceptable for a woman to venture alone into the city without a male companion or an appointment. Fortunately, it's fine to use a mobile phone. In fact, ...
  • New Tool Tracks Culture Through the Centuries via ...
    Can culture be decoded like a genome? A team from Harvard has teamed up with Google to crack the spines of 5,195,769 digitized books that span five centuries of the printed word with the hopes of giving the humanities a more quantitative research tool. [More]
  • Cosmos Incognita: Voyager 1 Spacecraft Arrives at ...
    In 1972 a young professor at the California Institute of Technology was asked to work part-time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as chief scientist for a new space mission , one that would probe the limits of the solar system and eventually enter interstellar space. Edward Stone accepted the ass ...

RAWA News

  • Kandahar gains came with “brutal” tact ...
    Inter Press Service: The Barack Obama administration’s claim of “progress” in its war strategy is based on the military seizure of three rural districts outside Kandahar City in October. But those tactical gains came at the price of further exacerbating the basic US strategic weakness in Afghanistan ...
  • Waste in US Afghan aid seen at billions of dollars
    Reuters: Waste and fraud in U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said on Monday. Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of U.S. assistance fundin ...
  • An inflated claim of health success in Afghanistan ...
    The Christian Science Monitor: Nine years and billions of dollars into the Afghanistan war the US government is eager to show progress. There's just one problem, say healthcare officials in Afghanistan. That claim, also peddled by the British government’s aid agency, the World Bank and at times by t ...
  • Contractors Behaving Badly A US Headache
    The Associated Press: At two in the morning on Sept. 9, 2005, five DynCorp International security guards assigned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's protective detail returned to their compound drunk, with a prostitute in tow. Less than a week later, three of these same guards got drunk again, this ...
  • Jailed Afghan Drug Lord Was Informer on U.S. Payro ...
    The New York Times: When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban i ...

frogblog

  • New Auckland motorway causes congestion
    The Herald has carried another story today about how building a motorway has made congestion worse in Auckland, not better. Suprised? The New Zealand Transport Agency has admitted that they seriously under-estimated how much traffic their upgrades of State Highway 16 (SH16) to form ...
  • 12 Days of Christmas wraps up
    Today is Day 12 of our mini ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ campaign. Each day, Metiria and Catherine have highlighted issues relating to inequality and child wellbeing, and presented Green solutions to those issues. Check it out day by day: Day 1 – Introduction Day 2 â Child poverty Da ...
  • Keith Locke: Backbencher of the year
    The political staff at Fairfax Media rate politicians’ performances in various categories around this time of year.  Here’s what they have to say about our own Keith Locke: Green MP Keith Locke, who has plugged away for years on issues as diverse as human rights, spy agencies, repu ...
  • Northland: the front-lines of how we move people a ...
    I went to Northland last Friday to visit a region which is on the front-lines of the government’s ideological attack on how we move people and freight around. The state of Northland transport right now epitomises the Government’s pro-truck ideology: more motorways and less rail. To ...
  • General debate, December 19, 2010

Patronus Analytical

J Kozy

  • Western Civilization and Classical Economics: The ...
    When a civilization abandons its morality, no rationalization can be devised to justify its continued existence. It is likely that many reasons can be given for this abandonment in the Western world, although I am convinced that one predominatesthe expansion of law. Law once governed various kin ...
  • The Mythical United States of America: Rushing int ...
    The mythical United States of America so highly lauded exists nowhere. It is a Shangri-la. The Preamble of the Constitution makes perfectly clear what kind of nation the United States was meant to be. What exists today fulfills none of those goals. Some have argued that the nation was a fraud fr ...
  • As Western Civilization Lies Dying
    The Western commercial system exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit and has never been the improvement of the human condition but to exploit it. When governments institutionalize this system, they place their nations on suicidal paths, be ...
  • Is Perfect Research Possible
    Some claim that there is no hope of doing perfect research. So, is there hope of doing perfect research? Of course there issometimes! It all depends on the whetherwhether the subject is limited and whether the researcher can write and is intelligent enough to adequately evaluate the evidence. Un ...
  • The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: Last Gasp of ...
    No civilization in history that collapsed after a period of greatness has ever regained its dominance. Egypt lasted for three millennia; today it is little more than a field for archeological study. The Persian Empire, which lasted for more than three hundred years, became the largest and most p ...

MoJo - Kevin Drum

  • Lame Duck Not So Lame After All
    From The Hill: Republican senators say privately they expect the Senate to ratify the New START treaty this week, which would hand President Obama his third major victory of the lame-duck session. GOP senators — including those who plan to vote for the treaty and those who say they’ll oppose it — h ...
  • Counterterrorism and You
    Dana Priest and William Arkin have a big piece in the Washington Post today about the vast expansion of local counterterrorism efforts in the United States since 9/11. An excerpt: At the same time that the FBI is expanding its West Virginia database, it is building a vast repository controlled by p ...
  • Simple Answers to Simple Questions
    Doug Mataconis has a question about Sarah Palin's continuing mockery of Michelle Obama's public education campaign aimed at improving child nutrition: Is Palin actually saying she’s against child nutrition and against providing information to parents? Or is she just taking cheap shots at Michelle O ...
  • Deadweight Losses Among the Super Rich
    After reading a new paper on income inequality, Tyler Cowen says this is a "scream it from the rooftops" result: ....we find that a one percent increase in the net of tax share is associated with an 0.7 percent reduction in incomes earned by people in the top 0.1 percent of the income distribution, ...
  • Quote of the Day: McConnell on START
    From Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell, explaining why he opposes the New START treaty: All of a sudden, we're once again trying to rush things right here before Christmas Eve. I think that was not the best way to get the support of people like me. Translation: he's pissed that Democrats ...

Insanity Report

  • FacePalm of the Week: Rep. Peter King To Hold Hea ...
    I’ll keep this short:  Peter King….Go fuck yourself. NEW YORK â The incoming chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security said Sunday that he will hold hearings on the “radicalization of the American Muslim community.” In an op-ed piece in Newsday, Rep. Peter King said such hearings are cri ...
  • IC 217: Ain’t Shit
    Topics for the show: Redskins and their stupid management decisions Mike Vick “wants” a dog Dog lovers can’t kiss Mike Vick’s ass and go fuck themselves Steve Harvey’s new book about “ain’t shit niggas” DADT passes and the President gets a win Share with your friends:
  • Senate Democrats Show Their Frustrations with the ...
    I wrote a piece last week about the incessant whining of liberals over the President’s tax cut deal with Republicans.  As expected, some people thought the basis of my article was my “Undying Support” as an Obama Stan.  Not at all.  My major problem with the whining is that it’s always focused at th ...
  • Jon Stewart Gives the DNC All the Ammo They Need
    Seriously, someone at the DNC needs to take parts of this and run these ads from now until 2012. The fact that Republicans have been leaving 9/11 first responders hanging when it comes Health Care is one of the most despicable things they’ve done in the last 2 years. It’s truly horrible. The Daily S ...
  • IC 216: The Incomplete Show
    Topics for the show: This is a partial show. We lost power in the middle of recording. We didn’t want to lose the 40 minutes we had recorded before so we decided to put what we had up. We talk Redskins, Suing McDonalds, people’s demands at cookouts and the beginning of our discussion on Steve [...] ...

Simple Climate

  • Choose the ultimate Simple Climate explanation
    Vote for previous poll-winners in the final poll to choose the best explanation of climate change given to me by scientists I've interviewed for my blog this year.
  • Polar bears offer beacon of climate hope
    There is unlikely to be a tipping point beyond which we cannot prevent Arctic ice disappearing, US researchers find this week, although to keep enough to allow a sustainable polar bear population temperatures must stay less than 1.25ºC above pre-industrial revolution levels.
  • What could climate change cost us?
    In 2006 the Stern report estimated the costs of stabilising atmospheric CO2 concentrations at 1 percent of world GDP, while the costs of not stabilising could reach 10 percent. Why then are finance-obsessed countries still struggling to agree what to do?
  • Simple Climate poll part 4: The effects of change
    Choose from some eye-opening descriptions - the last seven of 26 scientists' attempts to clearly communicate climate change on my blog this year - of how global warming is affecting our planet to select the one that best conveys the situation.
  • Cloud and plant data raise climate projection conf ...
    The cooling effect of clouds will get weaker as the planet warms, while plants' cooling effect will get stronger, findings published this week show, but despite the apparent contradiction the data provides enhanced confidence in climate models.

e!Science News

  • Scientists decipher 3 billion-year-old genomic fos ...
    About 580 million years ago, life on Earth began a rapid period of change called the Cambrian Explosion, a period defined by the birth of new life forms over many millions of years that ultimately helped bring about the modern diversity of animals. Fossils help palaeontologists chronicle the evoluti ...
  • Quitting menthol cigarettes may be harder for some ...
    Menthol cigarettes may be harder to quit, particularly for some teens and African-Americans, who have the highest menthol cigarette use, according to a study by a team of researchers. read more
  • A total lunar eclipse and winter solstice coincide ...
    With frigid temperatures already blanketing much of the United States, the arrival of the winter solstice on December 21 may not be an occasion many people feel like celebrating. But a dazzling total lunar eclipse to start the day might just raise a few chilled spirits. read more
  • About one-fifth of women, less than 7 percent of m ...
    Women are more likely to report use of indoor tanning facilities than men, and some characteristics common to indoor tanners differ by sex, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, few tanners—male or female—mention avoiding ...
  • Intensive chemotherapy can dramatically boost surv ...
    More effective risk-adjusted chemotherapy and sophisticated patient monitoring helped push cure rates to nearly 88 percent for older adolescents enrolled in a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treatment protocol and closed the survival gap between older and you ...

unEarthed

  • White House Girds for Battles With Congress Over S ...
    EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson �The Hill, a beltway website, carried a piece�Dec. 17, reporting on a memo�issued by the White House science advisor, John Holdren, ordering all federal agencies, in no uncertain terms, to use s ...
  • EPA Limits Mercury Pollution From Gold Mine Facili ...
    It's pretty to look at, but not to mine Amid all those delays on important air rules, the EPA is doing a few things right: today they issued standards for toxic pollution emitted by gold mining companies with ore processing f ...
  • Friday Finds: Fox News Email Reveals “Shocking” Cl ...
    Wolverines will have to wait for the protection they deserve. Photo courtesy of Lory Joly at http://oas.visitsweden.com Leaked email reveals Fox News' climate change bias Nonprofit media research center Media Matters recent ...
  • Restoring The Smelt And The Bay-Delta Ecosystem
    This week, following a challenge from California water districts, the state and corporate agribusiness, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to revise its plan to protect the delta smelt, a fish tha ...
  • Our Holiday Wish: Mr. President, Please Protect Ou ...
    Photo: BLM What do Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, turtle doves, geese a-laying, calling birds, partridges in pear trees, and holly trees all have in common? They all make their home in the forest, of course. This holiday ...

Brave New Climate

  • Energy and climate books I read in 2010
    Here is a selection of sustainable energy and climate change books I read in 2010. I’ve provided a few sentence summary of each book (from my perspective) and a Rating out of 5. Some books have been reviewed in more detail on BNC already — enter from the title of the book in this website’s search bo ...
  • OzEA – The second story
    The Oz-Energy-Analysis.org project continues to hum away in the background, building momentum. For those who don’t recall what OzEA is, read these two posts from earlier in the year on BNC: OZ-ENERGY-ANALYSIS.ORG â open science for the new millennium OzEA modelling â large-scale wind power using a b ...
  • Media reactions to the Energy paper – part 2
    In a previous post (part 1), I described some media reactions to my recent Energy paper (on how carbon pricing changes the relative competitiveness of low-carbon baseload generating technologies). The section of the media I covered in that post is often considered to be ‘progressive’ and environment ...
  • Idea: financing large capital cost electricity pro ...
    Guest post by Dr Gene Preston. Gene has had a long career as a power system engineer, performing generation planning, transmission planning, and distribution planning for Austin Energy. He is currently doing transmission studies for wind developers. He wrote all his own modeling software including t ...
  • Monthly Argument debate: climate change – is ...
    Remember this? Want to see me go head-to-head in a ‘bar room brawl’ with Jim Green and a representative from Friends of the Earth (Cam Walker)? Want to see on what I agree — and disagree — with Arthur Dent (formerly Albert Langer) on energy options for the future and the possibility of nuclear energ ...

Indigenist Opinion

  • Uthman Badar: WikiLeaks exposes foreign policy's d ...
    WikiLeaks exposes foreign policy's dark side - Unleashed (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) The writing is on the cables. Leaked US diplomatic cables that is, the publication of which by WikiLeaks and the ensuing reaction from various parties around the world re-affirm some concerning realities t ...
  • White supremacists urge Thor boycott over casting ...
    White supremacists urge Thor boycott over casting of black actor as Norse god | Film | guardian.co.uk: "'It [is] well known that Marvel is a company that advocates for leftwing ideologies and causes,' the site reads. 'Marvel frontman Stan 'Lee' Lieber boasts of being a major financier of leftwing ...
  • Stating the Obvious: WikiLeaks Indicts and Vindica ...
    Stating the Obvious: WikiLeaks Indicts and Vindicates U.S. Diplomats | FPJ: "The WikiLeaks vs. the US government saga started in July, when 77,000 secret US documents directly relating to Afghanistan were made available to major media organizations. Many of us shook our heads with a mixture of disgu ...
  • Misión Milagro: una operación de ojos a cambio de ...
    Misi�n Milagro: una operaci�n de ojos a cambio de adoctrinamiento � ELPA�S.com: El Gobierno de Venezuela, con la ayuda de médicos cubanos, puso en marcha a finales de 2005 un proyecto llamado Misión Milagro. Su objetivo consistía en recoger por toda América Latina a personas de bajos recursos con pr ...
  • Bryce Edwards : Foreign meddling laid bare - Natio ...
    Bryce Edwards : Foreign meddling laid bare - National - NZ Herald News: "The Wikileaks US Embassy cables given to the Herald on Sunday provide a fantastic insight into the governance of New Zealand and the role of foreign diplomats here. Political scientists and historians will pore over these cabl ...

Republicans are a Disease

  • Coming Soon – Reagan, America’s Greate ...
    The damage Ronald Reagan did to our nation is staggering. Coming soon…
  • Peter Johnson Rails Against “Congress” ...
    Of course he forgot to mention it was only Republicans in congress that voted “No”. An innocent mistake, I am sure. Peter, you pathetic pile of human feces. You left out the word Republican before the word Senators over and over and over. REPUBLICAN SENATORS kept the bill from coming up for a vote. ...
  • Wikileaks Anyone?
    I. F. Stone “To suppress the truth in the name of national security is the surest way to undermine what we claim to be preserving”
  • Obama Just Lost 2012
    Caving this time cost you your job. Extending tax cuts for the filthy rich while giving crumbs to the starving makes me sick to my stomach. Just giving the Republicans everything they want without so much as a whimper. Barry, you are not a Democrat. In fact I want my money back.
  • Republicans, Don’t Listen to David Stockman
    If you are a Republican, you had better not listen to David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director that created the trickle down fantasy. If you accidentally listen to what he says, you would realize that more tax cuts, the main plank in the Republican platform is insane. He is not happy with President ...

Appalachia Rising

  • Day of Action and Conference Vision Statements
    Appalachia Rising: Day of Action September 25 – 27, 2010, Washington DC Appalachia Rising is a mass mobilization in Washington DC on September 27, 2010 calling for the abolition of mountaintop removal and surface mining. It is a culmination of the national movement against surface mining and a found ...
  • Press Conference to be Held on June 15
    Thousands to March in DC Calling for the Abolition of Mountaintop Removal Press Conference June 15 in Charleston, WV Announces Mass Mobilization Appalachia Rising WHEN: June 15, 10:00 AM WHERE: WV State Capitol Back Steps Near Fountain, Charleston, WV CONTACTS: West Virginia Bo Webb –            304-237-2688       o ...
  • Press Inquiries
    All media inquiries should be sent to Bo Webb webb.bo@gmail.com Set up interviews via email. Previous Press Releases and Media Public Launch Press Conference Report Back, with video Press Conference Held on June 15 Announces Appalachia Rising Video June 15 Appalachia Public Launch Press Conference H ...
  • New Flier for Appalachia Rising
  • Appalachia Rising Uniting Celebrities, Appalachian ...
    Appalachia Rising Uniting Celebrities, Appalachians, and Scientists for the Abolition of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Ashley Judd, Woody Harrelson, Gloria Reuben, Kyra Sedgewick, Kevin Bacon, Ed Begley Jr., Kathy Mattea, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, James Hansen, and Darryl Hannah rallying behind coalfi ...

Amped Status

+972

  • “Guys, I just totally raped this student chi ...
    This, essentially, appears to be the gist of the story of an encounter between an Israeli pick-up artist and a Czech medical student, published four years ago on the “success” forum of The Centre for the Arts of Seduction, an Israeli pick-up school. [Click here to read this story in Czech with Goog ...
  • Israeli BDS activist detained by internal security ...
    Matan Cohen was informed he is classified as ‘a suspect of hostile terrorist activity’; he was released after three hours Israeli activist Matan Cohen was detained by Israel’s internal security agency (ISA, or ‘Shabak’ in Hebrew) at Israel’s international airport yesterday. According to Cohen, his b ...
  • How we came to protest racism and wound up keeping ...
    The road to Israel is paved with good intentions. Itka and I read in the paper that extremist Jewish activists from the West Bank were to hold a demonstration in the city of Bat Yam. Their claim was that mixed Jewish-Arab couples were a growing phenomenon in that town, one that should be fought, sin ...
  • Fear and loathing in Israel 2010
    I canât get away from it. Every place I go, everything I read, everything I watch – itâs always there. The racism is always there. Towards Arabs, towards foreign workers, towards Morroccans, Russians, Ashkenazim, Mizrahim. This isnât the place I grew up in. Where is that place? Where did it go? Raci ...
  • The Brutalization of the IDF
    How Giving teenagers power over the lives of other corrupts them – and the IDF “And my story is we and my story is that one time we grabbed a kid, not a big kid, a 10 or 12 year-old boy, something like that, we explained to him with the help of point with the barrel [...]

Sustainability,water,etc - Oz gov't

Matt Weidner Blog

  • Don’t Arrest The Criminal Bankers- Arrest th ...
    Small groups of people are finally starting to protest…and some of them are getting arrested.  That’s a good thing.  We need more arrests.  I say arrest all the protesters.  Lock them up and throw the keys away….at least they’ll have Three Hots and A Cot and a roof over their head. (Until we all ...
  • Wanna Know Why Your Loan Mod Was Denied? Call the ...
    You’re a real dope if you wasted all your time submitting loan modification paperwork to your lender.  You’re an even bigger dope if you called the “independent” phone number to find out why it was denied. (almost all were denied after all)…. Of all the possible reasons why the government’s loan mo ...
  • NUCLEAR BOMBSHELL- The Rule of Law Applied to FORE ...
    Apparently the practices in foreclosure courts in New Jersey have gotten so out of hand that the court has initiated an inquiry into the quetionable nature and inaccuracies of documents submitted in courts across the entire state. The attached Order is filled with all sorts of crazy language like, “ ...
  • BofA TrashOut Story is One Of St. Petersburg Times ...
    Lenders kicking down doors and taking their property is a component of the foreclosure crisis that I find particularly appalling.  I’ve got several cases that I’m actively pursuing and it makes me furious that law enforcement fails to intervene in these cases, much less arrest anyone. I’M FIGHTING ...
  • BOMBSHELL- SERVICE OF PROCESS PROBLEMS ARE THE NUC ...
    I’ve been saying it forever and now more and more this is going to be ONE OF THE BIG BIG BIG ISSUES that is going to rock the foreclosure process….remember…. OUR ENTIRE LEGAL AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM IS PREDICATED UPON SERVICE OF PROCESS AND WE’VE GOT MAJOR PROBLEMS WITH SERVICE OF PROCESS IN THIS COUNT ...

abelard - news

The Parallel Parliament

  • Parliament’s Castle
    Each and every day the Chateau Laurier looms into view as I work my way to and from Parliament. It remains one of my favourite sites. Born and raised in Calgary, the Banff Springs Hotel has remained the most memorable hotel in the world for me. It was constructed and designed to match a string [...]
  • It’s Over
    The fall session of Parliament ended yesterday not so much with a whimper but with mockery. At the end of months of activity, little resulted in the way of meaningful legislation. While MPs milled about offering holiday wishes, you could sense an emptiness and loss of purpose. The great questions co ...
  • Still Hazy After All These Years
    It took until the latter half of 2010 for the weaknesses of the Conservative government’s new foreign policy to come home to roost. I was in the crowd on Canada Day in front of the Peace Tower three years ago when the Prime Minister stated that “Canada is back” on the world stage as a [...]
  • A Special Group
    Last week I was asked to speak at the special recognition gathering for the maintenance staff on Parliament Hill. What a wonderful group of people, many of whom donated some three decades of service to making sure this place runs properly. I was more than thrilled to share how they had been of assis ...
  • The New War
    It’s not about Afghanistan, or peacekeeping. It doesn’t deal with expensive airplanes, troop numbers or NATO. It’s actually about ourselves and the unravelling of the seams that hold and characterize the many dimensions of this great expansive tapestry called Canada. We are quietly developing our ow ...

Vaccine Awakening

  • Counting Blessings, Remembering the Children
    by Barbara Loe Fisher Every Christmas and New Year, when I give thanks for the people who have blessed my life, I remember the mothers and fathers of severely vaccine injured children, who have taught me the most about love and courage. I know that my son, Chris, who developed brain inflammation ...
  • Thousands Of Americans Register for NVIC's New Adv ...
    by Barbara Loe Fisher Thousands of Americans living in all 50 states took action and registered for the new NVIC Advocacy Portal at www.NVICadvocacy.org during Vaccine Awareness Week (Nov. 1-6, 2010) co-sponsored by the National Vaccine Information C ...
  • Vaccine Science: A Search for Truth
    by Barbara Loe Fisher February 2009 turned out to be a month when vaccine science was put on trial in the U.S. Court of Claims in Washington, D.C., in mainstream media and on the internet, in the British Medical Journal and in vaccine safety research initiatives by the U.S. Department of Health and ...
  • Talking Vaccine Science with Government: Why Do It ...
    by Barbara Loe Fisher After the historic election in November that saw Barack Obama elected President, I wondered what he and his Administration would do about addressing the question that is on the minds of many parents: Why are so many vaccinated children today chronically ill, suffering with lea ...
  • Vaccine Bullies & Fighting Back
    By Barbara Loe Fisher During the past decade, families in the United Kingdom, Canada and America have witnessed the demonization of brave doctors and parents of vaccine injured children. It has been both sickening and frightening to watch physicians and some journalists engage in a relentless perse ...

2020 Science

  • Lost in the Maize
    My son Alex’s school puts on a highly prestigious musical each year. Competition for the lead roles is tough. Closed-door auditions are held to ensure the most talented kids get the leading roles â reward-through-merit in action you might say. Apart from the fact that some parents involved in the pr ...
  • The NNI at 10 – did I really say that?
    I must have been just a little worked up when I spoke with Gwyneth Shaw at the New Haven Independent a couple of weeks ago on nanotechnology.  I’m usually fairly circumspect with my comments to reporters (OK, so I know some readers have just spattered their coffee across the computer screen, but do ...
  • Small gods and the art of technology innovation
    There’s something rather liberating about being asked to give a no-holds talk on your perspective on life, the universe and everything.  So when the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center asked if I would speak as part of their “Where do we go from here?” series, I jumped at it. No holds barred is pro ...
  • Reviewing the National Nanotechnology Initiative S ...
    Here’s a bit of trivia: with the 4000 character limit on comments on the National Nanotechnology Initiative Draft Strategic Plan, you might as well ditch the official portal, and tweet your comments to the Office of Science and Technology Policy – 28 tweets would do it! As you can probably guess, I’ ...
  • Lost in the Maize
    Iâm writing this at Detroit airport, en route to Dubai via Heathrow.  By rights, I should be writing the usual stuff about how traveling to exotic places isnât all itâs cracked up to be – the mantra of the seasoned traveler.  But as itâs the day after Thanksgiving, I thought I would suck it up [.. ...

Reader Supported News

  • FBI Assembling a Database on Americans
    Intro: The FBI is assembling a massive database on thousands of Americans, many of whom have not been accused of any crime. The FBI has begun using facial-recognition technology on millions of motorists, comparing driver's license photos with pictures of convicts, 10/14/09. (photo: File photo, un ...
  • Top Democrat Predicts Senate Will OK Arms Treaty
    The article begins: "A top Democrat predicted Monday that the Senate will approve a new arms control treaty with Russia, but conceded that it will take 'house by house combat' to collect enough votes from recalcitrant Republicans to prevail." Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator Jo ...
  • Republicans Block Dream Act
    The Associated Press reports: "Senate Republicans on Saturday doomed an effort that would have given hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military." Students react after watching from the US Senate gallery as Republican ...
  • Top Democrat Predicts Senate Will OK Arms Treaty
    The article begins: "A top Democrat predicted Monday that the Senate will approve a new arms control treaty with Russia, but conceded that it will take 'house by house combat' to collect enough votes from recalcitrant Republicans to prevail." Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator Jo ...
  • Republicans Block Dream Act
    The Associated Press reports: "Senate Republicans on Saturday doomed an effort that would have given hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military." Students react after watching from the US Senate gallery as Republican ...

War Resisters League

  • The other “Afghanistan Report”
    Whose stories are we telling about the war in Afghanistan? On the day following the White House report on the war in Afghanistan that names the war as a qualified success and calls for the U.S. to “stay the course,” we must lift up the alternative stories and reports of this near-decade of occupatio ...
  • Join the Online Demonstration for Peace in Korea - ...
    President Obama is sending the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington (carrying 75 warplanes and a crew of over 6000) and other warships for additional war-games with the South Korean military beginning Sunday, November 28.� This only escalates the already tense situation on the Kore ...
  • IVAW Women’s Retreat this weekend!
    Dear Supporters, My name is Joyce Wagner. I am a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, and I am a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. This Labor Day, IVAW women will hold our first ever retreat in support of women veterans. Your donation today will help us make [...]
  • Protest nuclear warhead test launch tomorrow!
    Protest September 14, 11:55 pm (midnight) missile launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base: NOTE 09/14/10: THIS LAUNCH AND PROTEST HAVE BEEN CANCELED– More info to come! Join the protest of the test launch of a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) thermo-nuclear warhead delivery system ...
  • International Days of Action in Solidarity with Br ...
    Support Bradley Manning! Oakland, California, USA Thursday, September 16th, 7-9pm Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland CA (Between Telegraph and Broadway) Speakers: DANIEL ELLSBERG, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower COL. ANN WRIGHT (ret.), former US diplomat RAY MCGOVERN, former CIA analyst AIMEE AL ...

Center for a Livable Future

  • Happy Holidays from the Johns Hopkins Center for a ...
  • Looking at Food System Issues through a ‘Food Just ...
    I first came upon the term “food justice” from an organization in Oakland called People’s Grocery led by Brahm Ahmadi and others who were fighting against an unjust food system in the “food desert” of West Oakland. At the time, it was an area that left residents with liquor stores and [...]
  • Fair Food in Our 21st Century Economy
    Last Wednesday, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) held the last of a series of joint workshops on “Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement Issues in Our 21st Century Economy.” This particular workshop was held at the USDA in Washington D.C. and focu ...
  • Drug amounts for food animals now reported by FDA: ...
    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a report last Thursday (Dec 9, 2010) that 13.1 million kilograms of antimicrobial drugs were sold or distributed for use in food-producing animals in 2009 in the United States (pdf). Why is this important? It represents the first time the FDA has repo ...
  • Can Organic Farming Feed the World?
    Charles Benbrook, PhD, visiting CLF’s offices earlier this week, sat down with CLF staff to discuss a wide variety of topics, including the future promise of organic farming. Following his keynote lecture at the Polly Walker Ecology Fund, the Livablefutureblog asked the Organic Center’s Chief Scient ...

A special project of Foreign Policy and the New America Foundation

  • Crazy Like a Fox
    In a fit of anger, Hamid Karzai axes his director of intelligence, Amrullah Saleh. But is there method to his madness?
  • Addicted to Contractors
    The United States is hooked on privatized warfare in Afghanistan. And it's more costly than you think.
  • How to Whip the Afghan Army Into Shape
    Much of President Barack Obama's strategy rests on the creation of a new, more competent Afghan military. Here's what he'll need to know to get the job done.
  • Obama's Indecent Interval
    Despite the U.S. president's pleas to the contrary, the war in Afghanistan looks more like Vietnam than ever.
  • Divide and Conquer
    At an upcoming conference in London, the Afghan government will unveil its plan to bring the Taliban rank and file back into the political fold -- and plead for international assistance for its new initiative. 

Field Notes - Alberta Environment

Stop NATO

  • NATO Trains Afghan Army To Guard Asian Pipeline
    Stop NATO December 19, 2010 NATO Trains Afghan Army To Guard Asian Pipeline Rick Rozoff On December 11 the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan and the energy minister of India met in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat to bring to fruition fifteen years of planning by interests in the U ...
  • U.S. Prepares For New Decade Of War In Asia
    Stop NATO December 16, 2010 U.S. Prepares For New Decade Of War In Asia Rick Rozoff The United States is engaged in the longest war in its 234-year history in Afghanistan, one that will begin its eleventh calendar year in two weeks. Like the war that had been America’s longest before now, that in In ...
  • U.S. Builds Military Alliance With Japan, South Ko ...
    Stop NATO December 14, 2010 U.S. Builds Military Alliance With Japan, South Korea For War In The East Rick Rozoff Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton summoned her Japanese and South Korean counterparts, Foreign Ministers Seiji Maehara and Kim Sung-hwan, to Washington for trilateral talks on ...
  • White House Intensifies Military Buildup In Poland
    Stop NATO December 10, 2010 White House Intensifies Military Buildup In Poland Rick Rozoff Immediately on the heels of reports in the Guardian and other Western news media that the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization has crafted a strategy to intervene with nine army divisions in the Baltic ...
  • NATO Develops Plans For Military Confrontation Wit ...
    Stop NATO December 8, 2010 NATO Develops Plans For Military Confrontation With Russia In Baltic Rick Rozoff This week plans for U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization military intervention in the Baltic Sea region gained attention after information from American State Department cables released ...

Before It's News

Intel Hub

  • Paul Craig Roberts: Reaganomics
    The Intel Hub By Paul Craig Roberts I admire Robert Reich, because he has a social conscience. However, if I were writing about the current Republican/Obama tax cut, I would not help the Republicans put Ronald Reagan’s name on it. Outside of progressive circles, which reflexively blame Reagan, the 4 ...
  • Monitoring America: The Government’s Development O ...
    Steve Watson Infowars.com The Washington Post today reports on the vast growing domestic spying apparatus that the federal government is using, in conjunction with the Pentagon, to target millions of law-abiding American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing. In a lengthy report entit ...
  • Obama FCC Caves on Net Neutrality, Tuesday Betraya ...
    Timothy Karr The Huffington Post Late Monday, a majority of the FCC’s commissioners indicated that they’re going to vote with Chairman Julius Genachowski for a toothless Net Neutrality rule. According to all reports, the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow’s FCC meeting, falls drastically s ...
  • S 510 Fake Food Safety Bill Passed by Senate In La ...
    Natural News By Mike Adams The infamous S.510 “food food safety bill” was passed by the US Senate last night in a sneaky, last minute voice vote. All Senators voted for it, Republicans and Democrats alike. Not a single U.S. Senator — not even Coburn — objected to its passage. With this vote, the US ...
  • Charlie McGrath: Real Terror
    Related Posts: Charlie McGrath: No More Mr. Nice Gov’t Christmas Time Terror Hype Continues, Al Qaeda to Attack Food Supply? Economic Forecast: Bob Chapman Financial Shocks in Europe and America Charlie McGrath: LET INSANITY REIGN ! Tipping Point: 25 Signs That The Coming Financial Collapse Is Now C ...

FRS

  • US: Zionist Lobby’s New Orders For Obama
    December 17, 2010 By Alan Hart, “Information Clearing House“ – After his appointment as chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Californiaâs representative Howard Berman told The Forward: âEven before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist.â This is the man, one of the Zionist l ...
  • US Political Prisoner Bradley Manning’s inhu ...
    Wednesday, Dec 15, 2010 By Glenn Greenwald Reuters/Jonathon Burch/AP/Salon Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime.  Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine ...
  • West Bengal, India: Tribal group calls a 24-hour s ...
    2010-12-18 Kolkata, Dec 18 (IANS) Pro-Maoist tribal group, Peoples’ Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) Saturday called for a 24-hour shutdown Monday in West Bengal’s three rebel-dominated districts to protest ‘atrocities’ of the joint security forces. ‘The shutdown on Monday has been called ...
  • UK: 15 year old Tells Establishment to “Stic ...
    “we are no longer the post-ideological generation…..we are the generation now at the heart of the fight back”
  • WikiLeaks: Maoists not getting support from outsid ...
    [The US government, which provides important support to the Indian government and military (in materials, technology, information/intelligence, and diplomatic support and cover), reveals its attention and concern over the home-grown popular and revolutionary resistance struggles in India, in just-re ...

Ken O'Keefe

  • TJP Liberty Report Gaza – Collecting Rocks & ...
    Since March 2010 Israel has shot 97 Palestinians who were collecting rocks or tending to their crops. In the last three weeks 22 Palestinians have been shot. What makes this all the more disgusting is that these people are doing this work simply to survive. In the case of collecting rocks they are d ...
  • The little town of Bethlehem
  • TJP Liberty Report from Gaza ‘Life in Jabaly ...
    My latest video report from Gaza.
  • BBC Panorama ‘Death in the Med’ is 100 ...
    This is a letter from Ted (from Liverpool) who pretty much dismantles BBC; please share. Aloha Ted, An absolute joy to read.  I will be spreading this enthusiastically and look forward to seeing how many of the “journalists” at the BBC manage to report the truth about their disgusting propaganda pi ...
  • TJP Liberty Report from Gaza ‘Story of Areej ...
    Throughout my time in Palestine I am constantly reminded of how I would feel as a parent to endure not being able to provide all that a child needs.  Whether it be proper food on the table, clean drinking water, schools and supplies or that most basic need of loving security, all of these things [.. ...

StillSmallVoice

  • Jesus was a liberal
    Bernie Goldberg said so. And thanks, Sharon, for the link.
  • Today's guest blogger: Mark Diters
    The Rev. Mark Diters, of Flagg Road United Church of Christ in West Hartford, attended a universal health care action meeting on Dec. 13 in Hartford. He offers this:   “We are perpetually being told that what is needed is a strong man who will do things. What is really wanted is a ...
  • My goodness, but this has been a busy few days
    I go off to make my fortunate in Vegas, and look what happens: Congress repealed the woe-begotten Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Yeh! This is my favorite perspective thus far, from Patricia Shechter. Of course, there are still some things to work out, and there are still some vocal opponents, but I agree ...
  • Viva Las Vegas
    If you looked out my hotel window this weekend, this is what you saw, the rear end of a sphinx. There's a metaphor in there, and I think it is this: Las Vegas is a town of possibilities -- except when it isn't. If you've not been there, imagine the giddy product of the fevered dreams of rabid capi ...
  • What? Another Elvis song? Awesome!
    We're extending Elvis Weekend one day. Why? you ask. Why not?

Associated Content

  • 'American Idol's' Crystal Bowersox Releases Honest ...
    And through all alterations in her life in the past few months since "American Idol" introduced her to America and the world, Crystal Bowersox has found a way to maintain that independent quality that endeared her to the voting audience...Contributor: Saul Relative Published: Dec 20, 2010
  • Aspirin and Cancer Prevention Debate Heats Up
    In December 2010, the BMJ Publishing Group connected a daily aspirin to cancer prevention. Really? Conflicting studies fail to prove conclusively the aspirin-cancer connection but highlight something else. This "something" might just save your life.Contributor: Sylvia Cochran Published: Dec 20, 2010
  • Total Lunar Eclipse to Occur on the Night of Dec. ...
    An event that has not occurred since Charles I sat on the throne of England will occur in the night skies over North America, northwest Europe, and northeast Asia: a lunar eclipse coinciding with the winter solstice.Contributor: Mark Whittington Published: Dec 20, 2010
  • Senate Passes Stopgap Measure to Fund Government T ...
    The omnibus budget bill still faces an uncertain future after Congress failed again to reach an agreement. The problem is congressional earmarks, written to appropriate money for projects back home. Will the federal government shut down?Contributor: R. D. Lamont Published: Dec 20, 2010
  • Unemployment Extensions Pass House, Restoring Life ...
    For those jobless workers whose only source of income for the past several months has been an unemployment benefits check, the news out of Washington on Thursday night must have been a relief. Extension benefits expired at the end of November...Contributor: Saul Relative Published: Dec 17, 2010

Popsci - Science

  • Total Lunar Eclipse Visible From North America Ton ...
    And it's the first lunar eclipse to fall on the winter solstice in 372 years For the first time since 1638, a total lunar eclipse will be visible from North America on the longest night of the year. That night just happens to be tonight, starting at 1:32 AM, so all you moon-oglers will have to stay ...
  • Japan May Scale Back Its Space Ambitions After Pro ...
    The failure of a Venus probe to reach orbit last week will likely prompt the Japanese space program to take a more cautious tack, according to scientists attending the American Geophysical Union fall meeting this week. The Akatsuki probe — meaning “dawn” in Japanese — is shedding light on the peril ...
  • SciMall Gift Guide: 15 Science Supply Items For Yo ...
    This year, shop SciMall for glowing rodents, animal guillotines, and more Sure, you can buy a flying car from Hammacher Schlemmer. But for truly bizarre catalog collections, turn to America’s laboratory supply companies. It’s a fair bet your favorite holiday catalog will not include a small-animal ...
  • LHC Reports Failure To Create Black Holes, a Setba ...
    At least not yet Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider report that after a series of tests, they have not seen any mini black holes, to the chagrin of string theorists and the relief of disaster theorists. Researchers working on the Compact Muon Solenoid team have been crunching numbers t ...
  • Video: Gray Matter Is Big in Japan
    Our columnist heads to the Far East to prove that he's the world's greatest mad scientist. Every month for the past seven years, I’ve undertaken some experiment—entertaining you, dear readers, by risking my life with dangerous chemicals. But this month I conducted an experiment of an entirely diffe ...

Veterans Today

  • Battle Over Science, Money Blocks Widely Recommend ...
    Pentagon blocks cognitive rehabilitation therapy promoted by health experts in show of foolishness unusual even by DoD standards From the VA: Running a very similar version of a story that first appeared on the NPR website, Stars And Stripes (12/21) says that “despite pressure from Congress and the ...
  • Suicide Rate Breaks Army Record from ’09
    According to the current edition of the Army Times (12/27, 104K), the US Army “has set a new calendar year record for soldier suicides — with one month still to count.” By the end of the year, the “2010 suicide rate will be more than 10 percent more than last year and as much as [...]
  • Top 10 Veterans Stories in Today’s News
    Top 10 Veterans Stories in Todayâs News 1.      Veterans’ Benefits Entangled In Red Tape.  The Washington Times (12/21, 77K) says that while leading Democrats “like to hold up” the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) “as an example of how well government can provide” healthcare, veterans “w ...
  • VA Innovation Initiative Makes First Industry Awar ...
    Today we are highlighting two new technologies being tested in hopes of improving treatments for Veterans with heart problems or traumatic brain injury, both funded by the VA Innovation Initiative, or VAi2.  These projects are the first to be awarded under the 2010 Industry Innovation Competition – ...
  • WIKILEAKS IS POISON II: DECONSTRUCTION OF THE MYT ...
    Wikileaks Is Zionist Poison II: Deconstruction Of The Myth by Jonathan Azaziah for www.zionunmasked.com Not since Zionist warmonger Barack Obama’s ‘ascension’ to the US presidency, has there been such a hysteria in the anti-war/anti-Zionist community as there is with Julian Assange and his organizat ...

War is Business

  • Gracias
    Last week, War Is Business had an item picked up by Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog. Even better, the site got a really nice write-up at the website of Mother Jones magazine. Thanks to them for the recognition, thanks to the readers who’ve aided our research efforts through the DIY WIB form, and t ...
  • Defense Sector Proves, Accountability Is For Sucke ...
    Tricare officials have worried in private meetings about the high cost of cognitive rehabilitation, which can cost $15,000 to $50,000 per soldier. â¢â¢â¢ In public, the US military insurance program cites bogus “studies,” not cost, to justify its failure to cover brain injury treatment for “nearly 4 ...
  • ‘Pentagon To Withhold Budget Figures Out Of ...
    Pictures and video from the pro-Assange protest outside London metro court, brought to you by the @warisbusiness Twitter feed.
  • Even Philip K. Dick Didn’t See This Coming: ...
    A helpful new public service announcement via Public Intelligence: Homeland Security has an important new mission: “loss prevention.” From the National Retail Federation: In October, during the NRFâs Loss Prevention Senior Executive Summit, Andrea Schultz from DHS to shared the program and encourage ...
  • Raytheon: A Cash-Seeking Missile
    I’m trying a cleaner look for the WarCorp Dossiers. This post also marks the first official test of the revamped DIY ⢠WIB form, a unique crowdsourcing project on military contractors and arms dealers. If you haven’t tried it yet, please do. Why not start by looking up a Pentagon contractor in your ...

    Blacklisted News

    • Post election violence leaves over 50 dead in Cote ...
      In Cote d’Ivoire, reports are coming out that upwards of 50 people have been killed following that country’s runoff presidential election. At STRATFOR, we’re paying attention to this issue because Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s top producer of cocoa and for the potential of this standoff to raise into ...
    • Chinese Weather Manipulation Experiments To Increa ...
      According to the Xinhua news agency, Zheng Guoguang, the director of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), said that the weather-manipulation program will be used to aid the country's agricultural and rural development, provide additional airborne water resources, improve the ecology, and h ...
    • Shame on "Democratic" South Korea for Censoring Fa ...
      South Korea, the high-tech and ostensibly democratic ally of the United States, has reportedly issued a warning that South Koreans who post Facebook and Twitter messages and forwards ("please don't retweet!") that praise communist North Korea will face legal prosecution.
    • Cancer-causing toxin found in 31 US cities' drinki ...
      An investigative study released on December 20, 2010 by an environmental group reveals that 31 major cities have tap water tainted with the carcinogen hexavalent chromium.
    • Climate Change And Regional Defence Forces: Is The ...
      Firstly, climate change will act as a “burden multiplier” that will strain and complicate pre-existing environmental tensions and pressures of regional and domestic ‘natural security’: the sufficient, reliable, affordable, and sustainable supplies and access to natural resources. In Southeast Asia, ...

    The Intelligence Daily

    My AntiWar

    CASMII - Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

    • Iran, Qatar vow cooperation for security
      Summary: TEHRAN — Iran and Qatar on Monday pledged to cooperate for greater regional security during a visit to Tehran by the emir of the tiny but energy-rich Gulf state, official media reported. "By consultation and harmony Iran and Qatar can strengthen unity among regional countries and implem ...
    • US army chief: We are very ready to attack Iran
      Summary: Adm. Mullen in ManamaThe United States is "very ready" to counter Iran should it make a move, the top US military officer added in Manama, Bahrain, home to a large US navy base, on Saturday. "There are real threats to peace and stability here, and we've made no secrets of our concerns a ...
    • Out of the Loop
      Summary: Mehdi KhalajiAn article I posted on Huffington Post (the backlash caused Huffington to reject future articles) in response to Mehdi Khalaji, a native Iranian at the pro-Israel think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), drew unprecedented fire from neocons of all ...
    • Who is Behind Wikileaks?
      Summary: At the outset in early 2007, Wikileaks acknowledged that the project had been "founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.... [Its advisory board] includes representatives from expat Russian ...
    • AUSTRALIAN INTELLIGENCE FEARED ISRAEL MAY LAUNCH A ...
      Summary: A report in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald today says that Australia’s intelligence agencies feared that Israel would launch an attack against Iran which might draw both the US and Australia into a potential nuclear war in the Middle East. source: Lataan Blogspotread more

    The Daily Galaxy

    • The 'Dark Genome'- Key to Our Survival for 75 Mill ...
      The importance of what scientists are calling the “dark genome” became apparent in 2001, when the human genome was first published. Scientists expected to find as many as 100,000 genes packed into the 3 billion bases of human DNA; they...
    • Image of the Day: The Fiery Beauty of a Supernova ...
      Following a supernovae explosion or a collision with nearby star, a view of a runaway star AE Aurigae racing away from its original home. The cloud is called the Flaming Star Nebula. Although surrounded by what may look like smoke,...
    • The Daily Galaxy 'Holiday' Contest -Win a Free $50 ...
      Use it towards a purchase of an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Hundreds of Other Apple Products and Accessories. Users of Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon are invited to discover, review and share Daily Galaxy posts you love on...
    • Epic Discovery: NASA Astronomers Find Extraterrest ...
      A week after announcing the discovery of arsenic-loving life-forms, NASA astronomers have uncovered ET amino acids—the precursors of proteins—in fragments of previously superheated meteorites that landed in northern Sudan from a 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) parent asteroid that entered an Earth-cross ...
    • Titan: Saturn's Gigantic Organic-Chemicals Factory ...
      "Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material -- it's a giant factory of organic chemicals." "We are carbon-based life, and understanding how far along the chain of complexity towards life that chemistry can go in an environment like Titan will...

    Natural News

    • Feds order farmer to destroy his own wheat crops: ...
      (NaturalNews) In arguing for S.510, the "Food Safety Modernization Act," there are all sorts of attorneys, legislators and internet commentators who keep claiming, "The government won't try to control the food production of small farms." They say, "Your backyard garden is safe" and that the feds won ...
    • Warning for future generations - Pre-natal BPA exp ...
      (NaturalNews) The U.S. government is so concerned with health safety and hell-bent on supposedly protecting people from consuming certain natural foods (like raw milk), you can rest assured that Americans are not being exposed to well-documented chemical dangers in the food supply, right? Wrong. The ...
    • Toxic chemical carcinogen found in water supplies ...
      (NaturalNews) A recently-released report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has found that the water supplies of many major cities are contaminated with hexavalent chromium, an industrial chemical toxin that does not get filtered out by most consumer water filtration devices. Thirty-one of the ...
    • S 510 Fake Food Safety bill passed by Senate in la ...
      (NaturalNews) The infamous S.510 "food food safety bill" was passed by the US Senate last night in a sneaky, last minute voice vote. All Senators voted for it, Republicans and Democrats alike. Not a single U.S. Senator -- not even Coburn -- objected to its passage.With this vote, the US Senate now s ...
    • Fraudulent herbal immune supplement fails to reduc ...
      (NaturalNews) In an independent review published in a peer-reviewed medical journal (see below), a popular herbal immune supplement called "ImmunoFlu Remedy" was found to fraudulently marketed as a "flu prevention supplement." Its makers claim that if you take the supplement, you won't get the flu a ...

    Threat Level

    • Video: The Time Julian Assange Hacked the Pentagon
      WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reflects on his hacking of a Defense Department network in the 1990s.
    • Details of Sex Crime Allegations Against WikiLeaks ...
      Leaked police reports from Sweden are providing the most detailed account to date of the rape and molestation allegations circling WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange was freed from a London jail on $300,000 bail on Thursday, after being held for nine days on an arrest warrant issued from Swed ...
    • Congress Hears WikiLeaks Is ‘Fundamentally Differe ...
      The Justice Department would have no problem distinguishing WikiLeaks from traditional media outlets, should it decide to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with violating the Espionage Act, a former federal prosecutor told lawmakers Thursday. “By clearly showing how WikiLeaks is fundamentally ...
    • Assange Freed On $300,000 Bail After 9 Days in a B ...
      After nine days in jail, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was freed on bail Thursday in London after an appeal by British authorities failed. Assange was granted bail on Tuesday but was remanded in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. Assange can remain free while he fights extradition to Swe ...
    • U.S. Trying to Build Conspiracy Case Against WikiL ...
      U.S. federal prosecutors are looking for evidence that would help them bring conspiracy charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to the New York Times. Prosecutors are looking for anything that would suggest Assange encouraged or helped Manning leak classified information by givi ...

    PERRspectives : Blog

    • The Final Fury of John McCain
      Over the last several weeks, John McCain's rapid descent into furious incoherence has spawned a cottage industry of McCainologists. But his open scorn and seething rage over Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the DREAM Act, the START Treaty and even aid to 9/11 responders is hardly McCain's first performance o ...
    • Sarah Palin's Double Standard on Double Standards
      Like a broken clock, even Sarah Palin is occasionally right. So it is with her suggestion that the perpetually weepy incoming House Speaker John Boehner is getting a free pass for theatrical water works a woman could never survive politically. As it turns out, the half-term governor is speaking fr ...
    • Your Tax Dollars at Work
      On Friday, the House approved the $801 billion "compromise" tax bill, sending it on to the White House for President Obama's signature. Over the next two years, that budget-busting, gilded class giveaway will cost the Treasury $70 billion in revenue lost from the top 2% of taxpayers and another $25 ...
    • GOP Commissioners Blame Economic Meltdown on Gover ...
      Republican politics are now defined by necessary lies, untruths like "tax cuts pay for themselves" which GOP orthodoxy requires be true. So it should come as no surprise that the Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are dissenting from the panel's upcoming report to falsely ...
    • Pawlenty, Palin Push GOP War on Public Employees
      Move over, welfare queens, IRS agents and trial lawyers. The Republican Party has a new bogeyman: the public employee. With a sluggish U.S. economy, cash-strapped states and under-funded pension programs, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin and other leading lights of the GOP are scape-goating government wo ...

    Blackspot News Feed

    • The Great Tax Cut Debate - Myths and Facts
      In the lame-duck Congress agenda, perhaps the most substantive debate is over whether to continue tax breaks for the rich. President Obama and most Congressional Democrats want to extend the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans, everyone making under $250,000. Republicans want to extend the tax ...
    • What Landslide?: A Closer Look at the Midterm Elec ...
      By now, everyone has heard of the conservative "tidal wave" that has overtaken Congress and most gubernatorial seats throughout the U.S. Indeed, anyone who has watched mainstream media coverage probably understands the midterm election results as a "rebuke of Obama's policies," with the "Tea Party m ...
    • INS Targets Community Leaders, Not Criminals
      When people the world over think of Arizona nowadays, they generally think of Governor Jan Brewer, Sheriff Joe Arpaio or state representative Russell Pearce – the poster children of the state's move toward legalized discrimination and racial profiling. If they are closely following the politics of t ...
    • Dancing with Dynamite:How Citizens Can be More Tha ...
      Two years ago, President Obama sailed into the White House on the winds of voters’ desire for widespread social change and their disgust with two wars and a massive recession associated with George W. Bush. Only two years into his presidency and the concurrent Democratic takeover of Congress, howeve ...
    • Pope Says Condoms Acceptable 'In Certain Cases'
      Until now, the Vatican had prohibited the use of any form of contraception -- other than abstinence -- even as a guard against sexually transmitted disease.

    Consortium News

    • 'Giant' Holbrooke Failed on Afghan War
      Eulogies are pouring in for US 'Afghan War' envoy Richard Holbrooke, but is all this praise warranted, asks Ray McGovern. December 14, 2010
    • The War to Silence WikiLeaks
      The US assault on WikiLeaks raises doubts about the nation's commitment to freedom of the press, argues Elliot D. Cohen. December 13, 2010
    • WikiLeaks and the Power of Truth
      The WikiLeaks' disclosures offer detail and context to government actions that strengthen democracy, writes Rory O'Connor. December 13, 2010
    • Bush v. Gore's Dark American Decade
      Ten years ago, five Republican US Supreme Court justices put the country on a path toward disaster, recalls Robert Parry. December 12, 2010
    • How the Right Shapes US 'Reality'
      From global warming to foreign wars, the Right shapes the "reality" of many Americans, observes Lawrence Davidson. December 11, 2010

    CounterPunch

    Institute for Middle East Understanding

    Water - AlterNet

    Public Citizen in Texas

    • The wicked witch west of Fort Worth, Comanche Peak ...
      The planned $15 billion expansion of the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant suffered a critical funding setback in Congress this week when cuts in the House-passed version of the federal spending bill eliminated loan guarantees that Dallas-based Luminant have said were vital to the plan’s viability. ...
    • Join us at the 3rd Annual Austin Green Holiday Par ...
      If you haven’t already pre-registered to celebrate the holidays at the 3rd Annual Austin Green Holiday Party, do so now.  It is coming up soon and this year it is hosted by 10 great organizations. Fiesta Gardens  (2100 Jesse E. Segovia St., Austin, TX 78702) Thursday, December 16th, 2010 from ...
    • Time for a new oil industry watchdog: Citizens!!!
      During the final public meeting on the BP oil spill disaster, the Oil Spill Commission indicated that it would recommend reforms to address the current regime of lax safety and environmental regulations, future oil spill response, and Gulf Coast restoration. Not surprisingly, one theme surfaced that ...
    • TPA News Roundup for Dec 20, 2010
      The Texas Progressive Alliance is tracking reports of sugar plum sightings as it brings you this week’s blog roundup. Off the Kuff reminds you that expanded gambling is still doomed in the next Legislative session. The EPA Imminent and Substantial Endangerment Order to Protect Drinking Water in Sout ...
    • Ramon A Sanchez: Solar Intern at Public Citizen [F ...
      Public Citizen Texas posted a photo: Ramon Sanchez majors in math at the University of Texas at Austin.

    Unexplained Mysteries

    Grassroots

    • Building food sovereignty and economic justice
      2010_brazil_site_visit_026.jpg �read more
    • Traveling with The Vía Campesina’s Caravans for Li ...
      soberania_ya.jpg ��¡La Tierra No Se Vende � Se Ama y Se Defiende!� (English translation: �The Land is Not for Sale � It must be Loved and Defended!�) � A change from woman fighting against a large dam in Alpuyeca, Mexico read more
    • Brazilian referendum seeks limits to land concentr ...
      plebiscito_popular_logo.jpg Members of the Brazilian National Forum for Agrarian Reform and Justice announced this week the results of a non-binding referendum about whether the Brazilian government should limit the concentration of land held ...
    • Development Volunteer
      Grassroots International has an opportunity for someone interested in assisting our Development team on an ongoing, on-line research project to identify possible funding sources, including from foundations and ally organizations. We are looking for someone to start immediately, working flexible dayt ...
    • Setting the Standard for Global Resource Rights De ...
      4420078955_43729050f0_b.jpg The United Nations designates December 10 as International Human Rights Day. At Grassroots International, we give special recognition to the efforts of our partners and allies around the world—but for them, it’s jus ...

    Climate

    GreenBiz

    • Fireman's Fund Axes Carbon Footprint 15% with Bloo ...
      Fireman's Fund Insurance Company will soon join eBay, Coca-Cola, Walmart and Google as early adopters of Bloom Energy technology with the installation of six of the company's high-tech fuel cells, the insurance firm announced today.
    • Electronics Supply Networks and Water Pollution in ...
      This report from BSR looks at the Chinese supply chains of 10 electronics manufacturers and offers tips for companies that want to get a grasp on how their suppliers are impacting the environment overseas.
    • Electronics Firms Struggle to Grasp Chinese Suppli ...
      A new report from BSR in partnership with the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition finds that a number of electronics suppliers have poor records for managing wastewater, in a country already seriously stressed for clean water.
    • Economy, Better Management Cited for Fewer Toxic E ...
      The 3.37 billion pounds of toxic chemicals released in 2009 represents of 40 percent drop compared to 2001, the EPA said in its analysis of the 2009 Toxic Release Inventory unveiled Thursday.
    • Using LEED as the Starting Point for Greater Susta ...
      Congratulations. You’ve been LEED certified.  Now what? That is the question facing the owners and operators of over one billion square feet of commercial space that have obtained LEED status under the U.S. Green Building Council’s green building rating system.

    Reuters Global

    • China’s South Asia tour: win-win meets zero ...
      Just over a year ago, President Barack Obama suggested during a visit to Beijing that China and the United States could cooperate on bringing stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan. As I wrote at the time, China — Islamabad’s most loyal partner — was an obvious country to turn to for help in working ...
    • From Thuggees to fake WikiLeaks
      Does the thinking which once whipped up the fear of a cult of highway robbers in colonial India live on in fake WikiLeaks?
    • Polar bears, sure. But grolar bears?
      More than the climate is changing above the Arctic Circle. Meet the grolar bear.
    • Perilous predictions for 2011
      It's a perilous business making predictions about politics and world affairs. But the costs of being taken by surprise are so large that it's worth trying to pick the trouble spots. Here's our forecast for the top 10 political roadblocks the world will face in 2011
    • After Holbrooke, chances of political settlement i ...
      U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke would have come into his own as and when efforts to reach a political settlement began to take shape. His death leaves a big gap.

    Booman Tribune

    • Watching Too Closely
      If Obama succeeds, as is now expected, in getting the New START treaty ratified, he'll put a beautiful cap on a stunningly effective and productive Congress. It all started with the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the bills just kept coming. One of the best was certainly the Credit CARD Act of 200 ...
    • The Real McCain
      I actually enjoy watching the pundits on my teevee trying to figure out why John McCain is acting like a far-right nutjob with anger problems. A lot of us told y'all that John McCain was a guy with absolutely no principles who had anger problems. I like watching these clowns figure out that McC ...
    • Serious Questions
      Do you have a problem with Michele Bachmann serving on the House Intelligence Committee? Do you think anything could possibly go wrong? I don't know, but I think slots on the intelligence committees should be reserved for people who are serious legislators, not the political bomb-throwers. I also ...
    • GOP Shows Lack of Resolve to Be Dicks
      In the first nice, decent thing the Republicans have done in living memory, they passed the Food Safety Bill even though they could have used an administrative error to kill it. All spending bills must originate in the House. We abide by this Constitutional requirement not by honoring its intent b ...
    • Wingnuts
      Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been repealed, so what happens now? Well, here's one prediction: Character-driven officers and chaplains will eventually be forced out of the military en masse, potential recruits will stay away in droves, and re-enlistments will eventually drop like a rock. The dra ...

    European Tribune

    Futurismic

    • Personal Information: episode 24
      Personal Information is a new serial sci-fi webcomic from Sarah “Does Not Equal” Ennals. Follow Futurismic on Twitter for more nuggets of near-future fun and weirdness! Share and Enjoy:Follow Futurismic on Twitter for more nuggets of near-future fun and weirdness!
    • Arguments against life extension
      Via Michael Anissimov, here’s a spectacularly empty diatribe against “deathhackers” by TechCrunch‘s Paul Carr. Carr objects to the idea of radical life extension as advocated by transhumanists, which is fair enough, but as written here most of his objections seem to boil down to personal distate tow ...
    • Daddy, where does innovation come from?
      Plenty of folk have been linking to this excerpt from Matt Ridley’s new book The Rational Optimist, and with good reason – it’s a provocative piece that plays to advocates (and opponents) of free trade, open exchange, copyright reform and much more. The basic thesis? The one persistent factor that h ...
    • Replacement arms: mechanical or biological?
      Prosthetic limbs are still in their infancy, but there’s a lot of progress being made: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory is working with Darpa (who else?), and has a research grant for trying out their mind-controlled modular prosthetic arm on five test subjects over the next couple of years ...
    • How to be a futurist
      The irrepressible Scott “Basic Instructions” Meyer has the lowdown if you’re thinking of a career in futurism: Click through for the whole thing. But take it from me, being a futurist is a lot of work for no money. Or maybe that’s just the way I do it… and I’ve never been featured in a [...]Follow F ...

    Therapy News

    • Address Your Stress: It’s Essential
      A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Not addressing stress and anxiety can have measurable psychological and physical affects. Itâs easy to view stress in the short term: just get through this project, this busy day, this hectic week, the holiday season – then everything will be calm. But according to ne ...
    • When Resources are Lacking, Who Provides Counselin ...
      A GoodTherapy.org News Summary Ideally, those who struggle emotionally and psychologically will find a therapist or counselor who is well-trained, well-qualified, and experienced. But the global reality is that not all people have access to such mental health professionals. Finances are often a dete ...
    • Depression Impacts Men and Women Differently
      A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Look past the simple numbers of how many people need to find a therapist or counselor to address depression or anxiety. Beyond those numbers, how are people impacted, on an every day level, because of their mental health? Despite common perceptions, more men than wome ...
    • Psychotherapy News Weekly Round-Up
      A GoodTherapy.org Psychotherapy News Weekly Round-Up We hope you all are taking care of yourselves in this final rush of the holiday season. Hopefully reading these articles can give you some time to yourself and some new and interesting things to talk about during this season of sharing, loving, an ...
    • The Psychology of Heroism
      A GoodTherapy.org News Headline It’s easy to imagine that those who stand out as ‘heroes’ have some sort of ability, bravery, or internal force that sets them apart from the rest of us. After all, ‘regular people’ struggle with depression and anxiety. Some of us need to find a therapist or counselor ...

    Mountaintop Removal

    • Mountain Heroes: Help Stop Mountaintop Removal Tod ...
      PlanetSave.com Mountain Heroes: Help Stop Mountaintop Removal Today PlanetSave.com Mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) is very harmful to ecosystems, including to the humans living in or off of those ecosystems. ...
    • Rockefeller, Manchin Ask EPA to Approve Spruce No. ...
      Rockefeller, Manchin Ask EPA to Approve Spruce No. 1 Mine Permit WVNS The senators point out the negative impact a veto of the permit for the mountaintop removal mine would have on West Virginia. "We understand that EPA has a ... and more��
    • Representatives ask President Obama to review hand ...
      Representatives ask President Obama to review handling of mountaintop removal ... Examiner.com ... Guthrie and Geoff Davis have requested that President Barack Obama review the federal government's handling of a permit for a mountaintop removal mine. ... Review of feds' handling of mine permit soug ...
    • “Deep Down”: A community battle over proposed moun ...
      �Deep Down�: A community battle over proposed mountaintop removal coal mining Climate Science Watch At issue is the practice of mountaintop removal mining, in which explosives are used to blow up mountaintops, exposing the seams of coal underneath while ... Deep Down: A Story from the Heart of Coal ...
    • Educating Rand: “Deep Down” Film Brings Kentucky's ...
      Educating Rand: �Deep Down� Film Brings Kentucky's Mountaintop Removal Battle ... AlterNet (blog) While national media attention on mountaintop removal mining has largely been focused on West Virginia, the PBS Independent Lens series will air �Deep Down� ... �Deep Down�: A community battle over pro ...

    Memeorandum

    • F.C.C. Is Set to Regulate Net Access (Brian Stelte ...
      Brian Stelter / New York Times: F.C.C. Is Set to Regulate Net Access  —  The Federal Communications Commission appears poised to pass a controversial set of rules that broadly create two classes of Internet access, one for fixed-line providers and the other for the wireless Net.  —  The proposed r ...
    • Janet Napolitano: We're Working "24/7, 364″ ...
      Mark Joyella / Mediaite: Janet Napolitano: We're Working “24/7, 364″ To Keep The American People Safe  —  Ya gotta wonder which day America's anti-terror forces are kicking their feet up with a book and maybe a nap, instead of, you know, “keeping the American people safe?”  —  On ABC's World News ...
    • That snow is what global warming looks like (Georg ...
      George Monbiot / Guardian: That snow is what global warming looks like  —  Unusually cold winters may make you think scientists have got it all wrong.  But the data reveal a chilling truth  —  There were two silent calls, followed by a message left on my voicemail.  She had a soft, gentle voice and ...
    • U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan (N ...
      New York Times: U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan  —  WASHINGTON — Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan's tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustra ...
    • Gov. Chris Christie commutes sentence of man convi ...
      Ginger Gibson / New Jersey Online: Gov. Chris Christie commutes sentence of man convicted of having guns in N.J. illegally  —  TRENTON — Brian Aitken, who was convicted of illegally possessing two handguns that he had legally purchased in Colorado, will be spending Christmas out of prison.  —  Gov ...

    Energy & Environment News

    5+ quakes - 7 days

    China Dialogue

    • After the flood
      Half a year on, scientists are starting to understand the ecological impact of Pakistan’s devastating floods – and it’s a mixed bag. Zofeen T Ebrahim reports.Five months ago, floods triggered by torrential rains submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, killing 2,000 people and destroying the property, livel ...
    • Living on the edge
      Low-lying deltas are home to half the world’s population and much of its wealth, but they are also on the frontlines of climate change. Olivia Boyd looks at the challenges.This year, officials in Jakarta realised they had a serious problem: rain – and more rain. Indonesia’s wet months are famously s ...
    • Relic of a planned economy
      Chinese business is paying the price for inefficient and unfair green policies. It’s time for the government to re-think its role in environmental protection, writes Tang Hao.2010 is the final year of China’s 11th Five-Year Plan. In the first four years, the energy-intensity of the Chinese economy f ...
    • Relic of a planned economy
      Chinese business is paying the price for inefficient and unfair green policies. It’s time for the government to re-think its role in environmental protection, writes Tang Hao.2010 is the final year of China’s 11th Five-Year Plan. In the first four years, the energy-intensity of the Chinese economy ...
    • Apology
      chinadialogue has received a complaint from Mr Cheng Guoqiang about a recently published article. Although the article was prepared and published in good faith, chinadialogue's editors accept that errors were made in the preparation and publication of this article and we apologise unreservedly for ...

    AlterNet Top Stories

    Threat Level

    • Video: The Time Julian Assange Hacked the Pentagon
      WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reflects on his hacking of a Defense Department network in the 1990s.
    • Details of Sex Crime Allegations Against WikiLeaks ...
      Leaked police reports from Sweden are providing the most detailed account to date of the rape and molestation allegations circling WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange was freed from a London jail on $300,000 bail on Thursday, after being held for nine days on an arrest warrant issued from Swed ...
    • Congress Hears WikiLeaks Is ‘Fundamentally Differe ...
      The Justice Department would have no problem distinguishing WikiLeaks from traditional media outlets, should it decide to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with violating the Espionage Act, a former federal prosecutor told lawmakers Thursday. “By clearly showing how WikiLeaks is fundamentally ...
    • Assange Freed On $300,000 Bail After 9 Days in a B ...
      After nine days in jail, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was freed on bail Thursday in London after an appeal by British authorities failed. Assange was granted bail on Tuesday but was remanded in custody pending the outcome of the appeal. Assange can remain free while he fights extradition to Swe ...
    • U.S. Trying to Build Conspiracy Case Against WikiL ...
      U.S. federal prosecutors are looking for evidence that would help them bring conspiracy charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to the New York Times. Prosecutors are looking for anything that would suggest Assange encouraged or helped Manning leak classified information by givi ...

    Reuters - Most Popular Articles

    • Russia supports India U.N. seat quest, seals deals
      NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday threw his weight behind India's quest for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and secured agreements to deepen nuclear energy and defense cooperation.
    • UPDATE 2-Seoul shares hit 38-mth high as N.Korea w ...
      SEOUL, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Seoul shares bounced to hit a 38-month closing high on Tuesday as anxiety over geopolitical tension on the Korean peninsula eased, and the market was lifted by gains in steelmakers and crude oil refiners.
    • Thailand ends 8-month state of emergency in Bangko ...
      BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's government agreed on Tuesday to lift an eight-month state of emergency in Bangkok, citing an improved political climate and a less confrontational approach by anti-government "red shirt" protesters.
    • Seoul shares hit 38-mth high as N.Korea worry ease ...
      SEOUL, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Seoul shares bounced and hit a 38-month high on Tuesday as investor anxiety on growing geopolitical tensions in the peninsula eased, and the market was lifted further by gains in steelmakers and crude oil refiners.
    • 150 years on, Civil War still stirs South Carolina ...
      CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) - Dressed in 19th century period costume and standing on the spot where South Carolina seceded from the United States and set off the Civil War 150 years ago, Henry Kidd explained the Confederate decision this way:

    IntelNews

    • Israel silent on alleged Mossad spy ring uncovered ...
      Israeli government officials have refused comment on charges announced yesterday against an alleged Mossad spy ring in neighboring Egypt. Less than a week after the discovery of what appear to be Israeli surveillance devices hidden in the mountains around Lebanese capital Beirut, two Israelis have b ...
    • Mystery ‘spy devices’ found in Lebanon mountains
      A statement issued by the Lebanese armed forces last week details the discovery of at least two mysterious spy devices located in mountain ranges around the Lebanese capital Beirut. The discovery, which was apparently made early last week, concerns two allegedly Israeli-made electronic devices hidde ...
    • News you may have missed #460
      Deported Russian spy gets Rosneft oil job. WikiLeaks defectors to launch OpenLeaks alternative. Former spies see benefits in WikiLeaks disclosures. Continue reading →
    • Leaked cable confirms end of US-NZ spy quarrel
      To regular readers of this blog, this is not so much a revelation, as it is a confirmation. Back in October of 2009, we wrote about a peculiar comment made Hillary Clinton. The United States Secretary of State had told a press conference that âwe [the US] are resuming our intelligence-sharing cooper ...
    • Largest Afghan narcotrafficker was CIA, DEA inform ...
      The history of operational collision between the Central Intelligence Agency and illicit narcotics traders is both long and largely documented. But new revelations published in The New York Times this week come to add a new chapter in this ever-expanding saga. The revelations this time concern Haji ...

    War is a Crime.org

    • More on Haiti's Raging Cholera, Electoral Fraud an ...
      More on Haiti's Raging Cholera, Electoral Fraud and Deportations - by Stephen Lendman Haitians remains plagued by a perfect storm combination of earthquake devastation, crushing poverty, raging cholera, electoral fraud, exploitation, persecution, Obama-ordered deportations, and world indifference to ...
    • VIDEO: David Swanson, Lila Garrett, Jason Leopold, ...
      Los Angeles, Mimi Kennedy's House, David Swanson's "War Is A Lie" Book Tour, December 18, 2010. Sponsored by KPFK. http://warisalie.org Video by Lionel Heredia Editing by Joe Keating read more
    • Wikileaks: Documents Confirm US Plans Against Vene ...
      State Department documents published by Wikileaks evidence Washington's plans to "contain" Venezuela's influence in the region and increase efforts to provoke regime change By Eva Golinger A substantial portion of the more than 1600 State Department documents Wikileaks has published during the past ...
    • Justice Through Music And Op-Critical Release New ...
      “Another Name On The Wall” Now On YouTube Washington, DC: Justice Through Music, www.jtmp.org, partners again with the band Op-Critical, www.myspace.com/opcritical, in a new music video rendition of Roger Waters’ “The Wall,” to focus attention on the heartbreak of endless wars. “We made a few chan ...
    • VIDEO: Yet Another Biggest Military Bill Ever

    Grist - News

    • California approves first broad U.S. climate plan
      by Agence France-Presse. SAN FRANCISCO -- California has approved the most sweeping U.S. plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, acting on its own against climate change as proposed nationwide plans flounder in Washington. The largest U.S. state, which would be the world's eighth largest econom ...
    • U.S. sues BP, nine others over Gulf oil spill
      by Agence France-Presse. WASHINGTON -- The United States filed suit Wednesday against BP and nine other companies for damages stemming from this year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst in U.S. history. The complaint was filed by the Justice Department with a federal court in New Orlean ...
    • Climate talks make progress as Bolivia demands mor ...
      by Agence France-Presse. CANCUN -- The world's climate negotiators on Thursday inched toward compromise on fighting deforestation and assisting poor nations, even as Bolivia's firebrand leader demanded more aggressive action. With one day left for the U.N.-led talks in Mexico, South African Pres ...
    • Guarded hope at U.N. climate talks
      by Agence France-Presse. CANCUN, Mexico -- Negotiators on climate change were raising their hopes Sunday after signs of modest progress in Mexico, but a dispute over the future of the Kyoto Protocol threatened to derail momentum. The 194-nation talks at the Caribbean resort city of Cancun were ...
    • Cancun climate talks hit bump thanks to Japan and ...
      by Agence France-Presse. CANCUN, Mexico -- World climate talks struck a sour note on their third day Wednesday as Japan was accused of weakening the campaign for a post-2012 treaty by retreating from the landmark Kyoto Protocol. With negotiators laboring to unblock a complex, interlinked two-tr ...

    Popular Bookmarks on Del.icio.us

    Technorati - What's Hot in Blogs

    Time - Top Stories

    Farming Pathogens

    • That’s the Thicke
      The logistics of a just, equitable and healthy agricultural landscape here in the United States would remain a problem if Michael Pollan himself, Wendell Berry, or better yet Fred Magdoff were appointed Secretary of Agriculture. Decades-long efforts pealing back agribusiness both as paradigm and inf ...
    • Farming Pathogens Semifinalist
      Thanks to your votes Farming Pathogens piece ‘The Alan Greenspan Strain’ is a semifinalist in 3 Quarks Daily’s search for best political blog post of the year. Those posts remaining will be judged as early as today by 3 Quarks Daily editors. The final six will then be judged by Harper’s and Lapham’s ...
    • Vote Farming Pathogens
      Farming Pathogens post ‘The Alan Greenspan Strain’ is nominated for a 3 Quarks Daily award for political blogging. Public voting is open today until 11:59pm EST. Vote here. The successful nominations out of the round of public voting will be judged by Lewis Lapham, of Harper’s and Lapham’s Quarterly ...
    • Grainmorrah
      I gave the following presentation Friday night at Give & Take, an interactive show and tell happy hour held monthly at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis. Both informative and a lot of fun. Even our ancestors, without a smartphone among them, played like kids on the harvest moon. But fair warning: histo ...
    • Help/Harm
      Many of us only reluctantly accept one of life’s toughest lessons. In the course of doing our very best to make a better world–decades all blood, sweat and tears in the face of hideous odds–we may discover ourselves really fouling a few things up. The road to hell, etc., etc. Never realizing our mis ...

    Suzie-Q

    • Ray Mcgovern, Daniel Ellsberg, and other senior de ...
      The Indypendent 131 Arrested at Veteran-Led Civil Resistance to Wars at the White House Dec. 16 By Ellen Davidson December 16, 2010 | Posted in Ellen Davidson , IndyBlog , War | Email this article Veterans For Peace board member Elliott Adams chained himself to the White House fence with a bicycle l ...
    • In the Mideast, The US is a Helpless Giant
      Eric Margolis, Information Clearing House, Dec 13, 2010 In 1956, Britain, France and Israel colluded to invade Egypt to overthrow its hugely popular nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Israel provoked border clashes and quickly captured the Sinai Peninsula. The British and French landed at Suez. ...
    • Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid
      Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid News Corpse / By Mark Howard A new survey of American voters shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. December 15, 2010 | Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News ...
    • Does Nigeria Have A Case Against Dick Cheney?
      Does Nigeria Have a Case Against Dick Cheney? Africa Legal Brief Monday, 13 December 2010 20:42 Nigerian officials have indicted former Vice President Dick Cheney for bribing the Nigerian government in the ’90s. The accusation stems from Cheney’s reign as CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Last y ...
    • One November’s Dead: The American War Dead Disappe ...
      by Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, Dec 7, 2010 America’s heroes?  Not so much.  Not anymore.  Not when they’re dead, anyway. Remember as the invasion of Iraq was about to begin, when the Bush administration decided to seriously enforce a Pentagon ban, in existence since the first Gulf War, on media ...

    Solari

    • Precious Metals - Week of 12.19.10
      First Ever Gold Bullion Vending Machine Opens in Boca Rato Digital Journal (20 Dec 10) Coin Modernization Act to Become Law CionNews.com (6 Dec 10) Soros Gold Bubble at $1,384 Has Miners Push Every Button in Tale of Tears Bloomberg (19 Dec 10)
    • Food & Health - Week of 12.19.10
      YouTube
    • Silver: Steady as she goes . . .
      By Paul Ferguson Going with the sailing analogy here. Silver has set a course to the northeast.  When we look at it on a monthly chart—a timeframe that filters out short-term noise—we can see Silver moving along this course, tacking regularly but moving inexorably northeast. In 2008, buffeted by th ...
    • Hike Food Prices To Boost GM Crop Approval In Euro ...
      By Rady Ananda In a January 2008 meeting, US and Spain trade officials strategized how to increase acceptance of genetically modified foods in Europe, including inflating food prices on the commodities market, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. During the meeting, Secr ...
    • The Current US Debt Situation
      By Gregory White Continue reading the article . . .

    Insurgency Watch - Newswire

    • Times Scare
      ISLAMABAD–The apparent links between Pakistan and Faisal Shahzad are certainly cause for concern, but let’s not lose site of things here. The attack in Times Square was a fizzle. The rush to claim credit is a bit embarassing for the TTP and looks like it was — like the attack itself — a rush job. [. ...
    • 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 AfghanistanSri Lanka Gu ...
    • 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��

    AlterNet - Rights and Liberties

    Sideways News

    • Could you be a 10:10 community champion?
      The Guardian Newspaper and Franny Armstrong, through the Guardian 10:10 campaign, challenge organisations and individuals to cut their carbon footprint by 10%.
    • Brit mums strict about eco-chores
      Families in the UK are increasingly likely to be nagged about doing eco-chores, a new study conducted on behalf of the Energy Saving Trust has revealed.
    • UK venue offers rainforest weddings
      Getting married in a luscious rainforest has never been easier or more eco-friendly, according to the Eden Project.
    • Battery recycling 'too difficult'
      The European Recycling Platform (ERP) reports that while only a third of households at present recycle batteries, four out of five said they would do so if it was made easier.
    • 10 green resolutions to save you money
      By taking green steps at home, you can save money and make life easier. Being smart about waste, consumption and resources won't only win you the thanks of forthcoming generations: you'll feel the financial benefit immediately. 1. Make money from old electronics As your electronic goods become obsol ...

    Fabius Maximus

    • For the holiday season, here are some comforting t ...
      Summary:  As the sky darkens over America we find comfort in logical but incorrect beliefs, ignoring the horrifying nature of our core problem.  Here are two comforting examples. (1)  Our leaders have bad advisors In both national security and economics we have well-funded think-tanks advocating ...
    • Second thoughts by 2 major boosters of the Af-Pak ...
      Summary:   Guest author Bernard Finel discusses yet another think-tank report giving prescriptions for the Af-Pak War.  But this one is a surprise, a serious walk-back by one of the powerful institutional advocates of our foreign wars.  Perhaps they’re cutting their losses and gearing up for t ...
    • The insight that must precede reform of America: t ...
      Summary:  The last few weeks have produced news confirming that the Constitution is dead, the still heart of the Republic.  Realistic planning for reform must start with that grim fact or remain pie-in-the-sky fantasy. From the mailbag:  “There is only one peaceful solution to our great crisis, f ...
    • The story of the early 21st century: the future a ...
      Summary:  This is the first in a series looking at the US and global situations.   Here  we look at one of the large processes ending the post-WWII era — the leveraging and deleveraging of the developed nations.  It’s as much a psychological and political process as an economic one.  It’s a ...
    • The latest jobs news, watching the recovery in act ...
      Summary:   Corporate profits are strong.  Spending by the rich is skyrocketing (look at art prices).  The Republican’s top objective is extending the tax cuts for the rich and cutting social security and medicare benefits for everybody else.  So the economy must be doing fine, with excellent jo ...

    Open Your Eyes News

    • 4 in 10 Americans Still Hold Creationist Views
      Live Science – If you’re in a room of 100 people, odds are likely about 40 think God created humans about 10,000 years ago, part of a philosophy called creationism, according to a Gallup poll reported Friday (Dec. 17). That number is slightly lower than in years past and down from a high of 47 [...]
    • Better HIV screening worthwhile in U.S., study fin ...
      Reuters – Expanding screening for the AIDS virus to include every American at least once and the highest-risk people once a year could prevent more than 80,000 infections over the next 20 years, researchers projected on Monday. And if treatment for infected people were integrated into such a program ...
    • U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan
      New York Times – Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistanâs tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistanâs efforts to root out militants there. The pro ...
    • US Federal Government Cuts Off Recession Relief Mo ...
      Huffington Post – Despite soaring unemployment and the 19 million Americans currently living in “deep poverty,” federal funds for the Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) program have entirely dried up for the first time since 1996, leaving states with an average of 15 percent less federal ...
    • Denufosol helps cystic fibrosis patients, so does ...
      FoodConsumer – There is no cure for cystic fibrosis. Each year, about 1,000 Americans are diagnosed with the disease. Now a new ion channel-regulating drug may help kids with cystic fibrosis breathe easier, according to a phase III clinical trial featured online in the American Journal of Respirator ...

    The Progressive Realist

    • Reports: Palestinians "Separate and Unequal" Under ...
      A couple of recent reports provide important information on the reality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and highlight again the imperative of ending that occupation. The first, Unsafe Space: Israeli Authorities’ Failure to Protect Human Rights amid Settlements in East Jer ...
    • John Mearsheimer Lays Out the Costs—Strategic and ...
      John Mearsheimer—University of Chicago political scientist, America’s pre-eminent “realist” scholar of international relations, and (among his many other distinguished and high-impact publications) co-author, with Harvard’s Stephen Walt, of The Israel Lobby—has given his countrymen a Christmas pres ...
    • Deadly Kabuki in Korea
      The current crisis between the Koreas is now over a month old, with the North and South Koreans gnashing their rhetorical teeth and one another and the world wondering if this could be the onset of a second Korean War. The current flap began last month over the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, a part ...
    • Why Are "Creeping Sharia" Cranks Advising US Law E ...
      Max Blumenthal has a deeply reported new piece, The Great Islamophobic Crusade, tracking the growth of the network of think tanks and front groups cultivating and exploiting hostility toward Muslims and Islam for conservative political gain: Erupting so many years after the September 11th trauma, th ...
    • Crisis Deepening in Cote D’Ivoire
      In case you have not heard, Cote D’Ivoire is in deep crisis.  Two men both claim they won the November 28 presidential elections.  Alassana Ouattara’s claim is backed by the United Nations, African Union, United States, France, European Union and the Economic Organization of West African States (E ...

    TAPPED - The American Prospect

    • Our Obamacare, Ourselves.
      Patrick Appel, referencing an argument from James Joyner, asks: Why is Obamacare so offensive to some liberals? Because, as a meme, it was invented to make healthcare reform efforts unpopular with voters by implying that the government, in the form of President Obama, was going to be making your he ...
    • Today's Newt Notes.
      Yesterday's L.A. Times had an interesting article with a funny headline: "Newt Gingrich, serious this time, mulls a bid for president." As the piece notes, Newt has "mulled" a bid multiple times before, always pulling away at the point where he'd actually have to start putting together a campaign. B ...
    • Lightning Round: A Taste of Republican-Run Governm ...
      The Republican plan for the 112th Congress -- as if it wasn't already abundantly clear -- will be to slash budgets, deny funding for legislation passed in the 111th Congress, and then point to the results to prove government "doesn't work." The risk to Republicans, I'm to understand, is that a gove ...
    • The Good King of White Supremacy.
      Matt Yglesias rounds up the problems with and the responses to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's comments on the Citizens Council in his hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi. Citizens Councils were more moderate white supremacist organizations than the KKK, and used economic and social pressures rathe ...
    • No One Branch Should Have All That Power.
      HD�H.264HD�H.264 Ezra Klein has a good post up on the relationship between earmarks and executive power: But the people who are more commonly associated with the fight against earmarks both hate this White House and want to see more power devolved to the states and to political actors who are dir ...

    Buzzflash

    • Truth be Told: Boehner is a Traitor to His Class
      OLGA BONFIGLIO FOR BUZZFLASH Our future Speaker of the House John Boehner isn't afraid to cry in public. He readily admits to being an emotional man. His friends and colleagues all know it and accept it and he's not about to change. But what does he cry about?read more
    • Citizens United: As Bad As You Thought It Was
      BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH The Supreme Court's Citizens United Decision Unleashed a Deluge of Anonymous Donations and Negative Ads During the Midterm Elections, According to a New Report. If you've been waiting for the numbers to be crunched -- as opposed to going with your gut - to assess the r ...
    • "I Fear that Barack Obama Has a Streak of Inner Pa ...
      PETER MICHAELSON FOR BUZZFLASH   The collapse of the liberal resurgence of 2008, when Barack Obama swept to power, is evidence that some form of self-defeat is at play in the left-wing psyche. Obama is not solely responsible for this collapse. He's manifesting a weakness that's common to most li ...
    • If At First You Don't Succeed, Try Triangulation
      TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH Obama figures he'll look more mainstream; No more talk about Rev. Wright & Bill Ayres. How can he be a commie Muslim when he Just gave many millions to many millionaires?read more
    • Will America Continue on a Path of Transferring ou ...
      MARK KARLIN, BUZZFLASH EDITOR FOR TRUTHOUT Will America continue on a path of transferring our governance to corporations and the very rich? As a reader of BuzzFlash and Truthout, you are obviously concerned about the preservation of a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people. We ...

    Glenn Greenwald - Salon

    The BiPartisan Report

    Sciencebase

    • Sciencebase person of the year 2010
      Anyone can pick someone famous, a Zuckerberg, a Jobs, a Gaga, and call them their person of the year. But, how about a personal person of the year? Here’s my pick of the people who have had the biggest impact on me this year, whether through their retweet efforts on Twitter, their comments on my [.. ...
    • Periodic table of videos at the movies
      Regular Sciencebase followers will by now know only too well the Periodic Table of Videos from Nottingham University and my good friend Martyn Poliakoff. The creators of the video series recently ran a competition for viewers to create a movie-style poster to promote the videos and had an astounding ...
    • A few facts about asbestos
      Today, medical journal The Lancet has publicly criticised the Canadian government for its attitude towards asbestos, saying that although Canada will not expose its own citizens to asbestos, it will continue exporting the deadly substance to developing nations [Canada accused of hypocrisy, Lancet]. ...
    • What is nature worth?
      Each hour 3 species vanish forever, we’ve lost a fifth of the planet’s coral reefs, almost a third of its mangrove forests, and half of the world’s wetlands. But, how do you count the cost? Perhaps a business perspective is needed. If we considered the natural world as providing products and service ...
    • Searching for scientific abbreviations
      Ambiguous abbreviations and acronyms are annoyances when it comes to text search and data mining. As a writer-editor, I was always taught to spell out the long form (LF) of a short form (SF) at first mention in a document so that the reader would know that when I mentioned EBV I was referring to [.. ...

    Common Dreams-Progressive Newswire

    • Groups Move to Intervene in PA Pipeline Project
      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 21, 2010Environmental GroupsPennsylvania groups are seeking to intervene in a proceeding before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has been asked to expedite approval of a proposed pipeline that would cut through portions of northeastern Pennsylvania. The ...
    • FCC Set to Move Forward with Fake Net Neutrality
      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 20, 2010Free PressIn a statement Monday, Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps announced that he would vote to move forward FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s so-called Net Neutrality rules. The announcement appears to give the chairman the three votes ne ...
    • US EPA Acts to Control Mercury From Gold Mines
      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 17, 2010EarthjusticeThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued long overdue emission standards for the toxic pollution emitted by gold mining companies’ ore processing facilities. The new control requirements will provide significant reductions in gold mine ...
    • Government Changes Attorney Licensing Regulations ...
      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 17, 2010ACLU and Center for Constitutional RightsAttorneys are no longer required to seek permission from the government to provide uncompensated representation to individuals the government has placed on a list of designated terrorists, following a lawsuit filed by ...
    • International Migrants Day: A Day to Stand in Sol ...
      FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 17, 2010Latin American and Caribbean Community Center (LACCC)December 18th is International Migrants Day as observed by the United Nations. In United States, while many organizations observe this day, much work is needed to address many of the issues, struggles and at ...

    Common Dreams-Views

    • Stop Secret Election Spending: A Nonpartisan Goal
      by Michael B. KeeganWhatever you thought of the outcome of November's elections, you were probably, like me, relieved to see the end of an unusually nasty season of political ads. An unprecedented 1.5 million political ads aired in October alone--many of them false or misleading attack ads paid for ...
    • To the Gay Community: Now That You Can Join the Mi ...
      by Medea BenjaminThe peace group I cofounded, CODEPINK, has not only been protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the drone attacks in Pakistan, but we have been going to military recruiting stations, high schools and career fairs throughout the country encouraging our youth not to join the ...
    • War and Planet Earth: Toward a Sustainable Peace
      by Randall Amster and Michael NaglerOut beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about language, ideas, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. - Rumiread more
    • Obama's Tax Deal: Read the Small Print
      by Dean BakerThe enthusiasm of the US business press for the compromise tax package worked out by President Obama and Republicans in Congress led to a mini-euphoria of upbeat economic projections for 2011. While the economy will do better with this tax package than if no deal were forthcoming, much ...
    • The Spirit of Scrooge
      by Caroline HamiltonEveryone knows the story of "A Christmas Carol": the grouchy old man who dismisses Christmas greetings with "Bah, humbug!," his hard-working clerk Bob Cratchit, cheerful, crippled Tiny Tim, the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. This is a good time to reread the sto ...

    Newshoggers - AfPak

    • Demolishing Afghanistan To Save It
      By Steve Hynd Our friend Gareth Porter has an important new piece in which he describes how General Petraeus, supposed COIN guru, has thrown out "population centric" anything in an attempt to show some short-term success for the occupation in Afghanistan. The military offensive in Kandahar, which ha ...
    • Revisiting the Clauswitzian disconnect in Afghanis ...
      By Dave Anderson: Counterinsurgency (COIN) is expensive, time consuming, and often practiced in areas of secondary or tertiary interests. These attributes often lead to a Clauswitzian disconnect between real political constraints and the operational doctrine of COIN, as COIN demands much more than t ...
    • Failure, Not Progress, in Afghanistan
      By Derrick Crowe and Robert Greenwald On Thursday, December 16, 2010, the White House will use its December review to try to spin the disastrous Afghanistan War plan by citing "progress" in the military campaign, but the available facts paint a picture of a war that's not making us safer and th ...
    • The Pentagon's Credibility Cage Match
      By Steve Hynd In the red corner! The Pentagon and Saint General David Petraeus, who claim that things are getting better in Afghanistan because Petraeus has thrown out the COIN book he wrote the foreword to, escalating airstrikes and unpopular night raids. Wait another Friedman Unit - six months - t ...
    • Obama's Afghan Review - The Fix Is In
      By Steve Hynd The six month review of progress in Afghanistan that President Obama promised when he ordered the surge there is due on Thursday. But don't hold your breath for anything radical - the fix is in. Today, Admiral Mullen became just the latest senior official to say that nothing would be c ...

    Water Wars

    • Water wars: Hearing looms on eminent domain takeov ...
      According to the California Department of Public Health, drinking water being served to Lake Forest Water Company customers exceeded state arsenic levels in 2007, and the problem has not been corrected, despite water company owner Rick Dewante saying it has.
    • Water wars: Hearing looms on eminent domain takeov ...
      According to the California Department of Public Health, drinking water being served to Lake Forest Water Company customers exceeded state arsenic levels in 2007, and the problem has not been corrected, despite water company owner Rick Dewante saying it has.
    • Water wars: Hearing looms on eminent domain takeov ...
      According to the California Department of Public Health, drinking water being served to Lake Forest Water Company customers exceeded state arsenic levels in 2007, and the problem has not been corrected, despite water company owner Rick Dewante saying it has.
    • Water wars: Hearing looms on eminent domain takeov ...
      According to the California Department of Public Health, drinking water being served to Lake Forest Water Company customers exceeded state arsenic levels in 2007, and the problem has not been corrected, despite water company owner Rick Dewante saying it has.
    • Water wars: Hearing looms on eminent domain takeov ...
      According to the California Department of Public Health, drinking water being served to Lake Forest Water Company customers exceeded state arsenic levels in 2007, and the problem has not been corrected, despite water company owner Rick Dewante saying it has.

    WordPress | Economics

    • Keeping Up with the Coffins
      Problem:  1.) We are all victims and 2.) Rich people have money we do not have. Solution:  If we cou
    • Big Brother Wants You!
      For years, proponents of so-called “net neutrality” have been calling for strong regulat
    • The Politics of Snow
      Snow and ice have brought chaos to Britain. Flights cancelled, trains delayed, motorways deadlocked.
    • Tip of the iceberg
      This will be certain to be a common theme for 2011 and beyond. Privatizing. I have been a union memb
    • Invisible Hand, Meet Iron Fist
      Before there was Assange there was Mitrokin. I want you to consider the Invisible Hand theory and th

    Electronic Intifada

    Afghanistan Sun

    • 700 foreign troops died in Afghanistan this year
      The death toll of foreign troops in Afghanistan has surpassed 700 for the year, according to new figures released by an independent website Tuesday.
    • US army wants to expand raids in Pakistan
      US military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for more ground raids across the border into Pakistan's tribal areas, leading to a debate over the 'controversial' proposal.
    • Taliban considers drug stock like savings accounts
      The Taliban in Afghanistan are withholding thousands of tonnes of drugs, which they were treating like 'savings accounts' so as to manipulate street prices in the west, says a US cable revealed by WikiLeaks.
    • Taliban using opium stocks like savings nest egg
      1.(C/REL ISAF) BEGIN SUMMARY: On September 18 the Executive Director of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, briefed at NATO Headquarters the results of the 2009 Afghanistan
    • Afghanistan Feels the Squeeze
      Afghanistan recently explained his war plan as the “anaconda strategy,” designed to “squeeze the life” out of the Taliban insurgency. And according to the Pentagon, it’s
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