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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.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

9 December - RSS SnapShot! Pt 2

View of Chernobyl taken from the roof of a bui...Image via Wikipedia

Greg Palast

  • The Real Wiki Hero
    by Marta Steele from OpEdNews with a Surprise P.S. from Greg Palast Is it not ironic that the same country that contributed Rupert Murdoch to the world has more recently donated Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks since 2007, when it was founded to "report on and publish important informat ...
  • WIKI-CREEP ASSANGE, THE SCAMPPvt. Bradley, the Cha ...
    by Greg Palast for Truthout/Buzzflash I'm a "hero" and it makes me want to puke.  This week I was voted a "Hero of the Media" in one of those fairly harmless polls that are little more than thermometers of face time on the idiot box. But this Nation Magazine gong is shared with Julian Assange, imp ...
  • Put a Little Palast in Your Stocking
    from Greg Palast For Chanukah, Christmas, Hajj 2010, Kwanzaa or whatever lights your candle, why not give the (tax deductible) gift of Truth? My latest disguise - fooled you? This year we have a few suggestions for Holiday gift-giving from the Palast Investigative Fund store: A Palast Gift Ca ...
  • Debt Vultures Shot for ChanukahLiberia is saved bu ...
    by Greg Palast for In These Times We got’m. I can hardly believe it. Yesterday, the financial vultures, the carcass-chewers who were preying on the dirt-poor African nation of Liberia, gave up. Two shadowy vulture funds, which had won a $43 million court judgment against Liberia, agreed to accept ...
  • The Family JewelsA Veteran’s Story
    by Greg Palast In 1930, when my father was an 8-year-old kid in Chicago, he asked his older brother why people were outside in the cold snow in a long line. His brother Harold said, "It's a bread line. They don't have anything to eat. They're hoping for bread." My father ran to his mother's bedro ...

Telegraph UK - oil

Ian Welsh

  • Why Assange and Wikileaks have won this round
    The odd thing about Wikileaks is that their success has been assured, not by what they leaked, though there is some important information there, but by their enemies. The massive and indiscriminant overreaction by both government and powerful corporate actors has ensured this, and includes but is no ...
  • What is legal and what is just are two different t ...
    Just saying. A lot of people seem to have forgotten that. While we’re at it, you either believe that human rights should be inalienable, or you don’t.  That doesn’t mean they can’t be taken away, it means that any time they are taken away it is automatically unjust. Next: governments exist to serve ...
  • What is legal and what is just are two different t ...
    Just saying. A lot of people seem to have forgotten that. While we’re at it, you either believe that human rights should be inalienable, or you don’t.  That doesn’t mean they can’t be taken away, it means that any time they are taken away it is automatically unjust. Next: governments exist to serve ...
  • The folly of another surge
    We'll waste another couple thousand Western lives, untold thousands of Afghani lives and half a trillion dollars banging our head into that wall instead of admitting that American power has real limits, especially in areas that are objectively tertiary interests.
  • An American Future
    So, I’m peering into my looking glass today, or rather tonight, as the snow eddies down, the first snowfall of winter, and it’s winter I see for America, and for the world. It’s clear at this point that America is only the shell of a democracy, and instead is run by a self-perpetuating oligopoly who ...

Age of Autism

  • Measles in the United Kingdom - The “Wakefield Fac ...
    Here is an exceprt from Dr. Ed Yazbak's "Measles in The UK - The Wakfield Factor." Read the full article at Vaccination News. ...In the UK, the government withdrew the importation license for single vaccines a few months after Dr...
  • Autism Waiver Cuts Spell Catastrophe in Indiana
    Editor's Note: Steven Higgs, who runs the excellent Autism and the Indiana Environment blog, has written a powerful piece on how "impending cuts in the Medicaid Autism Waiver will devastate the lives of Indiana citizens with autism and other disabilities...
  • Canadian Judge Rules Vaccinations Not Essential in ...
    You can comment at the Calgary Sun HERE. Vaccinations aren’t “essential” medical treatments, a family court judge has ruled in refusing a Child Welfare request to order inoculations for four kids. Judge Stephen Lipton, in a written decision released Thursday,...
  • Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Autism Found in Stud ...
    Managing Editor's Note: How many of your kids see a mitochondrial specialist? We do. Mitochondria are known as "the powerhouses of the cell." Imagine if the system is broken or injured and the body can not create energy to fuel...
  • Son to Surgeon Father: "I Don't Have Autism Anymor ...
    Below is the start of an article from The Delaware County times in Pennsylvania. Take note how an allopathic doctor, a surgeon, has helped recover his children with autism. Remember, surgeons FIX THE BODY - that's their mindset, unlike the...

Global BDS Movement

Farm Wars

Open Your Eyes News

  • ‘History sniffing’: How internet brows ...
    Daily Mail – Dozens of websites have been secretly harvesting lists of places that their users previously visited online, a team of computer scientists found. So-called ‘history sniffing’ is used by fraudsters to learn more about their targets and send them personalised attacks. It also allows e-com ...
  • French men are giving up smoking, but not French w ...
    PhysOrg.com – The prevalence of smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke among men in France has fallen by more than 15 per cent since the mid 1980s, but over the same 20-year period has increased among women. As a result, investigators from the World Health Organization French MONICA (MONItoring trend ...
  • US Treasuries hit by biggest sell-off in two years
    Financial Times – US Treasuries suffered their biggest two-day sell-off since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, following a torrid month that has seen borrowing costs for western governments soar. Germany, Japan and the US have all seen their benchmark market interest rates rise by more than a quarte ...
  • WikiLeaks cables: Shell’s grip on Nigerian s ...
    The Guardian – The oil giant Shell claimed it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to politicians’ every move in the oil-rich Niger Delta, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable. The company’s top executive in Nigeria told US diplomats that ...
  • WikiLeaks cables: Rampant corruption ‘could ...
    The Guardian – Kenya could descend into violence worse than the 2008 post-election crisis unless rampant corruption in the ruling elite is tackled, the US ambassador to Kenya has warned in a report to Washington.Michael Ranneberger’s cable, written in January, is scathing about efforts to reform the ...

L.A. Times - Greenspace

  • Renewable energy advocates push for extension of f ...
    A Treasury grant program for renewable energy projects is set to expire at the end of the year, and solar and wind companies said their industry is in for a rough ride if it isn’t renewed. The program, which covers...
  • Hawaii expands push to fuel hydrogen cars
    Hawaii may be the first state in the nation to successfully build a fueling infrastructure that will support thousands of hydrogen fuel cell cars. Today, the Detroit auto manufacturer General Motors, in partnership with the Honolulu-based utility the Gas Co.,...
  • Dollar bills and receipts tainted with Bisphenol A ...
    Fifty percent of thermal paper receipts and most dollar bills tested in a new study are tainted with Bisphenol A, according to a report released Wednesday by the Washington Toxics Coalition. BPA, a chemical that disrupts hormones and has been...
  • Cancun climate talks: Island states plead for surv ...
    Among the delegates from 190 nations wrestling over international climate agreements in Cancun this week, there is nary a hint of the skepticism over global warming that has surfaced in the U.S. Congress, where oil, coal and other industrial interests...
  • California auto insurance goes green
    California motorists who spend little time on the road could pay significantly lower insurance premiums with new "pay-as-you-drive" auto policies starting in February. To be offered first by California insurance giants State Farm Mutual and the Automobile Club of Southern...

water.org

  • Teacher provides a wider world view (St.CharlesPat ...
    French Teacher Provides a Wider World View (St. Charles Patch) – Delaney organized a fundraiser in November to benefit Water.org, a charitable organization that provides clean water and sanitation to people in developing nations. “It’s amazing, because I got the students in my French classes involve ...
  • Know your charity (NBC)
    How to know where your money goes when you donate to charities this holiday season (NBC Action News) KANSAS CITY, Missouri – [Keith] Stamm is the chief operator for Water.org . The nonprofit group is based out of Kansas City, but it pushes to give clean drinking water to people all over the world. H ...
  • Holiday gifts that give back (CBS)
    Holiday Shopping for Gifts that Give Back (CBS – WOWKTV) CHARLESTON, WV – For a health or sports nut, a water bottle is a simple gift that can help others as well. Actor Matt Damon is pitching “hope in a bottle,” in which 100 percent of the profits go directly to Water.org, one of the [...]
  • Join a conference call with Damon’s Water.or ...
    Join A Conference Call With Matt Damon’s Water.org (Look to the Stars) – This is your chance to hear first-hand from Matt Damon’s Water.org about their work in Tigray, Ethiopia, the impact their programs are having on peopleâs lives, and their plans for the future in this region. Read full Look to t ...
  • Student to swim 10-miles for water (Water.org)
    Carman-Ainsworth High student plans 10-mile swim to raise funds for global effort (Flint Journal/ Mlive – November 29, 2010) FLINT TOWNSHIP, Michigan – Erick Skaff is using his skills in the water to raise money for a clean water cause around the world. The 17-year-old Carman-Ainsworth High School s ...

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

  • Israel has been given a chance to improve its imag ...
    In addition to confronting a major disaster and mourning the victims, Israel now has a window of opportunity to exercise diplomatic wisdom and make the most of this tragic event to rehabilitate its image and address its mistakes. Submitted by Margaret Mayer to World �|� �Note-it! �|� �Add a Comment ...
  • Cherished perk on the chopping block as schools tr ...
    IOWA CITY, Iowa � Under pressure to cut costs, state universities and lawmakers across the nation are going after one of the oldest traditions in the academic world: the professor's cherished sabbatical.Submitted by Jae A. to US Politics & Gov't �|� �Note-it! �|� �Add a Comment
  • Ron Paul: Don't Blame Wikileaks!
    State secrecy is anathema to a free society. Why exactly should Americans be prevented from knowing what their government is doing in their name? In a free society we are supposed to know the truth.Submitted by Sandra Watson to US Politics & Gov't �|� �Note-it! �|� �Add a Comment
  • Mr. Galloway Returns By Diane V. McLoughlin, mclou ...
    FTA: 'Justice Mosley ruled, 'the main reason why the [government] sought to prevent Mr. Galloway from entering Canada was that they disagreed with his political views.' [2] [2a] Submitted by Diane V McLoughlin to World �|� �Note-it! �|� �Add a Comment
  • 4 Scenarios for the Coming Collapse of the America ...
    The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imaginesSubmitted by Cal Mendelsohn to World �|� �Note-it! �|� �Add a Comment

Solar Energy / Energy Boom

News Blaze

  • WHO to Produce Standard Terminologies for Traditio ...
    The World Health Organization (WHO) is set to develop the first-ever global information standards for traditional medicine. It will be a primary source of health care for many people in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin American, and is increasingly
  • Public Funeral For Elizabeth Edwards
    A representatives for the Edwards family confirmed that the service will be held at the Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh, where the Edwards family worshiped. The funeral will be open to the public.
  • U.S. Gives Up on Settlement Freeze Push
    The U.S. had attempted for three weeks to persuade Netanyahu's right-wing cabinet to accept a 90-day freeze, at one point discussing 20 F-35 as a deal-sweetener, but to no avail.
  • Allegations of Fraud During Election Trigger Viole ...
    According to media reports, thousands of protesters rampaged through the streets of Port-au-Prince, the capital, setting fire to the headquarters of the ruling government coalition, which they accused of rigging the results, after Tuesday's announc
  • Appsolute Media Announces Free iPhone/iPad App fo ...
    'Celebrity Dead or Alive' is the only celebrity quiz game that allows people to test their knowledge of who's still walking the red carpet and who's pushing up daisies.

Historical Notes

libcom

  • December 9th day of action against cuts and fees
    middlesex-university-occu-005[1].jpg Tens of thousands of school and university students will walk out of class again today another national day of action against cuts and tuition fees. ...
  • Greece - declaration from the student assemblies a ...
    students-athens.jpg Declaration of the national coordination meeting of the student assemblies and occupied universities - 03/12/2010 After the massive national demonstration of to ...
  • Statement on the Goldsmiths Occupation
    I was among those supporting a real occupation of Goldsmiths this week. A large group of students, staff and supporters agreed before the library was occupied that only a significant disruption of the normal functioning of the university would contribute to bl ...
  • Russian Antijob Site Downed by Robots
    Site attacked by bots - because bosses don't like content. The Russian site "AntiJob" is a place where disgruntled workers can expose bad working conditions in the firm. It has been under heavy bot attack since Nov. 7. Despite the fact t ...
  • Aleks Mari? leads Partizan over Efes Pilsen, 93-92
    Euroleague tenderfoot Aleksandr Mari? was stupendous hindmost hours of shadows seeing he scored 34 points, pulled downcast 16 rebounds and great an stupendous 49 parade notch ranking. (Discuss Euroleague Basketball Round 7 in our forum)

Free Range International

  • 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 ...
  • On The Border
    The military campaign in Afghanistan is going well apparently.  I read that last Monday here in the Washington Post so it must be true.  But two days ago it took a turn for the worst.  I know that to be a fact too because I read it here in the Washington Post.  The truth is [...]

The Story Behind the Story

  • 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 ...
  • INSIDERS REPORT: OBAMA SUFFERING FROM SEVERE DEPR ...
    So you state that President Obama is depressed?  How did you come by this information?  From a direct source still working within the White House on a daily basis.  As I had stated previously, tensions at the White House have reached a critical stage.  The infighting among staff is off the charts.  ...

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

  • Tony Blair, former British PM (Sept 11, 2010)
    He was British prime minister for a decade of change and controversy. This week, as his book "A Journey" hits shelves around the world, Tony Blair is our guest.
  • James Cameron, Director and Activist (Oct 2, 2010)
    He's one of Hollywood's most powerful figures, and, he's been one of the oil sands most vocal critics. That combination had the oil industry on edge when Avatar director, Canadian James Cameron visited Alberta.
  • Robert Fowler, Held Hostage by al Qaeda in Africa ...
    Kidnapped by al Qaeda. The very thought causes shudders. But it happened to this week's guest: one of Canada's former senior diplomats in Africa on a special mission for the United Nations. The challenge: solving a dispute between the government of Niger and the rebel movement MNJ. This week, the Un ...
  • Steve Nash, Two-time NBA MVP (Sept 19, 2009)
    He's one of the best basketball players on the planet, and he's made millions at it. But there's more to this week's guest than just the game. A lot more. This Canadian now makes his name on the courts, in the movies, and doing some pretty good things around the world. This week, he's our guest.
  • Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada (Sept ...
    We know it was a recession, but do we know if it's really a recovery? And what about that huge deficit? A dollar again approaching parity with its US counterpart? And the unemployment rate -- could it soon be in double digits? Difficult questions for this week's guest, the man who has to consider th ...

Scotts Contracting

  • Guest Post: Trash Reduction: A 30-Day Plan for Eve ...
    Trash Reduction: A 30-Day Plan for Every Homeowner by: Gerald Arnolds is a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog and a writer for Accredited Online Colleges. Day 1: Do some necessary homework. Before you can start to reduce … Continue reading →
  • Analysts say ignoring global warming will cost the ...
    Nov 19, 2010 Portsmouth Herald Deborah McDermott Nov. 19, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) — Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a three-part look at the conference, "Sustainable Future: How Can our Nation Turn the Corner on the Economy and the Environment, and can N.H. Lead ...
  • GLOBE Alliance Will Advocate for Sustainability
    GLOBE Alliance Will Advocate for Sustainability Worldwide The Global Leadership in Our Built Environment Alliance has issued a call for partners to help fight climate change by advancing sustainable design. By:Stephani L. Miller The U.S. Green Building Council and the World Green Building Council (W ...
  • Green by Necessity is China’s New National P ...
    China’s New National Plan: Green by Necessity Tags: Alternative EnergyBest PracticesCase Studieschinalow carbon economyPolicySustainabilityTransportationUrban EconomicsWater November 29, 2010 by Warren Karlenzig China’s new national 2011-2015 economic plan–essentially also its green blueprint–is now ...
  • Work Outs Will Soon Create Energy and Burn Fat
    Gyms Now Producing "Healthy Clean Energy" Tags: Alternative Energyclean energy fitness centersConservation & Recreationfitness centersGreen BusinessGreen RevolutionHealth & Nutritionhealthy clean energySustainability November 30, 2010 by Nathanael Baker "Healthy clean energy" may soon become a catch ...

The View From Abroad

Foreign Policy in Focus - Military (US)

Law.com

Iranian.com

  • Derakhshan Released On Short Furlough On Unprecede ...
    An informed source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that Hossein Derakhshan was released last night on the unprecedented bail amount of $1.5 million. Derakhshan had requested a prison furlough after a lower court sentenced him to 19.5 years in prison in September. The informe ...
  • Iran, China drive prison tally to 14-year high
    Iran’s sustained crackdown on critical voices and China’s brutal suppression of ethnic journalism have pushed the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide to its highest level since 1996, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ identified ...
  • «حسین درخشان پس از ۲۶ ماه از زندان آزاد شد»
    به گزارش خبرنگار سیاسی مشرق، درخشان که برای گذراندن مرخصی با تودیع وثیقه از زندان آزاد شده قرار است در چند روز آینده به زندان باز گردد.read more
  • Dubai Customs foils attempt to smuggle drugs
    DUBAI - Dubai Customs has seized a large quantity of drugs carefully hidden in a cargo shipment, which originated from Iran on its way to Malaysia via Dubai and Singapore.read more
  • Tehran chokes on pollution, regime denies blame
    Acute air pollution in Tehran cannot be blamed on gasoline produced in an emergency plan to foil sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program, officials said on Wednesday, instead blaming the weather and domestic heaters. A weather system has trapped air in the Iranian capital for four weeks, posing a m ...

Most Revolutionary Act

  • Going Non-Corporate
    (from Lyn Webster – www.pigtitsandparsleysauce.co.nz) For me the most interesting part of Lyn's presentation was her wrap-up, where she talked about the strong temptation to resume buying commercial products when she used up her first homemade batch. Not because they are any better than the homema ...
  • Making Non-Corporate Choices
    America's pre-eminent consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader frequently talks about the last two generations growing up "corporate" in their attitudes and lifestyle choices. An important aspect of growing up “corporate” is automatically giving into constant pressure from t ...
  • The Best Research Corporate Money Can Buy
    As I have blogged previously, the whole notion of fluoride being safe and good for teeth is based on decades of corporations paying researchers to produce the scientific results they want – and burying research and firing and blacklisting scientists whose studies show otherwise. A Systematic Corpora ...
  • Water Fluoridation: a Corporate-Inspired Scam
    As Christopher Bryson outlines in his 2004 book Fluoride Deception, the decision to deliberately dose US municipal water supplies with a potent industrial toxin was basically a corporate scam dreamed up by Alcoa, GM and Dupont in the thirties and forties to stem a tide of lawsuits related to death a ...
  • Fluoride: the New Lead
    It took decades to “prove” that even low-level lead exposure caused mental retardation and behavioral problems in children. In 1973 when I graduated from medical school, there was a mountain of compelling evidence of the terrible things lead in paint and auto exhaust was doing to kids. However under ...

Doug's Darkworld

  • Wednesday, December 8th: Pretend to be a Time Trav ...
    Yes, it’s that time of year again! International Pretend to be a Time Traveller Day 2010! Yes, all Wednesday, participants  in this event will pretend to be a time traveller visiting the current era. The only “rule” is participants must never tell anyone they are a time traveller.  I’ve more or le ...
  • Random Notes in the Margins
    A couple of topics that I was unable to squeeze a whole blog post out on, but nonetheless wanted to say something. And yes, in some cases below I am simplifying or not adding obvious codicils: 1.  Germany’s Chancellor Merkel claims that “multiculturalism has failed.” She didn’t exactly define her t ...
  • KOREAN NUCLEAR NIGHTMARES
    December 2nd, 2010. During American and South Korean naval manoeuvres in the Yellow Sea near North Korea a nuclear explosion occurs, sinking a dozen major warships including the American carrier USS George Washington. At least ten thousand American and South Korean sailors and servicemen are killed, ...
  • FBI FOILS OWN TERRORIST PLOT AS STUNNED NATION REE ...
    It’s hard for me to look at the news these days without cringing, so why not share with my readers! The first non-news of the day is the FBI foiling a “terrorist plot” to blow up a Christmas Tree ceremony in Portland with a car bomb. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it, a Somali born teenager tried [...]
  • Should the USA Nuke North Korea?
    A commenter recently suggested that the obvious solution to the North Korean “problem” would be to simply nuke them out of existence. Well, maybe not those exact words, but the basic suggestion was to attack North Korea using nuclear weapons. The North has a huge well dug-in conventional military, w ...

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

  • 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 ...
  • How the RFA Wastes Your Tax Dollars – Part I: How ...
    Join the forum discussion on this post Over the next two posts, I will examine some of the tactics used by the Renewable Fuels Association to justify keeping the $6 billion ethanol subsidy that was made almost entirely redundant when the the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) was passed into law in  200 ...
  • Book Review: The Impending World Energy Mess
    Join the forum discussion on this post I actually had low expectations for The Impending World Energy Mess by Robert L. Hirsch, Roger H. Bezdek, and Robert M. Wendling. Not because I thought Robert Hirsch and company would put out a sub-par book, but rather I have read so many peak oil books that I ...
  • Cellulosic Ethanol Reality Begins to Set In
    Join the forum discussion on this post Delusional Mandates It is hard to believe that just a few short years ago, Congress mandated a massive increase in usage of cellulosic ethanol. This was remarkable, because no commercial cellulosic ethanol facilities even existed at the time. But people like ...
  • Rank the Top 10 Energy Stories of 2010
    Join the forum discussion on this post Platts’ annual survey of the Top 10 Energy Stories of 2010 is now open and will remain open until Christmas: The top 10 survey: what were the biggest oil stories of 2010? They listed about 40 stories; I pulled out a list below that I think is worth debating ...

Discovery Educator Network

  • Google Earth Activities | Hajjar Elementary School ...
    Tags: google earth, google, earth, activities, elementary, google_earthby: Dean Mantz
  • Skype Education
    Comments:Directory of educators using Skype in their Classroom. - Fred DelventhalTags: skype, education, technology, collaboration, toolsby: Jennifer Dorman
  • Google Science Fair 2011
    Comments:If you’re an educator and you’d like to receive classroom materials (posters, stickers, bookmarks, etc.) and a registration reminder notification when GSF registration opens, click the button below to send us your contact info. - Jennifer DormanTags: science, google, education, STEM, Scien ...
  • OverDrive - digital eBooks, audiobooks, music & vi ...
    Comments:Now supports ePub books from the library!!!! "Download OverDrive Media Console v2.0 for Android or iPhone today! * Read Adobe® EPUB eBooks. * Find libraries using the new 'Get Books' feature. * Listen to MP3 Audiobooks. Choose OverDrive Media Console for your computer or mob ...
  • BBC - History - Ancient History in depth: Mummy Ma ...
    Comments:Interactive site from BBC on mummy making during Egyptian times. - Dean MantzTags: egypt, mummies, history, interactive, mummy, socialstudies, ancient_egypt, BBCby: Dean Mantz

Rodale News

  • Death Risk Lowered by Eating Orange and Dark Green ...
    RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—You may have heard of beta-carotene, but what about its cousin, alpha-carotene? In a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed the data on over 15,000 participants in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Follow-up ...
  • The Nickel Pincher: Sweet and Satisfying Warm Wint ...
    RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Winter isn't even here yet, and already we're coping with 10- and 20-degree temperatures here in Pennsylvania. That kind of blustery cold just screams for warm, comforting treats like winter puddings. Served warm with a splash of fresh cream, these simple dessert recipes a ...
  • FDA Won't Regulate Breast Milk…for Now
    RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will not move to regulate breast milk banks for now, but a panel recommended this week that more research is needed to make sure the benefits of using breast milk from another mother outweigh the higher price tag and potential he ...
  • House Expected to Approve Senate Food-Safety Bill ...
    RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—After passing with a 73 to 25 vote last week, the Senate's version of the food-safety bill seemed certain to pass the Hou read more
  • Delicious Dietary Sources of Vitamin D
    RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Though sales of vitamin D supplements have skyrocketed—growing faster than those of any other supplement—the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on vitamin D may bring expectations for the vitamin back down to earth. Research suggesting that vitamin D protects agains ...

big think

  • Eruptions' User Community - Your Input Needed!
    As you might have read, I will be a panelist at the science blogging workshop at the 2010 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco next week. I will be tackling user communities on blogs and how bloggers and communities interact. So, as I've done before, I want your opinion! If you have a chance, lea ...
  • The Noun Project: A Global Database of Visual Lite ...
    Visual literacy is an essential necessity of modern life. But some of the most widely recognized symbols of visual language are wrapped in a surprising amount of historical and contextual obscurity. This is where The Noun Project comes in -- a wonderful effort to collect, catalog and contextua ...
  • Worried about Endocrine Disruptors or Mercury? Exp ...
    In a post today, risk communication expert and AoE guest contributor David Ropeik focuses on how journalists covering common health risks such as mercury in fish or endocrine disruptors in plastics often "fail to tell us what we need to know to make informed choices for ourselves and for society."� ...
  • Songs of Lament: Susan Philipsz wins The 2010 Turn ...
    Like the banshee of Irish and Scottish legend, Scottish artist Susan Philipsz keens songs of lamentation and loss that haunt those within hearing of the “sound sculptures” centered on her voice. For those unforgettable installations, Philipsz has won the 2010 Turner Prize, the most prestigious ...Re ...
  • Did Assange's Accusers Want STD Testing?
    Some of Julian Assange's defenders* are citing this special report by Mark Hosenball as proof that the rape allegations against the wikileaks figurehead are unfounded. WASHINGTON (Reuters) The two Swedish women who accuse WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of sexual misconduct were at first not ...

Information Liberation

  • Bob Beckel Calls for Julian Assange to be Assassin ...
    Democrat Bob Beckel calls for Julian Assange to be assassinated, "Illegally shoot the son of a b*tch." Fox neocon panel agree and are unable to contain their blood lust....
  • WikiLeaks, Amazon, Paypal, and Mastercard
    While supporters of WikiLeaks are criticizing Amazon, Paypal, Mastercard, and other companies who are distancing themselves from WikiLeaks, we should at least consider why such companies might be doing so. When it comes to the U.S. government, everyo...
  • Assange Headed for US Gulag
    A friend in the know predicts that Julian Assange of Wikileaks will be extradited by that US poodle, the UK, to once-neutral Sweden, where he will be found guilty and forced to pay a fine of c.$700. At that point, the US secret indictment will be rev...
  • Murder threats to family of Julian Assange
    WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange says militant supporters of the US military have made death threats against his family in Australia. The 39-year-old Australian, who caused global diplomatic embarrassment after leaking a sensitive haul of US em...
  • Cyber World War One
    After losing the Democratic Party*s primary in 2006, US Senator Joe Lieberman formed a new party and sought re-election on its ticket. In doing so, he bucked an American branding fad: While many candidates refer to their campaigns as *Smith for Amer...

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

  • Publishing Classified Info: A Review of Relevant S ...
    “There appears to be no statute that generally proscribes the acquisition or publication of diplomatic cables,” according to a newly updated report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service, “although government employees who disclose such information without proper authority may be subject to p ...
  • CRS Seeks Guidance on Using Leaked Docs
    After its access to the Wikileaks web site was blocked by the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service this week asked Congress for guidance on whether and how it should make use of the leaked records that are being published by Wikileaks, noting that they could “shed important light” ...
  • Intelligence and Border Security, and More from CR ...
    Noteworthy new products from the Congressional Research Service include the following (all pdf). “Securing America’s Borders: The Role of the Intelligence Community,” December 7, 2010. “Hamas: Background and Issues for Congress,” December 2, 2010. “U.S.-Australia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation: Issues ...
  • Blocking Access to Wikileaks May Harm CRS, Analyst ...
    The Library of Congress confirmed on Friday that it had blocked access from all Library computers to the Wikileaks web site in order to prevent unauthorized downloading of classified records such as those in the large cache of diplomatic cables that Wikileaks began to publish on November 28. Since t ...
  • National Security Secrecy: How the Limits Change
    On December 3, I participated in an interesting, somewhat testy discussion about Wikileaks on the show Democracy Now along with Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, who is a passionate defender of the project.  The ultimate victory of Wikileaks (or something like it) is guaranteed, Mr. Greenwald suggested ...

Sciencebase - Breaking Science News

  • 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 [.. ...
  • Santa Claus Science
    Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicolas, Kris Kringle, Sinterklaas. Call him what you will, at this time of year, for children who celebrate everywhere, many questions of a scientific nature arise and parents squirm in their efforts to answer them. Now, Gregory Mone, a contributing editor at Po ...
  • Latest scientific discoveries
    Forget fruit and veg. Lose weight and cut the booze to reduce cancer risk People should be warned that cancer is linked to obesity and alcohol, rather than urged to eat more fruit and vegetables to protect against the disease. UK trialling testing sugar-coated salt on roads Although they’ve been usi ...

RFF Library

  • Natural Hazards, Unnatural Disasters: The Economic ...
    World Bank and UN http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001899/189973E.pdf [From UNESCO website] A new joint report from the World Bank and the United Nations says that annual global losses from natural disasters could triple to $185 billion by the end of this century, even without calculating the i ...
  • Country Lighting Assessments
    en.lighten Initiative / UNEP, Philips, GEF, OSRAM http://tinyurl.com/25p7p47 [from database website] The first generation Country Lighting Assessments (CLAs) provide estimates of potential energy savings, CO2 reductions, and financial gains by shifting from inefficient to energy efficient lighting t ...
  • Universalism and Ethical Values for the Environmen ...
    UNESCO / Jasdev Singh Rai, Celia Thorheim, Amarbayasgalan Dorjderem, Darryl Macer http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001886/188607e.pdf [from Executive Summary] The report discusses the extent to which universal values can be agreed upon, exemplified by an empirical analysis of values contained i ...
  • Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) Pollutant Loadin ...
    US EPA http://cfpub.epa.gov/dmr/index.cfm http://cfpub.epa.gov/dmr/adv_search.cfm (advanced search) The Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) Pollutant Loading Tool is a new tool designed to help you determine who is discharging, what pollutants they are discharging and how much, and where they are disc ...
  • Shippingefficiency.org
    the Carbon War Room (free registration required) http://www.shippingefficiency.org/ [This resource will] list the energy efficiency of ocean-going vessels in an effort to reduce shipping emissions.The initiative aims to reduce emissions by up to [...]

Scientific American - News

  • Zoo Illogical: Ugly Animals Need Protection from E ...
    Zoos are like fancy hotels, albeit without the fluffy pillows and individually packaged soaps, or so says Daniel Frynta, an ecologist at Charles University in Prague. Only the "richest" animals get to check in. And if an endangered species gets a room, he says, it might just survive.Frynta defines a ...
  • Cat Disease Threatens Endangered Monk Seals
    Hoku endured some rough days before he died last spring. Three dogs chased him off one of his resting beaches, and he battled a minor tsunami that left him wedged between a pair of boulders in a lava field far from shore.Observers noticed him looking thin in the few months before fishermen found him ...
  • Pending U.S. Food Safety Bill Promises More Accoun ...
    Where did your most recent meal come from? Whether or not it was the supermarket, a nice restaurant or nearby drive-through, its contents probably came from not just one U.S. locality but a smattering of states--and countries. Just which ones, though, neither you nor the people who sold, packaged ...
  • Diminishing returns?: U.S. Science Productivity Co ...
    Science in the 1990s and into the early 21st century continued to advance the frontiers of knowledge--but less efficiently than it did earlier in the 20th century, according to a new study commissioned by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The report examines scientific publication trends in the ...
  • Targeting Practices: How Can Online Advertising Co ...
    The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) call for a "do not track" mechanism to be created to protect Web users' private information from being exploited by online advertising networks sounds good on paper, but implementing such a technology would be a thorny process. It is not because the technology is ...

RAWA News

  • 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 ...
  • UN: 7.4 million Afghans are living with hunger and ...
    Reuters: The United Nations on Saturday launched a $678 million humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan, where despite inflows of millions of foreign aid dollars, the world body said about a quarter of the population goes hungry. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Bragg ...
  • Wikileaks Reveals: Ahmed Zia Massoud, Afghan Vice- ...
    The Telegraph: Breaking news: secret US diplomatic cables tell us there’s corruption in Afghanistan. Ahmed Zia Massoud, Afghanistan’s former vice-president, was found to be carrying $52 million in cash – which a message from the American Embassy in Kabul, made public by Wikileaks over the weekend, s ...
  • Kidnapping on Rise in Afghan North
    IWPR: Like many businessmen in northern Afghanistan, Mohammad Daud wants to keep his success a closely-guarded secret. “The worst thing anyone can call you is rich,” he said, explaining that this would amount to an open invitation to kidnappers in the current climate.
  • Afghan vice-president “landed in Dubai with ...
    Mail Online: Classified diplomatic cables lay bare the extent of corruption at the highest level in Afghanistan, with cash apparently pouring out of the country. One report claims former vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud flew into Dubai with $52million in cash and was never asked to explain where it ...

frogblog

  • Defend Wikileaks against US government attacks
    Prominent Australians, including Green Senator Bob Brown, have signed an Open Letter to Julia Gillard asking her to provide assistance to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the face of the attacks he is facing, including threats of assassination. The letter says “such calls cannot ...
  • Food: Community gardens are a great idea
    I had a wonderful evening last night, speaking about food security and the local food movement at a meeting at New Brighton in East Christchurch.
  • Interesting answers to hard questions (for public ...
    Sometimes it can be tricky being a senior public servant. The Department of Conservation senior management just fronted up to the Local Government and Environment Select Committee for the Department’s ‘financial review’. This is the Department’s accountability mechanism to Parliamen ...
  • Lignite and IT problems
    The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has completed a report entitled Lignite and climate change: The high cost of low grade coal. “The plans to increase lignite use are extremely concerning as they would produce huge quantities of carbon dioxide which contributes to cl ...
  • Not raindrops on roses; nor whiskers on kittens
    Here’s ACT MP Hilary Calvert’s bizarre contribution on the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill: If this vile affront to human rights and democratic principles that will strip all sentenced prisoners of the right to vote was not one of Hilary Calvert’s ...

Patronus Analytical

J Kozy

  • 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 ...
  • Specie, Script, and War: The Contradictory Practic ...
    Wars are fought for business, but business and the economy are synonymous. Wars will continue to be fought for the economy as long as this economy is not abandoned. War is a logical consequence of it, not a means utilized by it. No attempt to eliminate war and preserve the economy can succeed. A ...

MoJo - Kevin Drum

  • Yet More Tax Deal Blogging
    Blogging is a little hard today. Pretty much the only topic on people's minds is the tax cut deal, and how much can you say about that? Well, as it turns out, a little bit more! So here are two thoughts. Thought #1 is courtesy of Noam Scheiber, writing about White House political aides who say the p ...
  • Quote of the Day: DeMint on the Estate Tax
    Sen. Jim DeMint is opposed to Obama's tax deal. No surprise there. But what is this all about? "It raises taxes, it raises the death tax. I don't think we needed to negotiate that aspect of this thing away." Huh? It raises the death tax? DeMint is talking here about the estate tax, which, admi ...
  • Bad News on DADT
    Democrats need at least a couple of Republican votes to overcome a filibuster and repeal DADT during the lame duck session. One of those votes is Susan Collins, but it looks like she's decided to bail. Steve Benen reports: In a nutshell, Collins is asking Democratic leaders for unlimited debate o ...
  • Herding Cats
    I never know quite how seriously to take Politico-style inside gossip pieces, but this one from Glenn Thrush strikes a chord: Obama’s advisers insist he didn’t go out of his way to pick a fight with fellow Democrats when he cut his highly controversial deal with Republicans to temporarily extend ...
  • Examining the Payroll Tax Cut
    Part of Obama's tax deal is a cut of two percentage points in the employee share of Social Security taxes. Employers will continue to pay 6.2% of wages, but starting January 1 employees will pay only 4.2%. Greg Mankiw argues that this is backward: An alternative would have been to reduce the employ ...

Insanity Report

  • FacePalm of the Week: Failing For the Palin Trap
    Sarah Palin is an idiot.  This is a well known fact.  We have video, audio and even “literary” (if you can call it that) evidence of this.  She’s now the punch line of any joke.  “Two guys walk into a bar and…..Sarah Palin” BWAHAHAHAHAHA We know this.  She’s not to be taken seriously.  Which is [... ...
  • The Incessant Whining of Liberals
    By now you’ve heard from liberals/progressives across the country about the latest “cave in” by President Obama on the Bush Tax Cuts.  I’ll be honest.  I’m shocked.  Not by the perceived “cave in” but rather by the utter lack of grip people bitching have on reality.  Yes…bitching. I realize that som ...
  • The Douchetastic Bill Maher
    “I thought, when we elected the first black president, as a comedian, I thought two years in, I’d be making jokes about what a gangsta he was, you know?” Maher said. Instead, Maher said we’ve got “President Wayne Brady.” I’m by no means overly sensitive.  I think we’ve established that.  On face v ...
  • IC 214: The Tiny Lister Eye
    Topics for the show: Brett Favre proves the NFL is “No Country for Old Men” Tron Legacy & Yogi Bear show the extreme ends of the spectrum in movies What Hollywood does right and what they do wrong Video games have stepped up to the level of movies in terms of storylines How both sides [...]
  • The Dumbest Debate In The Country Right Now
    We argue and debate a lot of dumb things in this country.  Every time Sarah Palin “writes” a new Facebook note or tweets something on Twitter, the media decides to talk about how she “might could be” running for President.  They ignore things like the factual inaccuracies she’s spewing or the fact ...

Simple Climate

  • What can we do about climate change?
    All year on Simple Climate scientists have suggested steps we can take to tackle climate change, so here's a roundup of what we can do, regardless of what happens in Cancún this week.
  • Simple Climate poll part 3: Getting personal
    Choose from explanation 13-20 out of 26 scientists' attempts to clearly communicate climate change on my blog this year, with these efforts focussing on how best to explain the phenomenon to people.
  • Marshland massacre by sea rise is avoidable
    Rate of sea level rise looks more important for wetland survival than the rises themselves – although the fact the world looks set for at least its third warmest year ever in 2010 is not a good omen.
  • China-US conflict reveals central climate issue
    Current climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, suggest that economic growth-obsessed nations should focus more on recognising and accepting their environmental responsibility.
  • Simple Climate poll part 2: One-liners and metapho ...
    Vote for your favourite from six more scientists' attempts to help me clearly communicate climate change, and discuss how effective they are.

e!Science News

  • Blue whale-sized mouthfuls make foraging super eff ...
    Diving blue whales can dive for anything up to 15 minutes. However, Bob Shadwick from the University of British Columbia, Canada, explains that blue whales may be able to dive for longer, because of the colossal oxygen supplies they could carry in their blood and muscles, so why don't they? 'The the ...
  • La Jolla Institute validates Type 1 diabetes compu ...
    A La Jolla Institute team, led by leading type 1 diabetes researcher Matthias von Herrath, M.D., has demonstrated the effectiveness of a recently developed computer model in predicting key information about nasal insulin treatment regimens in type 1 (juvenile) diabetes. Development of the software ...
  • '1-drop rule' appears to persist for biracial indi ...
    The centuries-old "one-drop rule" assigning minority status to mixed-race individuals appears to live on in our modern-day perception and categorization of people like Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, and Halle Berry. read more
  • Study examines effect of water-based and silicon-b ...
    A new study by sexual health researchers at Indiana University found that women who used lubricant during sex reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction and pleasure. read more
  • States now fund majority of human embryonic stem c ...
    States, not the federal government, now fund the majority of human embryonic stem cell research conducted in the United States, according to a recent study in the journal Nature Biotechnology. In addition, states varied substantially in the extent to which they prioritized human embryonic stem cell ...

unEarthed

  • A Complete Accounting of Ecosystem Death
    There is a common misconception concerning the environmentally destructive actions of governments and corporations. And, unfortunately, Google’s new Earth Engine application—with good intentions paving the way—falls prey to the ...
  • Friday Finds: Corporate Espionage Imparts Clear an ...
    Dow Chemical and others have been accused of spying on Greenpeace. Photo courtesy of sxc.hu. Judge orders GMO sugar beets to be ripped from the ground Citing the potential for environmental harm, a federal judge in Californ ...
  • After 18 Years of Climate Talks - Has Time Run Out ...
    (Editor's Note: Earthjustice attorneys Martin Wagner and Erika Rosenthal are blogging from the United Nations climate conference in Cancun, Mexico.) "I was born in 1992. You have been negotiating all my life. You cannot tell me ...
  • For The Cost Of a Few Cupcakes...
    Superfund site in Idaho On Dec. 11 the federal Superfund program turns 30. Which means? Time for cupcakes! Actually, the cupcakes arrived early -- on Wednesday -- when environmental groups including Earthjustice delivered th ...
  • West's Waterways Still Soaked in Pesticides
    Let's face it, the U.S. is awash in pesticides and some are quite deadly to America's wildlife. The Environmental Protection Agency is the government group responsible for signing off on pesticides before they are allowed for use and is supposed to stop the really bad ones. In going about this tas ...

Brave New Climate

  • 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 ...
  • Media reactions to the Energy paper – part 1
    It’s been fascinating to watch the media reaction to our Energy paper on how carbon pricing changes the relative competitiveness of low-carbon baseload generating technologies. It has certainly stirred a lot of interest, and the timing was admittedly celestial, because two other reports on electrici ...
  • The arithmetic adds up to nuclear
    Yesterday, The Australian newspaper published an Op Ed piece by Nicholson, Biegler & Brook, entitled Emission reductions are not blowin’ in the wind, which discusses our recent paper in Energy. The print (dead tree) version of the article even had the graph shown here included! However, the editor h ...
  • Nuclear is the least-cost, low-carbon, baseload po ...
    This is a press release to accompany a new peer-reviewed paper by Martin Nicholson, Tom Biegler and me (Barry Brook), published online this week in the journal Energy. In subsequents BNC post, I will look at how the media has reacted so far to the story (the good, the bad and the ugly), and also [.. ...

Indigenist Opinion

  • John John: Narco News: An Exclusive Interview with ...
    Narco News: An Exclusive Interview with Julian Assange on the Eve of His Arrest: "The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, gave an exclusive interview to Brazilian journalist Natalia Viana of the online publication Opera Mundi on Monday. (Viana, 2004 graduate of Narco News’ School of Authentic Jour ...
  • Daniel Ellsberg Says Boycott Amazon - Antiwar.com ...
    Daniel Ellsberg Says Boycott Amazon - Antiwar.com Blog Open letter to Amazon.com Customer Service: December 2, 2010 I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating today its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Con ...
  • Three Americans extradited to Canada to face G20 c ...
    Three Americans extradited to Canada to face G20 charges - thestar.com: "Three Americans are being extradited to Canada to face more than 100 charges related to damage during a protest at the G20 economic summit in Toronto last June, police said Friday. “These people may think they have gotten away ...
  • The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange - David Sam ...
    The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange - David Samuels - International - The Atlantic Julian Assange and Pfc Bradley Manning have done a huge public service by making hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents available on Wikileaks -- and, predictably, no one is grateful. Manning ...
  • Armenian activist and editor attacked, placed in s ...
    Armenian activist and editor attacked, placed in strict jail - Committee to Protect Journalists New York, December 2, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about reports that Nikol Pashinian, an opposition activist and editor-in-chief of the independent daily Haykakan Zhamanak, was ...

Republicans are a Disease

  • 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 ...
  • Raise Taxes or Cut Taxes?
    Raising taxes, and spending the money wisely, and on programs that promote economic fairness, stimulates the economy. Cutting taxes on the filthy rich stimulates hoarding, and not the economy. They should teach this in kindergarten. Every single billionaire makes sure the media that serves him teach ...
  • Economic Treason
    The Republicans plan on retaking the White House by performing endless economic treason. Regardless what the president, and the Democrats do to repair our struggling economy, the Republicans will stand in the way. The can count on a corporate controlled press to never call them out for filibustering ...
  • Republicans Are Herd Animals
    The tea bag caucus, it turns out, got over One Billion in PORK. Whoda thunkit…

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

  • Carmel Scapegoats, Part I: The Ultra-Orthodox
    In a series of three posts, I will examine arguments, which have resurfaced following the Carmel fire, that assign the blame for Israel’s problems to the ultra-orthodox or the settlements. In this first post, I argue that the ultra-orthodox play a marginal role both in Israel’s economic and social p ...
  • Israel’s referendum law: Who gets asked?
    The concept of a referendum – a direct vote by the qualified voters of a state – is customary in some countries, as part of a nation’s right to determine its future. It is only in Israel that we see the perplexing notion of asking citizens of the occupying power – rather [...]
  • Why Israel imposes Sharia law
    Most Americans would be shocked to hear Israel imposes Sharia. But it does, for some 60 years. On Andrew Sullivan’s blog, a reader wondered about the contradiction of conservatives supporting, at the same time, two contradictory opinions: on the one hand, they blindly support Israel and its army, an ...
  • Supplement to Haaretz expose on High-Velocity Tear ...
    Haaretz is reporting today something which has been known for weeks, the IDF has illegally reintroduced high-velocity tear gas canisters to their arsenal of weapons used to crush weekly Palestinian non-violent demonstrations in the West Bank. This is in violation of the IDF’s own directives that suc ...
  • Israeli-Palestinian talks officially dead: Time to ...
    Now that negotiations have officially failed, it’s time for the U.S. to join three South American countries and endorse Palestinian unilateralism. True, a viable Palestinian state will not be ready by August 2011, but that’s besides the point. This declaration is only a means to an end As expect ...

Sustainability,water,etc - Oz gov't

Matt Weidner Blog

  • Congressional Testimony on Foreclosed Justice- PLE ...
    It’s important to note just how quickly we’ve gone past arguments over widespread breakdowns, fraud and abuse.  For years attorneys and advocates have been making these allegations and many have faced criticisms, threats of ethics complaints and objections from judges and opposition attorneys who d ...
  • Homeless For The Holidays- The Banks vs. The Ameri ...
    Never before has the contrast between the obscene profits and abusive practices of industry and Wall Street and the struggle and turmoil of the American people on Main Street been more dramatic. Wall Street and the minions they have fanned out across this country are working feverishly to silence di ...
  • I am Officially a Card-Carrying Member of the ACLU ...
    During lunch today, I logged in and became a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.  As I felt these storm clouds brewing around all of us over the last several months, I’ve come to the absolute conviction that if we do not have our press with us and fight to  preserve free speech, all [... ...
  • Foreclsoure Court From a Homeowner’s Perspec ...
    The sleeping giant that is the American people is waking up.  The correspondence below is the kind of letter every single person who is impacted by foreclosure and who cares about our country needs to be writing.  This is still our country and for now we still have the right to protest.  If you d ...
  • HOT OFF THE PRESSES- AWESOME ORDER FROM THE 1ST DC ...
    WOW this is good stuff. order1st Tweet this! Share and Enjoy: Scridb filter

abelard - news

The Parallel Parliament

  • Santa Claus Joins Ranks Of The Homeless
    Just in time for the global environment meetings in Cancun, Mexico, this country’s Environment Commissioner delivered a harsh report on the Conservative record in battling climate change. As it was being released, the Harper government was being awarded three “Fossil of the Day” awards. Alas, from b ...
  • The Great Reversal
    So, Barack Obama caved in to the wealthy. He likely had to if he hoped to win re-election, but still his recent decision has left a bitter taste in many mouths. By going back to the Bush tax cut era, where the wealthy just got a whole lot richer, the President has set in motion [...]
  • For Women, A Chance At Last
    The narrative on women’s issues in the modern age has dominated its fair share of political attention in this past year. With the government’s attention on maternal health for the G8 meetings, concern over human trafficking, the primacy of women’s concerns over the loss of the gun registry, and the ...
  • “Thanks For Coming”
    You know something is essentially broken in politics when a clear case of human need in society is passed off by a government that attempts to hide behind legislation in order to absolve itself of just plain humanity. Such is the case with the some 400 Nortel pensioners on long-term disability who, ...
  • A Nation Afraid Of Its People
    Speaking to a luncheon of legislators from around the world, John Kennedy attempted to hold out what he thought was the greatness of America: We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid ...

Vaccine Awakening

  • 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 ...
  • Doctor-Heroes Standing For Better Vaccine Science
    by Barbara Loe Fisher The cry that was heard around the world in the early 1980's, when mothers and fathers realized an old, crude pertussis vaccine was killing and damaging the brains of their children, is being echoed today by new generations of parents struggling to raise vaccine injured childre ...

2020 Science

  • 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 [.. ...
  • Lost in the Maize
    Here’s something that keeps me awake at night (seriously): why, in this age of super-slick graphics and innovative multimedia resources, is it nearly impossible to give presentation that looks as good as they should? How come I can guarantee that when I give a presentation, the slides will be croppe ...

Reader Supported News

  • Rapists Stalk Women in Somali Refugee Camps
    Excerpt: "Some camp residents and aid workers blamed some of the sexual assaults on a new prevalence of pornography, which can even be seen on cell phones. The top official in Somalia for the UN refugee agency said he has received reports that youths 'first heat up themselves before they go out and ...
  • Rapists Stalk Women in Somali Refugee Camps
    Excerpt: "Some camp residents and aid workers blamed some of the sexual assaults on a new prevalence of pornography, which can even be seen on cell phones. The top official in Somalia for the UN refugee agency said he has received reports that youths 'first heat up themselves before they go out and ...
  • Elizabeth Edwards Dies of Cancer at 61
    "Mrs. Edwards posted a Facebook message to friends on Monday, saying, 'I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces - my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope.' She added: 'The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that.'" Elizabe ...
  • Daily Aspirin Linked to Steep Drop in Cancer Risk
    The report begins: "Long-term use of a daily low-dose aspirin dramatically cuts the risk of dying from a wide array of cancers, a new investigation reveals." Low-dose aspirin tablets. (photo: AFP/Getty Images) Sorry, your browser cannot display frames!
  • BREAKING: WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arreste ...
    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange surrendered to London police Tuesday to face a Swedish arrest warrant, the latest blow to an organization that faces legal, financial and technological challenges after releasing hundreds of secret US diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, back to ca ...

War Resisters League

  • 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 ...
  • March for Justice on October 2!
    What: One Nation Working Together Who: A broad-based national coalition of labor, racial and economic justice groups, community organizations, and antiwar organizations. Where: Washington D.C. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial When: Saturday, October 2 Dear fellow War Resisters, As the U.S. expen ...

Center for a Livable Future

  • Is There a CAFO in Your Neighborhood?
    National consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch (FWW) just released the latest version of its Factory Farm Map, which charts the concentration of factory-farmed animals across the country and their subsequent affect on human health, communities and the environment. As most factory farmer ...
  • CDC responds to CLF on antibiotic resistance testi ...
    The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, confirms that the CDC “feels there is strong scientific evidence of a link between antibiotic use in food animals and antibiotic resistance in humans.” Frieden offered the CDC’s position in his response to a lette ...
  • JHU Students Take the Real Food Challenge
    Colleges and universities in the United States spend over $4 billion every year on food. Imagine if that purchasing power were shifted towards food that is community-based, fair, ecologically sound, and humane. That’s the idea behind the Real Food Challenge (RFC), a national network uniting students ...
  • Urban Foraging in Asheville, NC
    While accompanying my fiancé to Asheville, N.C. for one of her residency interviews, I found myself bouncing around from coffee shop to coffee shop in downtown Asheville, scooping up free internet, downing coffee, handling bits of work, bits of personal business and trying to think about whether I c ...
  • Too Much or Too Little: The Hazards of Mixing Anti ...
    How food animals are given medication can be very different from how you take medication.  While humans are prescribed antibiotics at specific dosages in pills or injections, food animals are often given antibiotics mixed in their feed and freely choose how much to consume.  These free-choice medica ...

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 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 ...
  • U.S. And NATO Allies Escalate Military Buildup Aga ...
    Stop NATO December 6, 2010 U.S. And NATO Allies Escalate Military Buildup Against Iran Rick Rozoff The new Strategic Concept adopted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at its summit in Lisbon, Portugal on November 19-20 reiterated the U.S.-led military bloc’s determination to expand military ...
  • North Korea As Pretext: U.S. Builds Asian Military ...
    Stop NATO December 3, 2010 North Korea As Pretext: U.S. Builds Asian Military Alliance Against China And Russia Rick Rozoff On December 1 the U.S. and its South Korean military ally completed four days of naval maneuvers in the Yellow Sea where China claims a 200-mile exclusive economic zone. The U. ...
  • U.S. And NATO Prolong And Expand Greater Afghan Wa ...
    Stop NATO December 2, 2010 U.S. And NATO Prolong And Expand Greater Afghan War Rick Rozoff Over 150,000 foreign troops from more than fifty nations will spend another Christmas in Afghanistan. The tenth since the U.S. and Britain invaded the nation on October 7, 2001 and the North Atlantic Treaty Or ...
  • U.S. Recruits Russia As Junior Partner To Maintain ...
    Stop NATO November 24, 2010 U.S. Recruits Russia As Junior Partner To Maintain Global Dominance Rick Rozoff This past weekend the world witnessed an event that until recently would have seemed inconceivable: A Russian head of state attended a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Preside ...

Before It's News

Intel Hub

  • Actor John Schneider Talks 911 & Missing Trade Tow ...
    TIS catches up with Smallville & Dukes of Hazard actor John Schneider as he questions 9/11 and makes note that the popular Hotel “New York, New York” in Las Vegas doesn’t have the Twin Towers built into the Skyline…but the Hotel was open before 9/11. Why is that? Conspiracy? http://truthisscary.com ...
  • S.510 “Hitched” A Ride On Massive Budg ...
    The Intel Hub Democrats passed a massive budget bill late Wednesday night. The bill narrowly passed by a 212-206 vote. “A widely backed food safety bill is hitching a ride on the legislation. The measure passed the Senate by a 73-25 vote last week but got caught in a snag because it contained revenu ...
  • Public OUTRAGED By TSA Abuse! TSA Searching Young ...
    All TSA agents involved in these illegal acts should be arrested and put in a prison cell where they belong. Old women arrested for apple sauce, young girls searched, women felt up, old men stripped and a disabled child mocked! This is 1984! These officers have been filmed beating women up yet we ar ...
  • WikiLeaks ‘Struck A Deal With Israel’ Over Diploma ...
    Veterans Today “Assange met with Israeli officials in Geneva earlier this year and struck the secret deal. The Israel government, it seems, had somehow found out or expected that the documents to be leaked contained a large number of documents about the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 an ...
  • Bob Boyce’s Un-Requested VeriChip and Associ ...
    Boyce finally had the second VeriChip implant removed yesterday along with the associated tumor.  This time the surgical staff documented the implant with photos, and the surgeon placed the “foreign body” in a specimen container and sealed it to establish chain of custody evidence. by Sterling D. A ...

FRS

  • Julian Assange denied bail by London court in reta ...
    The Guardian UK, Tuesday 7 December 2010 20.52 GMT Julian Assange denied bail over sexual assault allegations “Last night Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for WikiLeaks, confirmed it would continue publishing US diplomatic cables. In a statement he said: “This will not stifle WikiLeaks. The release o ...
  • Wikileaks supporters use Internet to give Master C ...
    The Wall Street Journal World, December 8, 2010 A growing number of companies, prosecutors and banks that have tangled with controversial website WikiLeaks and its detained founder, Julian Assange, have suffered online attacks, apparently from hackers bent on extracting revenge for the document-leak ...
  • US aid programs for Central Asia dictatorships est ...
      U.S. Military Aid Far Outpaces Democracy Assistance By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON (IPS) – Desperate to secure supply routes to Afghanistan, the United States has been spending at least six times more on military aid for the mostly authoritarian states of Central Asia than on efforts to promote political ...
  • Iran: US government scrambled to understand street ...
    Washington talked with allies’ embassies and Iranian dissidents and businessmen to gauge the Iranian opposition, according to dispatches disclosed by WikiLeaks. “”What started as a movement to annul the election now gives shelter both to those seeking the full set of rights guaranteed them by Islami ...
  • Six imperialist powers and the Islamic Republic of ...
    The Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2010 Iranians Agree to Talks in Istanbul U.S. Sets Sights on Reviving a Fuel-Swap Agreement When Effort to Re-Engage Tehran on its Nuclear Program Resumes GENEVA—Iran and six global powers agreed to extend their first diplomatic engagement in more than a year, en ...

Ken O'Keefe

  • The Strategy of Recognizing Our Enemies, or Why We ...
    The second category of enemies are those who on the surface would appear to be allies - our esteemed fellow conservationists. Unfortunately, Sea Shepherd is the "Lady of the Night" of the conservation movement. Many of our allies do agree with our objectives in the daytime but they don't want to be ...
  • TJP Liberty Report from Gaza – Ken O’K ...
    Virtually unreported by the western propaganda machine is the almost daily shootings of Palestinians in the so-called “buffer zone”. This land happens to be the best agricultural land in Gaza and in a state of siege in which 80-90% of the population is reliant upon aid to survive, these shootings ar ...
  • Getting shot at by Israelis in Beit Hanoun, Gaza
    Today is the International Day of Solidarity with the People of Palestine. So today we expressed our solidarity by painting messages of support on a wall in Beit Hanoun and demonstrating against the ongoing siege of Gaza. Despite this entire event being completely peaceful on our end, Israelis shot ...
  • My mum interviewed by Salem News
    A lovely story by Salem News in which my mother is interviewed. It is indeed the boundless, unconditional love that she gave to me that is responsible for any good deed I have done in my life. If only every child were given the same, we would have a better world within one generation.� Thank [...]
  • Truth Behind Blockade of Gaza – As Revealed ...
    News Release – For immediate release – Thursday, October 21, 2010 Due to Gisha’s Freedom of Information Act Petition on Gaza Closure: Israel Reveals Documents related to the Gaza Closure Policy à After 1.5 years of obstruction, today Israel revealed the procedures governing the closure of Gaza and t ...

StillSmallVoice

  • If you were an alien, what would you think of Wiki ...
    NPR asks the question.
  • Is it civility? Or is it capitulation?
    When Pres. Obama agreed to keep tax cuts for the wealthy in return for tax cuts for the middle class, was he simply being civil? Or did he cave? David True at Religion Dispatches writes: Even this more modest view of civility is challenging in politics, where we recognize a politician to be civil ...
  • Want to do battle in the fake war on Christmas?
    American Family Association has a color-coded chart for you, to guide you to shop where the merchants know how to say "Merry Christmas" because where else can you judge a person's character except in a mall? Amazon? Passes the test. Walmart, too, natch. Banana Republic? Against Christmas, according ...
  • The House passed the DREAM Act last night
    And now it goes to the Senate. You can read more here. And here's a bit more (though it's slightly dated) on the facts behind the act. AP photo
  • When does satire start and disrespect begin?
    A play about the Church of Scientology is raising issues in Florida about freedom of speech. And thanks, Mike, for the link. Flickr photo

Associated Content

  • SpaceX's Dragon Splashes Down in the Pacific After ...
    After a perfect launch and a test flight that consisted of two orbits around the Earth, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft fired its retro rockets, reentered the atmosphere, and successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, the end of a perfect flight.Contributor: Mark Whittington Published: Dec 08, 20 ...
  • Drug Bust at Columbia University Leads to Arrest o ...
    Three other people who have no affiliation with the university in New York City were also arrested for supplying the students with the drugs. The students claim they were selling drugs to pay for college.Contributor: William Browning Published: Dec 08, 2010
  • John Lennon Quotes Still Repeated 30 Years Later
    With today being the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's death, his famous quotes and lyrics - along with his infamous ones - are being remembered. Of course, they have hardly faded away over the last three decades.Contributor: Robert Dougherty Published: Dec 08, 2010
  • 'Anonymous' Hacks Website of Swedish Prosecutor Ov ...
    Julian Assange is in jail and a cyber attack is underway against the prosecutor who had him arrested. Many companies are under attack too for shutting down accounts of WikiLeaks.Contributor: Julia Bodeeb Published: Dec 08, 2010
  • Unemployment Extension 2010 Compromise Blocked by ...
    With only a few days left to go on the 111th Congress' schedule, what looked like a relatively simple compromise to extend Bush tax cuts and unemployment benefits extensions might turn into a battle royale that extends into next year and the convening...Contributor: Saul Relative Published: Dec 08, ...

Popsci - Science

  • Scientists Use Stem Cells To Create Mice With Two ...
    Using stem cell technology, scientists have produced male and female mice from two fathers, a breakthrough that could conceivably allow same-sex couples to have their own genetic children. The multi-generational technique combines genes from the chromosomes of two male mice and uses surrogate mothe ...
  • In a World First, German Doctors Capture MRI Image ...
    For the first time, doctors have imaged a live birth using a special MRI machine, hoping to illuminate the birthing process and understand how complications may develop. The mother and baby — who was born Nov. 20 — are both doing fine, according to doctors at Berlin's Charité hospital, who announce ...
  • NASA's Arsenic-Loving Bacteria Don't Love Arsenic ...
    At first, the controversy over NASA’s arsenic-loving bugs centered on whether the space agency had found aliens. A week later, the debate has ping-ponged the other way, with scientists questioning whether the bacteria even love arsenic at all. Over the weekend, a handful of respected microbiologist ...
  • This Week In The Future, November 29 - December 3, ...
    The weather outside may be frightful, but the weather here at This Week in The Future looks pretty toasty. Baarbarian has summed up four of this week's most outrageous stories in the scene above, and as always, if you are the first to correctly identify all of them in the comments section, you wil ...
  • A Science Experiment in South Pole Ice Searches Fo ...
    Every December since 2004, engineers have flown to the South Pole to drill 8,000-foot-deep holes in the ice. The team lowers cables, each strung with 60 disco-ball-size light sensors, into the holes and let them freeze over. So far they have completed 79 such holes, set in a grid half a mile on eac ...

    Blacklisted News

  • bump
    bump
  • Are The Federal Reserve’s Crimes Too Big To Compre ...
    What if the greatest scam ever perpetrated was blatantly exposed, and the US media didn’t cover it? Does that mean the scam could keep going? That’s what we are about to find out.
  • Steve Wozniak: ‘We’ve Lost a Lot of Control’
    The world has mostly caught on to Steve Wozniak’s vision of having a computer in every home. But this digital lifestyle can sometimes turn rotten, he said last week.
  • The era of mega banks – The growth of too big to f ...
  • Top Israel rabbis: Don't sell property to non-Jews
    Three dozen top Israeli rabbis threw their support Tuesday behind a religious ruling barring Jews from selling or renting homes to non-Jews - an indication of growing radicalism within the rabbinical community at a time of mounting friction between Israeli Arabs and Jews.

The Intelligence Daily

My AntiWar

CASMII - Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran

  • Swedish FM Carl Bildt: Iran sanctions won't work, ...
    Summary: Bildt and Mottaki Bildt disagreed with Clinton’s view, expressed in our exclusive interview with her two days before, that the international sanctions regime had brought Iran back to the table and was thus having an effect on the Iranian leadership’s decision making. “They were at the t ...
  • Iran talks take small step forward
    Summary: There is no reason why US diplomats should interpret the two-day talks as reflecting a setback at all, since it created an opportunity to talk to Iran directly and set the stage for further talks with more concrete agendas. source: Asia Timesread more
  • UAE Wants UN To Lift Iran Sanctions - UAE Foreign ...
    Summary: "We want the Security Council to go back and end the sanctions on Iran, but we want Iran to help in this as well," Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said. source: Wall Street Journal read more
  • US-Iran Talks: A Good Start
    Summary: Although the first two days of talks this week didn’t accomplish much, it’s critically important that the talks are happening, and both Iran and the United States are making positive noises about them. source: The Nation, USAread more
  • New York Times Beats Drums for War
    Summary: Well, it's really quite amazing. Here's The New York Times. We have not only two large front-page stories, one of which talks about the sharp distress over a nuclear Iran, but the jump page--ah, there you go: Ahmadinejad, surrounded by a whole bunch of evil-looking people. And then, the ...

The Daily Galaxy

  • Riddle of a Crab Nebula Gamma-Ray Outburst: The Mo ...
    Spacecraft detected powerful gamma-ray flares from a supernova remnant known for its steady glow The composite X-ray, visible-light and infrared view of the Crab nebula above shows an array of complex knots or wisps. One such wisp may be the...
  • A Never-Before-Seen Signal from the Dark Epoch of ...
    "Our goal is to detect a signal from the time of the Epoch of Reionization. We want to pin down when the first galaxies formed and then understand what types of stars existed in them and how they affected their...
  • NASA Zooms in on the 1st Carbon-Rich Planet Beyond ...
    Astronomers have discovered that a huge, searing-hot planet orbiting another star is loaded with an unusual amount of carbon. The planet, a gas giant named WASP-12b, is the first carbon-rich world ever observed. The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer...
  • NASA Warns Global Warming Models Wrong -Don't Acco ...
    Top NASA experts say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise. According to Lahouari Bounoua of...
  • From the X Files Dept: WikiLeaks: "New Diplomatic ...
    New leaked diplomatic cables set to be published by Wikileaks will contain fresh details on UFOs, according to the website's founder Julian Assange. The 39 year-old Australian, who is wanted by Interpol over a charge of rape and sexual assault...

Natural News

  • S 510 Food Safety bill is still alive and may unle ...
    (NaturalNews) The U.S. government wants to know where your greenhouse is. Under Senate Bill 510 -- which is now back in the hands of the U.S. Senate after the House hid an amendment in an appropriations bill and passed it last night -- American food producers would be required to register their faci ...
  • Obama administration urges armed forces, public sc ...
    (NaturalNews) It seems that no matter how many times government officials try to convince the public that Gulf seafood is safe to eat, Americans simply are not buying it. So the Obama administration has resorted to pushing the stuff on the public sector, which includes the nation's prison systems, t ...
  • Study finds money contaminated with BPA
    (NaturalNews) A new test conducted by the Washington Toxics Coalition and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families has revealed that the plastics chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) is most likely lurking in your wallet. According to the findings, nearly every dollar bill tested in the multi-state analysis revealed ...
  • Urgent: Democrats attempting to pass Food Safety A ...
    (NaturalNews) In a last-ditch effort to resurrect S.510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, House Democrats are effectively hiding approval of the bill inside another bill -- HR 3082, an appropriations bill meant to fund the Department of Veterans Affairs.Health freedom attorney Ralph Fucetola has b ...
  • Humpty Dumpty stars in genetically modified nurser ...
    (NaturalNews) We've just released a hilarious new Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme that calls attention to the dangers of genetically modified foods. The short video is available now at NaturalNews.TV: http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=7169FB2DB98676A4616229E3A6356F20The video is the first in a new serie ...

Threat Level

  • Berkeley Considers Declaring Bradley Manning a Her ...
    The city of Berkeley, also known as “Berzerkeley,” is considering a resolution to declare alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning a hero. Or, as a FoxNews site puts it, “Berkeley Gives America the Middle Finger.” According to a resolution being considered for vote, the imprisoned Army private susp ...
  • Pro-Wikileaks Vigilantes Step Up Attacks
    Internet vigilantes on Wednesday stepped up attacks in support of Wikileaks, downing Visa’s web site in a widening protest against a handful of companies that banned the secret-spilling site after it began publishing hundreds of secret U.S. diplomatic cables. The outages, organized by the group An ...
  • WikiLeaks’ Cash Pledge Hasn’t Reached Bradley Mann ...
    WikiLeaks has failed to deliver on a months-old pledge to contribute financially to the defense of Bradley Manning, according to a group raising money for the imprisoned Army private suspected of providing WikiLeaks its most important U.S. releases. A spokesman for the Bradley Manning Support Netwo ...
  • Supreme Court Asked to Review State Secrets, Tortu ...
    The Supreme Court is being asked to review a lawsuit a lower court had dismissed against a Boeing subsidiary accused of helping the CIA transport detainees to secret foreign prisons where they were allegedly tortured. The appeal to the high court concerns a September decision by the San Francisco–b ...
  • EFF Demands Copyright Troll Pay for Suing Democrat ...
    The Electronic Frontier Foundation is demanding that the newspaper lawsuit factory RightHaven pay the  EFF’s costs for its successful defense of the website Democratic Underground from one of RightHaven’s many copyright lawsuits. “Attorneys’ fees would be appropriately awarded, even apart from a ...

PERRspectives : Blog

  • The Republican War on the States
    For years, American federalism has been characterized by "red state socialism," the one way flow of federal dollars from blue state taxpayers to red state recipients. For example, Sarah Palin's home state of Alaska ranked third in federal tax dollars received per dollar of taxes paid by state resid ...
  • FDR on Pearl Harbor, Taxes and Sacrifice
    It is sadly ironic that President Obama held a Pearl Harbor Day press conference to defend his surrender to Republicans over the extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. At a time when the United States is fighting two still-unpaid-for wars, facing staggering budget deficits and struggling to em ...
  • Blanche Lincoln's Revenge
    Perhaps the worst part of President Obama's very bad deal on taxes concerns the estate tax. After all, what Ezra Klein deemed "noxious" is a $7 billion annual giveaway to the heirs of the largest fortunes in America. It is estimated that only 0.11% of estates and just 40 family farms and businesse ...
  • Meet the Winners of the Class War
    Back in 2006, billionaire Warren Buffett lamented, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Now with President Obama's capitulation imminent on extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, average Americans will once again be the big ...
  • GOP Peddles Uncertainty Myth About Taxes
    In their scorched-earth effort to deliver another $700 billion tax cut windfall for the wealthy, Republicans have fittingly appropriated their favorite global warming talking point: "uncertainty." Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and John Boehner are just of the GOP leaders claiming "Con ...

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

  • NYT Stokes Fears of Iran
    By hyping claims about North Korean missiles in Iran, the New York Times continues its fear mongering, writes Ray McGovern. December 2, 2010
  • The Right's Power of Media Money
    In recent decades as the Right poured money into media, the Left opted for other strategies that failed, reports Robert Parry. December 2, 2010
  • Gitmo Detainees Given Risky Drug
    Guantanamo Bay prisoners were forced to take an antimalarial drug with risky side effects, say Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye. December 3, 2010
  • Flush Republicans Play Hardball
    Backed by money and media, the Republicans flex their political muscle against weakened Democrats, notes Michael Winship. December 2, 2010
  • A Full Body Scan for the US Empire
    U.S. officials are furious about the WikiLeaks breach of secrecy, but the disclosures seem like fair turnabout to Phil Rockstroh. December 2, 2010

CounterPunch

Institute for Middle East Understanding

Water - AlterNet

Public Citizen in Texas

  • Public Citizen Staff at PUC after protesting a beh ...
    Public Citizen Texas posted a photo: Public Citizen Staff at PUC after protesting a behind-closed-door negotiation b/w NRG, CPS Energy, and Chairman Barry Smitherman
  • Flammable water in homes west of Fort Worth!
    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ordering a natural gas company in Fort Worth to take immediate action to protect people living near one of its drilling operations who have complained about flammable drinking water coming out of their home faucets. Read some of our earlier blogs abo ...
  • STOP TEXAS FROM BECOMING THE NATION’S RADIOACTIVE ...
    Texas is at risk of becoming the nation’s radioactive dumping ground.  The new proposed rules were posted in the Texas Register on Friday, November 24th and the public comment period is through December 26th.  In the meantime, the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission (TLLRWCC) has sc ...
  • BP Forecasts Solar Power Cost to Equal Fossil Fuel ...
    According to the British energy giant BP, the cost of generating power by capturing the sun’s energy will fall about 10 percent a year in the next decade until it equals the expense of producing electricity by burning fossil fuels. As conventional fuel prices rise and solar power falls, generation c ...
  • Radioactive Waste Dump Ruling Comment Period Throu ...
    People will have through Dec. 26 to provide feedback to a rule published by the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission (the Commission) this weekend that could allow radioactive waste to be shipped from around the country to Andrews County for storage. As proposed, the rule would gi ...

Unexplained Mysteries

  • Dark object hurling comets at Earth
    A massive object four times the size of Jupiter could be lurking in the outer solar system. The mystery object is thought to be responsible for sendin...
  • Giant fossil bird found on 'hobbit' island
    Fossils of a giant stork have been discovered on the same island as the human-like "hobbits". The massive bird would have stood 1.8m tall and would ha...
  • Unicorn cow attracts tourists in China
    A cow with a giant horn growing from its forehead has attracted a great deal of attention in China. What started off as a small bump two years ago has...
  • Da Vinci manuscript found in France
    A rare Leonardo Da Vinci coded manuscript has been discovered in a public library in France. It was one of several thousand manuscripts donated by Pie...
  • Man changes name to Captain Awesome
    Douglas Smith has legally changed his name to Captain Awesome due to a joke in a TV series. The 27-year-old successfuly applied to have his name chang...

Grassroots

  • The global forum “For Life, Environmental and Soci ...
    viamarch.jpg By�Cloc/The Via Campesina(Cancún, 5 December 2010) One idea dominated the opening and first working day of the global forum �For Life, Environmental and Social Justice�, organized by La Via Campesina and its allies at their camp i ...
  • New Map Shows Concentration of Factory Farms
    Subheadline:� Food & Water Watch Analysis Finds Livestock on Factory Farms Grew by 20 Percent in 5 Years Outside Author Info Outside Author Bio:� Food & Water Watch (a Grassroots International ...
  • International Solidarity Cools the Planet
    cancuns.jpg by Sara Mersharead more
  • Rural Women (and Men) Lead the Way in Ending Viole ...
    707729276_d8407e6648_t.jpg � � Today, November 25th, is observed around the world as the International Day to Eliminate Violence against Women. Grassroots International joins women and men everywhere�in calling for an end to all violence � int ...
  • A New Kind of Disaster in Haiti in the Midst of St ...
    un_haiti_tent.jpg Haitian peasant leader, Chavannes Jean Baptiste, put it best: �Haiti is going from disaster to disaster.��He was talking about debilitating disease among displaced people in squalid living conditions, tropical storms destroyi ...

Climate

  • China and U.S. Narrow Gap on Climate
    Source:� New York Times With narrowing differences over a key issue, verification, there is growing hope of modest success at the conference.
  • Pact Could Be Near to Save Tropical Forests
    Source:� Washington Post For years, policymakers and scientists alike have spoken of the need to save tropical forests as a way of curbing climate change. By week's end, U.N. negotiators may finally set the rules of the road for d ...
  • Upton Wins Energy and Commerce Gavel
    Source:� The Hill Rep. Fred Upton beat out Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and others in contentious race for the chairmanship.
  • Blankenship Gets $12 Million Retirement Package
    Source:� Coal Tatoo Massey Energy late today detailed its severance package for retiring CEO Don Blankenship. The deal appears to include $12 million, in two payments.
  • Supreme Court to Hear Key Global Warming Case
    Source:� AFP �The Supreme Court said Monday it would consider a key global warming case over the right of US states to regulate carbon emissions as a "public nuisance."

GreenBiz

  • The Power of One: Union Pacific
    Mike Iden has spent a lot of time at Union Pacific working on making locomotives more efficient as well as reducing their emissions, including developing new low-emission engines and redesigning containers to reduce drag.
  • UN Implores Private Sector to Help in Climate Chan ...
    While global businesses have made gains to improve their energy efficiency and reduce carbon footprints, more needs to be done upstream and on a sector-basis, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres told business leaders over the weekend.
  • Home Depot, Walmart Receive Energy Efficiency Expe ...
    Through the Department of Energy's Commercial Building Partnership, 24 projects will receive $21 million worth of technical assistance funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
  • 4 Investment Changes that Can Help Green Wall Stre ...
    'Tis the season for low expectations on climate change and other global sustainability challenges. Yet there's no reason to think our stockings will forever be stuffed with coal.
  • How Starbucks Saves Millions per Year in Energy fr ...
    When Starbucks converted the lighting in more than 7,000 of its stores from to LEDs developed for the company by GE, the company ended up saving roughly $4 million per year in energy costs, and proving that LEDs are ready for prime-time.

Reuters Global

  • This year’s Nobel winner on the importance of a go ...
    The most important thing that ever happened to newly minted Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa? It wasn’t the news two months ago that he had won the prize for literature, or the first time he ever published a book. It was, he said, learning how to read.
  • Pakistan talks up al Qaeda/Taliban split
    Pakistan is talking up the possibility of a split between the Taliban and al Qaeda as it tries to refocus the debate over Afghanistan into end goals rather than the means of getting there.
  • Does Germany need Europe?
    Jim O'Neill, the new Goldman Sachs Asset Management chairman who is famous for coining the term BRICs, reckons he know why Germany might not be rushing to bail out all the euro zone debt that is under pressure. Europe is not as important to Berlin as it was.
  • Ivory Coast puts Africa’s credibility on the ...
    Ivory Coast's election has put African and U.N. credibility on the line and could raise concerns over whether deals to end other African post-election crises have established a new model for leaders to emerge as the winner from elections even if they lose them.
  • It was news, but not as we know it…
    "We end a week of fiction," NASA's Dwayne Brown said.

Booman Tribune

  • So Awesome
    Do you want to know how you can tell that we have the best form of government evah? Well...to take but one of many examples from yesterday, the House of Representatives successfully passed a resolution that recognized and honored the 2500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon. The resolution had ...
  • I'm too depressed ...
    to write anything coherent or thoughtful or informative today. I will say Obama is a failure as a President. He failed to provide real reform to prevent the mortgage fraud and illegal foreclosures the banks are pulling off as we speak. He relied on the the worst possible advice of Wall Stre ...
  • Teh Gay Did It!
    Oh brother. Oh sister, too. Once more into the breach with fundamentalist Christians blaming gays for all the terrible things in America. This time its the American Family Association are blaming Wikileaks on the "Gay Agenda" of the soldier under arrest for leaking the Iraq War documents to Wikile ...
  • Get Ready For Nothing to Happen
    Hey, if you are really bored, like in-the-mood-to-watch-wallpaper-dry-bored, then you can watch the Senate this afternoon. Watch them fail to do anything. The Senate, meanwhile, is busy finishing up a judicial impeachment. After which, they'll take a break for the fifth Democratic Caucus meeti ...
  • What Now, Tea Partiers?
    I am sure that the Tea Partiers are heartbroken to learn that the GOP's first order of business was to cut a deal with the president to add $900 billion to the debt and then to select a hypocritical earmarking lover of federal health care to be their chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. ...

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

  • What Do You Do When You Can’t Afford Treatment?
    A GoodTherapy.org News Headline While understanding of how therapy’s effectiveness is growing, many people’s health insurance plans—if they are insured—do not provide enough coverage for that person to receive adequate treatment. As recently documented in the New York Times, this is especially true ...
  • For Female Vets, Suicide is Far Too Prevalent
    A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Therapists and counselors who work with female veterans see almost triple the rate of suicidal thoughts and actions than therapists who work with women in the general public. This comes from a new report highlighting what could be “A Hidden Epidemic” among female mili ...
  • Sexuality and Mental Health Among Teens
    A GoodTherapy.org News Headline Despite common conceptions, LGBT youth experience about the same rate of mental health troubles as their straight peers. A survey of LGBT teens in Chicago found that rates of depression and PTSD, while higher than the national average, were very similar to other group ...
  • When is Giving Not a Gift After All?
    By Judith Barr, MS, LPC, Power: Healing to the Root Topic Expert Contributor Click here to contact Judith and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile In this time of giving – the holiday season – it is vital for us to truly comprehend giving . . . not in the one-sided way it’s taught in our world, but r ...
  • Nurturing the Nurturer: Tips for New/Seasoned Moms ...
    By Andrea Schneider, LCSW Postpartum Depression Topic Expert Contributor Click here to contact Andrea and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile The holidays are swiftly upon us, and for many, it is a season of joy, anticipation, family and friends, decorations, and memories in the making. For the woma ...

Mountaintop Removal

  • Massey's CEO Blankenship expect to testify Dec. 14 ...
    Kansas City Star Massey's CEO Blankenship expect to testify Dec. 14 Newsday But environmental activist Larry Gibson, who has long battled Massey and the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining, said there was one thing ... Massey CEO ends profitable career marred by blastBusinessWeek Massey CEO ...
  • 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. ...
  • Two coal companies have agreed to pay for violatio ...
    Two coal companies have agreed to pay for violations WYMT Kentucky's two largest mountaintop removal coal companies have agreed to pay a settlement for clean water act violations. The Hazard-Herald reports that ICG ... and more��
  • Fighting for the Fate of the Appalachians - Counte ...
    Reuters Fighting for the Fate of the Appalachians CounterPunch Since mountain top removal was first introduced in the early 1970's, local citizen groups have formed to fight the coal companies and effective leaders have ... Blankenship Quits As CEO Of Massey EnergyCare2.com (blog) Massey's Chance t ...
  • Ask Umbra's Book Club: Does caring about the envir ...
    Ask Umbra's Book Club: Does caring about the environment make you crazy? Grist Magazine I love that it's bringing the themes of overpopulation, biodiversity, consumerism, and mountaintop-removal mining to a mass audience. ... and more��

Memeorandum

  • Michael Bloomberg: I'm Not Running for President. ...
    Brian Montopoli / CBS News: Michael Bloomberg: I'm Not Running for President.  Period.  —  New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg - who is often discussed as a potential third party candidate for the presidency in 2012 - told CBS News' Katie Couric Wednesday there is “nothing” that would compel him ...
  • Don't topple economy by rejecting tax deal, Obama ...
    The Hill: Don't topple economy by rejecting tax deal, Obama tells the Dems  —  President Obama warned his fellow Democrats on Wednesday that they risk plunging the country into a double-dip recession if they reject his tax-cut deal with Republicans.  —  As the White House intensified pressure …
  • Emmer to concede election to Dayton (TwinCities.co ...
    TwinCities.com: Emmer to concede election to Dayton  —  Announcement today expected to end tight contest with Dayton  —  It's over.  —  Republican Tom Emmer will concede the 2010 Minnesota governor's race this morning to Democrat Mark Dayton, a Republican source with direct knowledge confirmed to ...
  • Americans Support Two Major Elements of Tax Compro ...
    Lydia Saad / Gallup: Americans Support Two Major Elements of Tax Compromise  —  Liberal vs. Moderate/Conservative Democrats disagree on extending tax cuts for all  —  PRINCETON, NJ — Two major elements included in the tax agreement reached Monday between President Barack Obama and Republican leader ...
  • LOOKING FOR PLAN B.... The Center on Budget and Po ...
    Steve Benen / Washington Monthly: LOOKING FOR PLAN B.... The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Bob Greenstein, who has as much liberal credibility on budget and tax issues as anyone, doesn't seem to like the “disturbing negative” provisions of the tax policy deal struck by the White House and ...

Energy & Environment News

5+ quakes - 7 days

China Dialogue

  • Seeing the wood
    Climate-change negotiators are right to focus on forests – they offer a path to adaptation as well as carbon storage, Lu Zhi tells Yang Fangyi. Lu Zhi is the founder of China’s Shan Shui Conservation Center and professor of conservation biology at Peking University. In conversation with Yang F ...
  • The multilateral zombie
    Sick but not quite dead, the UN climate process stumbles on. Credible global strategies for reducing emissions must be readied for the moment the politics change, argues Alex Evans.A year on from Copenhagen, things aren’t looking good. Immediately after the 2009 negotiations, some of the more optimi ...
  • Moving past Mexico
    Whether the Cancún climate summit succeeds or founders may not matter, writes Andrew Pendleton. Long-term progress depends on national politics.The last time Cancún played host to a major inter-governmental summit was in 2003. Then, the fifth ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation colla ...
  • Cancún’s climate colonels
    Success in Mexico – and global security – depends on the ability of frontline negotiators to handle the tensions, write Nick Mabey and Shane Tomlinson.The experience of managing complex peacekeeping missions has led the military to coin a valuable term: the “strategic colonels”. Strategic colonels c ...
  • Counting carbon
    Uncertainty in national emissions inventories is par for the course and not an excuse for inaction in Cancún, writes Jay Gregg. A deal on transparency looks possible – and there is every reason to push for it.Creating national emissions inventories seemed easy: I would simply take the energy consum ...

AlterNet Top Stories

  • Is Amazon Evil?
    Amazon's cheap books are easy on our wallets, but publishers have been deeply undercut by the rise of large retailers and predatory pricing schemes.
  • Vision: How Organizing Is the Real Antidote to Fox ...
    For too long, unions have mistaken access for power. They need to get back to organizing and activating members.
  • Why Obama's 'Tax Deal' Does Major Damage to His Ca ...
    The White House is bolstering the conservative tax cut mantra as it tries to tell us that more money for the rich is what America needs now.
  • Shifting Goalposts on Terrorism
    We’ve seen so many definitions of terrorist in the last few years, it can be hard to keep them straight. So I suppose it’s understandable when someone like Rep. Peter King from New York can’t remember what the word means anymore. Back in the 80s, when King was Nassau County Comptroller and the chair ...
  • Happy Holidays from the Ho, Ho, Hopelessly Anti-Sc ...
    Originally posted at Cagle. I grew up in Los Angeles, so the notion of living in or around snow was romantic — the thing of movies. Living in Washington, D.C. for the past several winters has proven to be an entirely different experience. Donât get me wrong, the calm quiet brought to my neighborhood ...

Threat Level

  • Berkeley Considers Declaring Bradley Manning a Her ...
    The city of Berkeley, also known as “Berzerkeley,” is considering a resolution to declare alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning a hero. Or, as a FoxNews site puts it, “Berkeley Gives America the Middle Finger.” According to a resolution being considered for vote, the imprisoned Army private susp ...
  • Pro-Wikileaks Vigilantes Step Up Attacks
    Internet vigilantes on Wednesday stepped up attacks in support of Wikileaks, downing Visa’s web site in a widening protest against a handful of companies that banned the secret-spilling site after it began publishing hundreds of secret U.S. diplomatic cables. The outages, organized by the group An ...
  • WikiLeaks’ Cash Pledge Hasn’t Reached Bradley Mann ...
    WikiLeaks has failed to deliver on a months-old pledge to contribute financially to the defense of Bradley Manning, according to a group raising money for the imprisoned Army private suspected of providing WikiLeaks its most important U.S. releases. A spokesman for the Bradley Manning Support Netwo ...
  • Supreme Court Asked to Review State Secrets, Tortu ...
    The Supreme Court is being asked to review a lawsuit a lower court had dismissed against a Boeing subsidiary accused of helping the CIA transport detainees to secret foreign prisons where they were allegedly tortured. The appeal to the high court concerns a September decision by the San Francisco–b ...
  • EFF Demands Copyright Troll Pay for Suing Democrat ...
    The Electronic Frontier Foundation is demanding that the newspaper lawsuit factory RightHaven pay the  EFF’s costs for its successful defense of the website Democratic Underground from one of RightHaven’s many copyright lawsuits. “Attorneys’ fees would be appropriately awarded, even apart from a ...

Reuters - Most Popular Articles

  • Factbox: Who is Liu Xiaobo?
    (Reuters) - China's official media accused the West of "launching a new round of China-bashing" ahead of Friday's awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiabao.
  • China, North Korea reach consensus over crisis: re ...
    SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - China and North Korea reached consensus on the Korean peninsula crisis after "candid" talks, Chinese state media reported, which analysts said suggested Pyongyang likely agreed not to inflame the situation.
  • Analysis: Indian plan to deter Pakistan more myth ...
    SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A strategy developed by the Indian military to fight a lightning and limited war with Pakistan without crossing nuclear red lines has stirred concern across the border and in the United States, but the plan is years, if not decades away from battle readiness.
  • Police link ex-convict to death of Hollywood publi ...
    LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Police investigating the slaying of a leading Hollywood publicist said on Wednesday that lab tests show a match between the presumed murder weapon and the gun a suspect used to kill himself when officers approached him.
  • WikiLeaks backers hit MasterCard and Visa in cyber ...
    LONDON (Reuters) - Credit card giants MasterCard and Visa came under intense cyber attack on Wednesday as supporters of WikiLeaks retaliated for moves against Julian Assange after the release of U.S. diplomatic cables that angered and embarrassed Washington.

IntelNews

  • News you may have missed #458
    More arrests of alleged Russian agents in Georgia. Iran defector says Tehran hosted N. Korean techs. Spy scandal MP helped second Russian woman stay in UK. Continue reading →
  • Some spy news in the shadow of WikiLeaks’ re ...
    The WikiLeaks revelations continue, and so does the global news storm concerning the whistleblower site. Obviously, the news value of the WikiLeaks disclosures is unquestionable. However, there are notable intelligence-related developments taking place outside the now-familiarWikiLeaks context. Con ...
  • FBI allegedly looking for Russian spy inside NSA
    American counterintelligence investigators are allegedly trying to uncover at least one Russian-handled double agent operating inside the US National Security Agency (NSA), according to information published on Wednesday. Continue reading →
  • News you may have missed #457
    Belgium investigates Colombian spying allegations. Russia reshuffles foreign intelligence after spy scandal. Israel gets new spy chief amid big shuffle. Continue reading →
  • More underreported WikiLeaks revelations
    Some of the least noticed revelations include a 2009 dispatch from a US diplomat in Tel Aviv, which appears to confirm the close secret relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, despite the fact that these two countries have no official diplomatic connections. Another diplomatic cable r ...

War is a Crime.org

  • Brit Iraq War Inquiry: Recalling Witnesses
    Tony Blair To Appear Before Iraq War Inquiry Commission 12/8/2010 - The independent commission probing the reasons for Britain joining the Iraq war announced Wednesday that it has asked former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to appear before the panel for a second time to give additional evidence. ...
  • More on Obama's Capitulation and Betrayal
    More on Obama's Capitulation and Betrayal - by Stephen Lendman With help from Democrats controlling both Houses, Obama put a criminal cabal in charge of furthering the greatest wealth transfer in history. In the process, he's hollowing out America, eliminating the middle class, centralizing power, e ...
  • The Deafening Silence About the War in the Deficit ...
    By Dan Kovalik, Huffington Post There is a lot of talk right now on Capitol Hill about the need to balance the federal budget. Sadly, both Democrats and Republicans alike are largely debating about how best to balance the budget upon the backs of the poor and working people (who are many times the v ...
  • Obama's Grand Betrayal
    Michael Collins Previously, I reported the startling news - Obama to Change Party. That was satire, at least on November 14. Just three weeks later, satire becomes reality. In the past few days, President Obama has traded away $620 billion in tax revenues in order to get a $56 billion, 13 month ...
  • The Sounds of Silence: Reactions to Political Desp ...
    By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers Hello darkness, my old friend... -- Simon & Garfunkel, "The Sounds of Silence" By nature, I'm usually an optimist. I've experienced and studied enough history to understand its cyclical nature and its ability to house enormous positive/negative contradictions. ...

Grist - News

  • 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 ...
  • Obama extends drilling ban in wake of BP spill
    by Agence France-Presse. WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has reversed a decision to expand oil exploration off U.S. coasts and, in the wake of the BP spill, will extend a deepwater drilling ban in certain areas through 2017, the administration said on Wednesday. The move, announced by Inter ...
  • Worldchanging’s bright green contribution
    by Jonathan Hiskes. Rumors have been floating around for a while, but on Monday the unfortunate fact became public: the sustainability news and advocacy site Worldchanging is shutting down. The 501c3 non-profit will dissolve by the end of the year, though the hope is to preserve its seven-year o ...
  • Why it’s OK for big polluters to get stimulu ...
    by Jonathan Hiskes. A hefty new investigation from the Center for Public Integrity takes the Energy Department to task for giving stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) funding to industrial polluters while waiving requirements that they conduct environmental-impact reviews. It's an i ...

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Technorati - What's Hot in Blogs

Time - Top Stories

Farming Pathogens

  • 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 ...
  • Virus Dumping
    Man came to shake my hand / and rob me of my farm –Ryan Bingham Dumping grain on another country is a classic maneuver in economic warfare. When a country’s borders are opened by force or by choice, by structural adjustment or by neoliberal trade agreement, when tariffs and other forms of protection ...
  • We Can Think Ourselves into a Plague
    The power of the mind is a New Age staple. But, really, can I concentrate enough to levitate myself (much less get my laundry done today)? The materialist answers, funny you mention it, but, yeah, you can. A few minds thought through the ideas that produced the airplane and perhaps soon enough the p ...

Suzie-Q

  • Ray McGovern: “No Moral Sense in Pentagon an ...
  • Tax Cuts for the rich will put food on your table
     NYTimes Tax Deal Suggests New Path for Obama DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and JACKIE CALMES Published: December 6, 2010 WASHINGTON — President Obama announced a tentative deal with Congressional Republicans on Monday to extend the Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels for two years as part of a package t ...
  • Nigeria Charges Former US VP Cheney Over Bribery
    Nigeria charges former US VP Cheney over bribery By JON GAMBRELL The Associated Press  Via- The Washington Post Tuesday, December 7, 2010; 3:50 PM LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency on Tuesday charged former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney over a bribery scheme involving oil services ...
  • Obama’s Israel Policy: Speak softly and carry a ve ...
    by Maidhc Ó Cathail, Foreign Policy Journal, December 4, 2010 Even those familiar with the long and shameful history of America’s appeasement of Israel were taken aback by the Obama administration’s extraordinary offer to Netanyahu. In exchange for a paltry one-off 90 day freeze on illegal settlemen ...
  • Julian Assange Arrested!
    Wikileaks Arrest: Julian Assange In Custody, Court Battle Underway Huff Post- First Posted: 12- 7-10 10:21 AM   |   Updated: 12- 7-10 10:35 AM LONDON (AP) — A British judge has denied bail for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who told a London court he intends to fight his extradition to Swed ...

Solari

  • Precious Metals Market Report
    I am in Philadelphia, so Franklin and I are conspiring by phone this month! As usual, we have plenty to cover, including December highs and swapping action on the gold-silver ratio. We will be addressing historical price patterns in the first quarter of the year. If December and the fourth quarter ...
  • Approaching Parity
    This Morning Dollar Cross Rates: - - -Swiss Franc 1.02270 - -Canadian Dollar 1.00368 - -Australian Dollar 1.00598
  • Investigators Baffled by Wheat Fields
    By Matthew Weaver The Oregon Department of Agriculture and Oregon State University are investigating the yellowing of upward of 40,000 acres of wheat in Umatilla and Morrow counties. So far, the cause is a mystery, and researchers do not know if the problems in the two counties are related. In earl ...
  • Brodsky on Gold
    By Paul Brodsky In practical terms, we can’t lower rates below zero and we can’t raise them. What about debt-focused quantitative easing? That won’t work either. An economy can’t be de-levered by issuing new debt or by transferring existing debt to government balance sheets. And consider this: in t ...
  • Quote du Jour
    The odds of dying on an airplane as a result of a terrorist hijacking are less than 1 in 25 million ­ which, for all intents and purposes, is effectively zero ­ according to Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. By comparison, the odds of dying in a normal [...]

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

  • 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 ...
  • The home-grown aspect of the jihadist menace
    Summary:  Much of our home-grown terrorism results from the government’s careful nurturing, clearly seen in the many cases since 9-11.  It’s yielded a full harvest:  a fearful and tame public.  Here are some of these stories. Domestic jihadist terrorists since 9-11 comes in several forms.  Mo ...
  • A look at America’s lost decade
    Summary:  When the new Congress takes their seats in January, the Tea Party-dominated House will have many goals.  Jobs for the unemployed is not among them (they prefer to trust in the Blue Fairy).   The numbers paint a sad story, of little interest to our ruling elites. Let’s look at America’s ...

Open Your Eyes News

  • Desensitisation approaches effective against hayfe ...
    PhysOrg.com – Immunotherapy given as pills or drops under the tongue is a safe and effective way to treat hayfever-like allergies caused by pollen and dust mites, according to a new Cochrane Systematic Review. The researchers say the approach is an attractive alternative to immunotherapy injections ...
  • Canada: Register kids’ vaccinations: health expert ...
    Toronto Sun – â Canada needs a national vaccination registry so no child misses out on being immunized, a public health group says. The Canadian Public Health Association says a registry would help the government track how many people across the country have been vaccinated, as well as whether child ...
  • ‘History sniffing’: How internet browsers can be h ...
    Daily Mail – Dozens of websites have been secretly harvesting lists of places that their users previously visited online, a team of computer scientists found. So-called ‘history sniffing’ is used by fraudsters to learn more about their targets and send them personalised attacks. It also allows e-com ...
  • French men are giving up smoking, but not French w ...
    PhysOrg.com – The prevalence of smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke among men in France has fallen by more than 15 per cent since the mid 1980s, but over the same 20-year period has increased among women. As a result, investigators from the World Health Organization French MONICA (MONItoring trend ...
  • US Treasuries hit by biggest sell-off in two years
    Financial Times – US Treasuries suffered their biggest two-day sell-off since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, following a torrid month that has seen borrowing costs for western governments soar. Germany, Japan and the US have all seen their benchmark market interest rates rise by more than a quarte ...

The Progressive Realist

  • A World Without a China
    Americans have some odd ideas about the strength of the Chinese economy: In the poll, only one in five Americans said that the U.S. economy is the worldâs strongest — nearly half picked China instead. Looking forward, Americans are somewhat more optimistic about regaining primacy, but still only ab ...
  • Gitmo "Recidivism," Ctd.
    I don't know if this was explicitly clear in my last post, but bipartisan alarmism over Gitmo recidivism notwithstanding, it's very clear that the Obama administration is doing a much better job of identifying which detainees pose a future danger than the Bush administration. Not that this piece ove ...
  • Mideast Peace Process: When Seduction Fails It's T ...
    Barack Obama's latest effort to seduce Benjamin Netanyahu to stop expanding illegal settlements in occupied territories as a portal into renewed Palestine-Israel talks has collapsed. Khruschev, Oops, I mean Netanyahu has yet again thrown eggs in the face of President Obama, humiliated him and his ...
  • ASG Member Blogs Recap
    Afghanistan Imposter Redux:  Paul Pillar writes:  âThe case of the impostor Taliban negotiator might suggest that negotiations as a way to conclude the war in Afghanistan are unwise, untimely, unfeasible, or a joke. They are none of those.â  Pillar goes on to note both the difficulties of negotia ...
  • Free Speech Is Bigger than WikiLeaks
    I have a lot of disagreements with things Richard Cohen says in his column on WikiLeaks, but in this case that’s actually what makes his defense of the core principles of a free press so important: The WikiLeaks brouhaha will pass. Diplomats will once again be indiscreet at cocktail parties and rat ...

TAPPED - The American Prospect

  • Lightning Round: Regime Change all the Rage.
    Barack Obama's continuing need to scold his allies is rather baffling, but ultimately it won't matter as long as his "silent majority" holds up. Indeed, given how horrible economic conditions are, it's surprising that his overall approval rating has fluctuated very little over the past year. It's n ...
  • The Little Picture: DREAM Act Vote.
    (Flickr/DreamActivist) Protesters calling for passage of the DREAM Act, which is expected to be voted on in Congress today.
  • Michael Bloomberg's Contempt for Democracy.
    The New York Times calls this "sweeping," but it's mostly just warmed-over pablum: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Wednesday unleashed a blunt and stinging critique of the federal government’s handing of the economic recovery, saying that lawmakers from both parties have “abdicated their responsibili ...
  • Why Democrats Are Deserting Obama.
    Dorothy: You’re a very bad man for pretending to be a wizard. Wizard: No, I’m a good man, just a very bad wizard. Barack Obama, you might say, is a very good man who is just not turning out to be a very effective president. And he makes a serious misjudgment if he thinks that it is just the libera ...
  • America: Still Richer Than China.
    Though, try telling that to most Americans: In the poll, only one in five Americans said that the U.S. economy is the world’s strongest -- nearly half picked China instead. Looking forward, Americans are somewhat more optimistic about regaining primacy, but still only about one in three expect the ...

Buzzflash

  • Tax Cuts Usually Lead to Higher Unemployment. Tax ...
    LARRY BEINHART FOR BUZZFLASH It's quite simple really: Tax cuts usually lead to higher unemployment. Tax increases usually lead to lower unemployment. Since 1950 we have had five tax increases on the rich. Four out of five times unemployment went down. Since 1950 we have ten cuts to the top margi ...
  • They are Going to Get Us in the End Because They H ...
    BRUCE PEDERSEN FOR BUZZFLASH/TRUTHOUT Why Do I Feel Like a Christian Scientist with Appenditis? (With Thanks to Tom Lehrer) I always thought myself to be a cautious optimist. Tending to be more moderate and living in the gray areas more than black & white I try to think things through and hopefully ...
  • McConnell and Boehner Seen Around D.C. Defacing Ho ...
    BUZZFLASH EDITOR FOR TRUTHOUT BY MARK KARLIN What would be the cost of extending unemployment benefits that the Republicans demand can only be implemented if they are offset by decreases in the deficit? Why, it would be - ironically - about one year's worth of the "bonus" tax cuts for the wealthy ...
  • What's One Question GOP Leaders Never Ask: "What C ...
    PATRICIA WELLER FOR BUZZFLASH Do Republicans ever sit in a room together and begin the discussion with "What can we do for the good of the country?"  Because I can't see it. Whether they were tea partiers or simply the disenchanted, the middle class drove the Republicans to power in November.  You ...
  • The Rich Get Richer and the Young Go Into Deep Deb ...
    DAVID MASCIOTRA FOR BUZZFLASH The average young American graduates college with $24,000 in debt, according to the Student Debt Project (Link: http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/). Before Americans in their twenties even have the opportunity to gain independence and fully enter adulthood, they must ...

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

The BiPartisan Report

Sciencebase

  • 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 [.. ...
  • Santa Claus Science
    Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicolas, Kris Kringle, Sinterklaas. Call him what you will, at this time of year, for children who celebrate everywhere, many questions of a scientific nature arise and parents squirm in their efforts to answer them. Now, Gregory Mone, a contributing editor at Po ...
  • Latest scientific discoveries
    Forget fruit and veg. Lose weight and cut the booze to reduce cancer risk People should be warned that cancer is linked to obesity and alcohol, rather than urged to eat more fruit and vegetables to protect against the disease. UK trialling testing sugar-coated salt on roads Although they’ve been usi ...

Common Dreams-Progressive Newswire

  • Groups Ask USDA and DOJ to Stop the Retail Squeeze ...
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 7, 2010Food & Water WatchToday consumer and farmer groups encouraged the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to follow up its final competition workshop tomorrow with concrete actions to address the anti-competitive practices that b ...
  • ACLU to Gov. Crist: Don’t Let Dead Rock Stars Dom ...
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 7, 2010ACLUGovernor Charlie Crist’s decision to ask other members of the Florida Board of Executive Clemency to join him in a posthumous pardon of Jim Morrison, lead singer of rock band The Doors, drew skepticism today from the ACLU of Florida about the Governor’s desi ...
  • Ex-Intelligence Officers, Others See Plusses in Wi ...
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 7, 2010Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA)The following statement was released today, signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Frank Grevil, Katharine Gun, David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, Craig Murray, Coleen Rowley and Larry Wilkerson; all are associated with Sam Adams Associate ...
  • 20,000-plus People Boycott Bluefin Tuna, Restauran ...
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 7, 2010Center for Biological DiversityMore than 20,000 people have agreed to boycott bluefin tuna as part of the Center for Biological Diversity’s campaign to save this fish, driven to the brink of extinction to supply the sushi market. In the first week of the boycott ...
  • Statement on Tax Cut Deal
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 7, 2010Senator Bernie SandersSen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement today on the agreement announced Monday between the White House and congressional Republicans:"In my view, it is a moral outrage that at a time when this country has a $13.8 trilli ...

Common Dreams-Views

  • The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Poorer
    by William AstoreMore tax breaks for the rich in exchange for another year's worth of unemployment benefits for the desperate: Now there's a compromise that makes me proud to be an American. My father wouldn't have been surprised. He grew up during the Great Depression and worked in factories befo ...
  • Participate in a Real “December Review” of the Wa ...
    by Brian TerrellOn November 25, 2010, the occupation of Afghanistan by United States and NATO forces had already lasted 9 years and 50 days. This date is a significant milestone, Jason Ditz of antiwar.com points out, because 9 years and 50 days is also how long the Soviet occupation of that count ...
  • With Jailed Minister, DREAM Act Hunger Strike Near ...
    by Jeff BiggersOn the heels of a new Congressional Budget Office report that the DREAM Act would reduce the deficit by $1.4 billion over the next decade and public support by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, seven university students in San Antonio prepare themselves to enter their 28th ...
  • Still Needed: A Responsible Path to Energy Indepen ...
    by Derrick Z. JacksonIn reversing controversial plans last week to expand offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, "As a result of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill we learned a number of lessons, most importantly that we need ...
  • One November’s Dead: The American War Dead Disappe ...
    by Tom EngelhardtAmerica’s heroes?  Not so much.  Not anymore.  Not when they’re dead, anyway. read more

Newshoggers - AfPak

  • For Afghanistan, A Wind Of Change From Washington
    A Guest Post by Keith Boyea The Washington political winds have changed, but unless you closely observed such things, you may not have felt the breeze. Yesterday, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a well-connected Washington DC think tank, released a report on Afghanistan titled, Respon ...
  • Bad Hippies! No December Afghanistan Review For Yo ...
    By Steve Hynd Karl Eikenberry is the latest administration official to tell us that the thorough review of progress that Obama promised the nation a year ago when he ordered the Afghan surge will instead be just a rubberstamp of "staying the course" for another Friedman Unit. I won't prejudge the De ...
  • Subliminal Messaging On Afghanistan
    By Steve Hynd A report last week by veteran Af/Pak analyst Ahmed Rashid, nicely timed for the Lisbon summit at which NATO rolled out its "aspirational" date of 2014 for an Afghan transition, says that Afghan president Hamid Karzai has never been so anti-Western and anti-American in his views. In an ...
  • Taliban Negotiator Was Imposter, Received "A Lot O ...
    By Steve Hynd It sounds like something from The Onion, but it's by Dexter Filkins in the NYT: For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the tab ...
  • In Afghanistan, The Occupation Is The Problem
    By Steve Hynd Your Af/Pak "must-read" for today is by analyst Alex Strick van Linschoten, who lives in Kandahar. In a piece entitled "Five Things David Petraeus Wants You To Believe" he sets out the problems with Petraeus happy-talk about "momentum" in Afghanistan. It's essentially un-excerptable so ...

Water Wars

  • U.N. climate talks seek to avert damaging failure
    CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) - Almost 200 nations sought on Wednesday to break a deadlock between rich and poor on steps to fight global warming and avert a new, damaging setback after they failed to agree a U.N. treaty last year in Copenhagen.
  • John Bulloch obituary
    Old-school foreign correspondent who reported on the Middle East for the Daily Telegraph and the Independent John Bulloch, who has died aged 82, epitomised the classic foreign correspondent of the last half of the 20th century: tough, acerbic, commanding, not averse to a drink or eight, and utterly ...
  • Another View: Time for Sacramento to update sewage ...
    Re "Water wars hinder sound decision-making" (Viewpoints, Dec. 3):
  • Letters to the Editor
    Sewage, prisons, redistricting, etc.
  • Commentary: Truce needed in water wars
    Each Sunday through the beginning of the 2011 General Assembly, The Times is taking a look at some of the key issues that Gov.-elect Nathan Deal and state lawmakers will face.

WordPress | Economics

Electronic Intifada

  • Israel fires on Gaza as it claims to "ease" siege
    Israeli tanks opened fire east of Gaza City today, injuring three Palestinians near the so-called "buffer zone." A few hours earlier Israeli fighter jets launched two airst ...
  • Sustainable tourism or sustaining Israel's occupat ...
    While the goal of developing tourism, in particular rural tourism, may have at its origins socially benevolent intentions, it cannot transcend the same economic barriers th ...
  • The Electronic Intifada Campaign: Help keep our re ...
    To remain a strong, independent publication and an educational resource for the Palestine solidarity and justice movement, The Electronic Intifada needs the support of its readers ...
  • Beit Ommar returns to its roots
    Palestinians in the occupied West Bank village of Beit Ommar are returning to older models of organizing against the Israeli occupation. These organizers are employing strategies o ...
  • No safe haven for displaced Iraqis
    More than seven years after the United States and United Kingdom-led invasion of Iraq, millions of displaced Iraqis have nowhere to go. For the overwhelming majority of refugees an ...

Afghanistan Sun

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 ...



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