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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.

Monday, April 23, 2012

23 April - My Feedly

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The French Election: What You Need to Know
The French took to the polls for the first round of the presidential election yesterday, Sunday April 22. With voter participation of over 80%, the result of this first round dealt an unexpected blow to Nicolas Sarkozy, the first incumbent in France’s 5th republic not to come out on top after a first round of voting. It’s also the first time since 1995 that a Socialist candidate won the most vote
Choice magazine (government lap-dog) “likes” monopolies and propaganda. Oops.
For an example of modern government propaganda, wait til you see this: Your Carbon Price (No really, go spend 30 seconds there to try to guess what this production would have cost.) I’ve never seen a website so slickly designed, so smooth to the point of oozing graphic designer dollars with every rollover. As I watched it, I was seeing our national productivity being buried under Gucci-layers-of-g
More than 4,300 gather in pouring rain as Ron Paul brings rEVOLution to Philly
PHILADELPHIA — “Life should always be about seeking the truth.” At 12:15pm on Sunday April 22, on the sopping lawn of Independence Mall Visitor Center, a few hundred people sit in plastic folding chairs, listening to charming songstress Tatiana Moroz warm her guitar up for a stirring rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” A couple hundred more are scattered about the lawn, some signing up to w

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 Suzie-Q
 
 

 
 

Richard Grenell, New Mitt Romney Spokesman, Scrubs Online Attacks On Media And Women
Mitt Romney's new national security spokesman, Richard Grenell, has erased some of his online history. Huffington Post By- Michael Calderone Posted: 04/22/2012 10:37 am Updated: 04/22/2012 3:00 pm NEW YORK — Richard Grenell, a former Bush administration official who joined the Romney campaign Thursday as national security and foreign policy spokesman, appears to have deleted more than 800 of his p
Romney Raised $12.6 Million In March. Refuses To Disclose Bundlers
Chicago Sun-Times By Lynn Sweet on April 20, 2012 7:49 AM | Mitt Romney raised $12.6 million in March for his primary, his campaign said Friday. Watch for the number to quickly jump. Now that Romney is the all-but-certain nominee, he is starting to raise money jointly with the Republican National Committee, which will allow him, under federal law, to collect much bigger donations from individual

 
 

For Earth Day, Treat Yourself to an Inspiring Success Story
Documentary Film Burning the Future Shows the Power of Citizen Action

 
 

Episode 227 – The Regulation Trap
Every time there’s a problem in the world, there are those who will cry for more government regulations to make it better. Time and again, these interventions make things worse, and yet the same people inevitably cry for the same false solutions. Could it be that there is something fundamentally wrong with the system? Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we interrogate government regulations
Corbett Report Radio 116 – The Truth About OKC
Tonight on Friday Night Highlights we explore some of the facts and evidence that prove the official story of the Oklahoma City bombing is a lie. From forewarnings to hidden CCTV footage to bomb blast discrepancies, join us as we go in search of the truth about OKC. Works Cited: Jesse Trentadue on The Corbett Report FBI explanation of missing Oklahoma City bombing tapes not credible, judge says A
Corbett Report Radio 110 – Enviropig in the Food World Order
Tonight on the program James breaks down some of the stories making headlines and takes your calls. Then in the second half of the program we’re joined by James Evan Pilato to talk about all the latest Food World Order stories, from the enviropig to the battle for health freedom. Works Cited: Episode 225 – Still Listening to the Enemy Episode 175 – The RAND Corporation Exposed Rand: The Future of
New World Next Week – 2012/04/12
Welcome to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com — the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week: Story #1: DHS/Navy Award Contract to Hack Gaming Systems http://ur1.ca/8zijv Spy Games – Homeland Security Is Trying to Hack Into Your Xbox http://ur1.ca/8zijx Feds Want Way to Hack Xboxes and Wiis for Evid
Interview 494 – New World Next Week with James Evan Pilato
Welcome to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com — the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week: Story #1: DHS/Navy Award Contract to Hack Gaming Systems http://ur1.ca/8zijv Spy Games – Homeland Security Is Trying to Hack Into Your Xbox http://ur1.ca/8zijx Feds Want Way to Hack Xboxes and Wiis for Evi
Corbett Report Radio 109 – The New World Order Does Not Control Everything
More and more people are waking up to the New World Order agenda of the global enslavement grid, but with that mass awakening comes an oversimplification of the ideas. In this simplified worldview, earthquakes are always caused by HAARP, plane crashes are never just plane crashes, and nothing can ever deflect the NWO’s plans. Join us tonight on The Corbett Report as we interrogate the omnipotence

Bits and Pieces - April 23, 2012
Politics with Socrates: He felt it was vitally important to admit that the human condition is one of profound uncertainty, deep doubt. We are in between creatures. On the one hand, we are not ignorant and un-self-aware like most other animals. We can learn much. But on the other hand, we are not omniscient and all-seeing like the gods.This is why the lust for certainty is a sin, as a former Archbi
Bits and Pieces - Iran Edition
And now we face the rushing wave of op-ed pieces on what's next in the negotiations with Iran. Just before last week's meeting, there was such a wave, much of which was highly repetitive and a somewhat smaller portion was wrong. If I had a spare week or so, I would go over all that and show which writers you needn't read any more on the subject because they were so far off on that first meeting.Bu

 
 

Proxima Centauri: Looking at the Nearest Star
Let’s start the week with a reminder about Debra Fischer’s work on Alpha Centauri, which we talked about last week. There are several ongoing efforts to monitor Centauri A and B for planets and, given the scrutiny the duo have received for the past several years, we should be getting close to learning whether there are rocky worlds in this system or not. Fischer’s continuing work at Cerro Tololo i

 
 

Who Needs the White Working Class?
In the likely presidential face-off this fall, President Obama will rely on support from a core of young voters, single women, African Americans, Latinos, highly educated voters, liberals and -- though often forgotten -- union members. Mitt Romney will count on lopsided votes from social and religious conservatives, wealthy business-oriented voters and the anti-Obama crowd -- from virulent haters
Contradiction Where Religion and American Politics Meet
Here's a newspaper headline that might induce a disbelieving double take: "Christians 'More Likely to Be Leftwing' And Have Liberal Views on Immigration and Equality." Sounds too hard to believe, right? Well, it's true--only not here in America, but in the United Kingdom. That headline, from London's Daily Mail, summed up the two-tiered conclusion of a new report from the British think tank Demos
Israel Needs a New Narrative
The first time I visited Israel I was shocked by many things. Most disturbing was the narrative of Masada -- the story of Jews in the 1st century A.D. who holed up on a mountain top while battling Rome's Tenth Legion and committed what was essentially mass suicide rather than surrender or compromise their religion. I attended Jewish Day School until the age of eight, and Sunday school until the ag
Hypothetical Matchups: A Gaffe-ing Matter
The Republican primaries have turned this year into probably the longest-ever season of the gaffe. Even if we leave out the verbal missteps of Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, we still have had an outpouring from Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. There are websites dedicated to "the dumbest quotes" from each of them. But one group seems to get off scot-free when it come

 
 

Governments should stop poachers stealing gains made in tiger conservation
A month ahead of a senior government officials’ meeting, WWF is calling on tiger range countries to take steps to stop poachers stealing the gains made by the governments towards their goal to double the number of tigers in the wild. “There is little hope of doubling the number of wild tigers if every conservation gain made by each of the countries is undermined by poachers every day,” said Mike
Status quo is not an option says WWF
 Gland, Switzerland: World governments are meeting in New York this week for a final round of negotiations to decide the priorities for the Rio+20 Summit taking place in June this year. The negotiations will be the best and last chance that we have to influence the agenda for Rio+20. New text presented by the co-chairs to the Summit and released today, 23rd April 2012, will serve as a basis fo

 
 

Ebooks and professionalism in the publishing industry: The Case of John Barth on Kindle. UPDATED
by Doctor Science I see in the comments to the previous post that I really poked some nerves by saying "the profession of editing had become distinctly unprofessional." Perhaps I should have said, "people with pro editing jobs were no longer able to consistently edit in a professional manner." The root cause was succinctly stated by commenter Professor Fate, who says ze worked in trade publishing
50 Shades of Fandom: Writing. Part IIa
by Doctor Science The copyright page for Fifty Shades of Grey says:The author published an earlier serialized version of this story online with different characters as "Master of the Universe" under the pseudonym Snowqueen's Icedragon.I'm pretty sure this is the first time a best-selling work of fiction has explicitly acknowledged that it's derived from a fanfic; at least I've never seen anything
A 'they really do that at schools over there' Friday open post
 by liberal japonicus Though every week is education week at the lj household, this week has a bit of an edge to it. Yesterday, we experienced katei homon, where the teacher of my youngest (2nd grade elementary) comes by to visit the home, talk to a parent (almost always the mother) and see how the child interacts. My daughter has been practicing making coffee for the teacher, and got to show off

 
 

8th Layer of Networking
We all know about the 7 layers of the OSI model. This is the framework by which computer networks are defined. Starting with the physical layer, going through the transport layer and finally culminating in the application layer where end user applications reside. I believe that this should be redefined to include and additional layer – the Social Layer. From the current vantage point, the Social

 
 

QOTD: Rethinking Sex-Positivity & Sex Work
Audacia Ray: If we put aside our attachment to the sex positive construction of sex work, we will certainly hear things that will be hard to sit with. But for sex positivity to be a useful framework, one that encourages the pursuit of social justice, it must also engage with the ugly pieces of sexuality, and not in a simplistically reactive way. Otherwise, the concept of being a sex positive sex
Provocation, Appropriation, and That Blackface Clitoridectomy Cake
Here’s an idea for truly provocative art. No more male artists, black or white, speaking for African women. No more ever-more-graphic ever-more-voyeuristic art on the suffering of African women. Stop using the female African body as raw material to be worked – unless you happen to live in one. Then, notice that African women are making their own work about their lives and struggles. Look. Listen.

 

Straw in the Stink
The Mail on Sunday is doing a very good job on the odious Jack Straw’s involvement in torture and persecution. I think that at last the truth has entered the established narrative. There is a little box in the report about my own evidence to Scotland Yard. I will type it out here as the Mail’s box format here is not internet searchable: “Torture” Evidence Handed to the Yard Further pressure wa

Obsolete
 
 
 
 

This person is trolling you.
It's quite something when a piece for CiF opens with a sentence this obtuse and then goes downhill from there:When I broke the neck of my sick cat and then made a handbag of her skin, I honestly had no idea of what I had got myself into.236 comments and counting.
 
 
A new definition of irony.
Deciding in China whether the human rights situation in Bahrain means the race there should be cancelled.
Film review: I Saw The Devil.
(Major spoilers ahead.)For a good month or so, I've been going back over Mark Kermode's film reviews for 5 Live as posted up on Youtube. One of Kermode's great strengths as a critic is that he understands genre cinema and so is often far more forgiving of certain films, such as Basic Instinct 2, than other critics would ever be. This can also be a weakness, as it's also led him to give good revi

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The Unbearable Cheeselessness Of Nicolas Sarkozy
Tomorrow the French go to the polls to vote in the first round of their presidential elections. The French, they vote on Sundays, because, as is well known, they are against God. They are also against Nicolas Sarkozy, the nation’s current president. Who is seeking a second term. But who now seems less likely to serve again as president, than Tom Thumb, Wile E. Coyote, or a petri dish of scabies. S
 
 
Yowl, And Ye Shall Find
Many peculiarities there are, among human religions. Muslims run from pigs faster than Richard Pryor with his body on fire. Catholics each week munch flesh and guzzle fluids that have been laying around for more than 2000 years. Jews would rather hack off their hands than write out the full name of their god. Scientologists wander the land waving “E-meters” in order to get “clear.” Fundamentalist

 
 

Game Behind Coordinated Attacks in Afghanistan
By Sajjad Shaukat The well-coordinated attacks by the heavily-armed Afghan militants who targeted the US, British, German, Russian embassies, NATO headquarters and parliament in Kabul including other offices in three provinces of Afghanistan on November 15 this year, while fighting for 18 hours with the US-led foreign and Afghan forces cannot be seen in isolation. On the same day, earlier around 2

 
 

Oklahoma Oath Keeper Convicted of Rape
In the end, the antigovernment rhetoric that so energized his defense couldn’t save Charles Dyer, the former Marine and member of the antigovernment Oath Keepers organization accused of raping his own daughter. Late Thursday, after four hours of deliberation, a Duncan, Okla., jury convicted Dyer and recommended a 30-year sentence. After the verdict was read, Dyer’s [...]

Pesticide data on the chopping block
This week PAN joined farmworkers and farmworker advocates in urging Congress to protect a small, unsung program that’s vital to the health and safety of the nation's nearly two million farmworkers: pesticide recordkeeping. USDA's Pesticide Recordkeeping Program is on the congressional chopping block, though it has long served as an essential tool for the proper identification, treat
Widely-used pesticides are killing bees
Bees are still dying and EPA is still sitting on its hands. Luckily for those of us who like to eat, scientists have been hard at work cracking the "mystery" of colony collapse disorder (CCD). Today two new studies were published in Science, strengthening the case that neonicotinoid pesticides are indeed key drivers behind recent pollinator declines. read more
Breaking bee science
Not marked at Hot Topic bee-fly-slide.jpg Two new studies strengthen the case that neonicotinoid pesticides are key drivers behind pollinator declines. These studies make the case clearer than ever.
What's next on methyl iodide? Update from the courtroom
Timing is everything. On March 20, Arysta LifeScience pulled its cancer-causing pesticide, methyl iodide, from the U.S. market. The decision came after years of public outcry against the undue influence that Arysta, the largest privately held pesticide corporation in the world, had on science and governance during the rulemaking. Interestingly enough, Arysta's decision was announced on the

The impact of the end of the Egypt-Israel gas agreement
I don't have time to comment much on this, although it's a subject that has long fascinated me. Perhaps later. But the bottom line to yesterday's new that Egypt is canceling its deal with Eastern Mediterranean Gas (EMG), which supplied gas to the Israeli National Electricity Company, is minimal aside from coming lawsuits and efforts at international arbitration by EMG's shareholders. It is certain
Beyond Syria's "truce" and interventionism
The April 12 truce between the Syrian military and the armed opposition groups under the Free Syrian Army umbrella is fragmenting as reports continue to come out of Syria showing that violence is continuing while the UN is preparing a ceasefire monitoring mission. Syrian blogger Maysaloon, on the catch–22s for the Syrian Army and the armed resistance: The Syrian Foreign Ministry has announced tha
Being a woman IT professional in Saudi Arabia
This morning, Saudi (update: she was born in Saudi but is not Saudi) IT professional Ruba al-Omari tried for the umpteenth time to attend an IT event in Jeddah. Most of the time she's tried this before, she had to be segregated or what she calls "IT mutawwas" would ask her to leave. She tweeted about her experience, and I Storified it below. I thought it illustrated rather well the o
The Noise of Cairo
Singer Shaimaa Shaalan I had the chance to see the documentary "The Noise of Cairo" last night. The film is about Egyptian artists and their relationship to the revolution -- their engagement, whether political, personal or professional, and the effect they expect the uprising to have on the creative field. (This is a topic I have written on myself, in "Art in Egypt's Revolutionary S
Thank you, Daily News Egypt
We got the very sad news today that one of Egypt's leading English-language publications, Daily News Egypt, is closing. I had known that the paper's owners were thinking of doing so for a few months now, as the newspaper was losing money and the shareholders could not justify investing more into it in the context of a bad economy. The DNE's business model largely relied on institutional sa
"Our steadfast pursuit of a freer Saudi Arabia"
A must-read, and courageous, letter from Saudi Arabia by Waleed Abu Alkhair in WaPo: Every week, I am host to several dozen people at my home, most of them politically engaged Saudi youth. I started the salon after government and religious authorities clamped down on gatherings of liberal youth in cafes and bookstores in the wake of Hamza’s arrest, severely constricting the space for free expres

 
 

How Can We Make The Case For Public Employees If This Is How Some Conduct Themselves?—Houston Public Works Staff Need To Get To Work Just As We Need To Fight For The Role Of Government
A recent Houston Chronicle article discussed the large numbers of City of Houston employees who have been disciplined or fired for poor conduct on the job. From The Chronicle— “While working on the taxpayers’ dime, Houston’s Public Works employees have smoked pot, driven drunk, packed guns, falsified meter readings and stolen scrap metal, not to mention lunching leisurely for hours at Memorial Par
Texas Progressive Alliance Round-Up—The Work Of Freedom Is Up To Each Of Us
Here is the weekly posting of the Texas Progressive Alliance round-up. The TPA is a confederation of the best political bloggers in Texas. TPA members are citizen-bloggers working for a better Texas. Every Texan and every American has the ability to attend a public meeting, attend or organize a protest, write or call an elected official, talk to friends and family, start a blog, donate money, writ
Chrome Cranks Looking To Produce A New Album—Find The Time To Create Something Before The Hour Has Passed
My longtime friend Peter Aaron, who lives in the New York City area, is a member of the band The Chrome Cranks. This band began in Cincinnati in 1988. (Above you see the Chrome Cranks. Peter is the one smoking the cigarette.)  The Chrome Cranks are trying to get the money they need to make a new album. Below is what Peter has written for Texas Liberal regarding this effort— “The Chrome Cranks are
An Expanded Thought Of The Day—We Can Govern From A Point Of Opposition
A few days ago I made a post t I called Thought Of The Day. Here is what I said– “It is easy to join a permanent opposition or to make common cause for a brief time with the enemy of your enemy. It is a more difficult thing to “govern” in the sense of offering a viable alternative to the powers that be even as you remain a figure of opposition.” I’ve been thinking about the above idea and concept
Texas Progressive Alliance Weekly Round-Up—The Work Of Freedom Is Up To Each Of Us
Here is the weekly posting of the Texas Progressive Alliance round-up. The TPA is a confederation of the best political bloggers in Texas. TPA members are citizen-bloggers working for a better Texas. (Above–The famous gusher at Spindletop.) Every Texan and every American has the ability to attend a public meeting, attend or organize a protest, write or call an elected official, talk to friends an
I Saw Houston Mayor Annise Parker—Then I Saw A Chicken
A few hours back I went to the blogger lunch that is hosted each month by Charles Kuffner. Mr. Kuffner writes the top Houston and Texas political blog  Off The Kuff. The guest at the lunch this month was Houston Mayor Annise Parker. Below you see a picture that I took of the Mayor at this lunch. The Mayor has her hand raised as she takes a pledge to read Texas Liberal each day. No–I’m making that
Thought Of The Day

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