Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama
We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.
Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.
The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking
Mike Rose
No one in power is asking the more fundamental questions like: What is the purpose of education in a democracy, and are our reforms enhancing—or possibly restricting—that purpose?
Education ‘Miracles’ Don’t Survive Scrutiny
Business Goes to School
What might the business community’s culpability be for the state of American education? And what else would a more comprehensive discussion of the school-business connection need to include?
Some businesses have a direct financial interest in matters educational, from textbook and test development to the delivery of goods and advertisements to classrooms. Less obvious is the fact that donations from business are tax-deductible, so, as policy scholar Janelle Scott points out, considerable tax revenues are diverted from the public fund and toward business-certified causes. These causes might well be laudable ones, but the channeling of revenue affects public policy and yet is not open to public deliberation.
The 1910s and 1920s, another era of strong business influence, provide a cautionary tale. In an attempt to maximize educational productivity and efficiency, some districts advocated measuring teacher effectiveness by counting the number of arithmetic combinations or grammar exercises a student could perform in one minute. Industrial conceptions of productivity are spread throughout our educational policy, certainly in some high-stakes testing programs. Business advocacy groups have been defining the purpose of schooling in economic terms. Kids go to school to get themselves and the nation ready for the global marketplace, and this rhetoric of job preparation and competition can play into reductive definitions of teaching and learning.
The sad and astounding fact is that at the state and federal level there is little deep understanding of the intricacies of teaching and learning involved in the formation of education policy.
In all the public discussions I’ve heard, the focus of school-business alliances is solely on the problems with the schools and what it is that business can do to help remedy those problems. The discussion never seems to include business’s contributions to the conditions that have limited educational achievement.
When Banks Are the Robbers
Amy Goodman
The Obama administration signaled that it was not supporting a foreclosure moratorium. Not long after, Bank of America announced it was restarting its foreclosure operations. GMAC followed suit, and others will likely join in. So much for the voluntary moratorium.
GMAC Mortgage engaged in mass document processing, dubbed “robo-signing.”
Recall that GM received $51 billion in taxpayer bailouts; its subsidiary, GMAC, received $16.3 billion; and Ally Financial subsidiary GMAC Mortgage received $1.5 billion as an “incentive payment for home loan modification.”
So you as a taxpayer may have bailed out a bank that is fraudulently foreclosing on you. What recourse do you have?
Why the IMF meetings failed
17th October 2010, 08:41 am by Stan
What is to stop U.S. banks and their customers from creating $1 trillion, $10 trillion or even $50 trillion on their computer keyboards to buy up all the bonds and stocks in the world, along with all the land and other assets for sale, in the hope of making capital gains and pocketing the arbitrage [...]
A Glimpse Into the Heart of a Rotten System
I have now sat through Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job”— the nonfiction version of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”— and I still don’t fully understand our endless financial crisis.
NUPGE urges Obama and U.S. legislators to give Canadian health care system a fair hearing
Clancy said he felt obligated to write to the U.S. legislators after Prime Minister Harper and Health Minister Aglukkaq refused to step in and counter the anti-Canadian propaganda being spread by private health care interests battling health care reform in the United States.
( I know : late to the party. I just never tracked down union representations against corporate propaganda demeaning the Canadian healthcare system. Currently preparations are underway to fight to include medications in insurance coverage.)
“If you want a job, go to Asia!”
That’s Tom Brokaw’s advice to college grads…
Our politicians manipulated the laws to permit corporations to send their lower level jobs to other countries without penalty. Now even white-collar jobs are leaving the country. They wrote the laws (Clinton’s NAFTA, Bush’s CAFTA, Truman’s GATT which is now the WTO) to benefit their corporate contributors and even gave some of the companies taxpayer-funded subsidies in the process.
Who Is Responsible for U.S. Russia Policy?
Who is ultimately responsible for an American policy toward Russia that since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been aggressive, militarily overbearing and threatening to the integrity of Russia, to absolutely no useful purpose. The conventional Western comment says the NATO governments have underestimated “Russia’s determination to dominate its traditional sphere of influence.”
This is wrong. Russia has been amazingly tolerant of successful Western efforts to annex its “traditional sphere of influence,” if that term means the Warsaw Pact, which until 1991 was the Communist counterpart to NATO, lending troops to enforce the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which held that membership in the Warsaw Pact and in the “Socialist bloc” was irreversible.
Mikhail Gorbachev reversed it. He withdrew troops from Afghanistan.
NATO was redefined by President George H.W. Bush, as he recounts in his memoirs, as “a political instrument of European stability” rather than a force of military confrontation. On those terms Gorbachev agreed to the unification of Germany within NATO. Warsaw Pact states were invited to go their own way, and they did—into NATO.
Came the American-sponsored “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine, installing pro-American governments, followed by the Bush administration’s efforts to get NATO to give them a formal Military Action Plan for membership, an initiative fortunately blocked by Germany and France. And in February of this year, Kosovo, Serbian since the 12th century, was—illegally—declared by the U.S. and the EU to be an independent nation.
This was the turning point for Russia. Now the United States and the EU had not only unilaterally dismembered Serbia but were attempting to make two states historically part of Russia into Western satellites. Georgia and Ukraine had not simply been part of the Soviet Union, but before that of czarist Russia.
US: The dishonest broker
There are many reasons for America’s failure to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians but the most fundamental one is that it is a dishonest broker. As a result of its palpable partiality towards Israel, America has lost all credibility in the eyes not only of the Palestinians but of the wider Arab and Muslim worlds.
My Ron Paul rant…
Every liberal who ever said we can’t leave Iraq because without the Americans there the place would descend into chaos… is a passive racist. This is a white supremacist assumption.
My main point was that the biggest social catastrophe for Black and Brown folk in the US today is the criminal justice system and the American gulag that goes with it.
One candidate has quoted the figures on how this has unfairly impacted African Americans. Ron Paul. He opposes the criminalization of drugs. The issue of blanket pardons — within the President’s authority, and the de-prioritization of federal drug enforcement, are both within the Prez’s purview.
One point I emphasized in my rant is the difference between agreeing with someone’s expressed views and the net effect of someone’s likely actions.
In this case, I pose a hypothetical question. If Ron Paul were elected, what would the net effect of his policies be on the American Gulag, given the capabilities and limitations of the office?
Iraq and Afghanistan have become abattoirs. Stopping this war is an urgent and immediate moral imperative.
Let me add something to this. As an anti-imperialist, who believes US hegemony in the world is the most destructive and dangerous political force in our world, and as someone who wants to see that political power broken, for good, there is no single action that would underline an immediate and decisive loss of some of that power than US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is exactly why whichever DLC-anointed candidate is nominated, the Democratic Party leadership has not the least intention of reversing what is going on in Southwest Asia: the permanent post-Cold War re-disposition of the imperial armed forces of the United States of America. The leadership of the Democrtatic Party is committed to American imperialism.
Hillary’s Bones – A Coup Tutorial
30th September 2010, 03:23 pm by Stan
In light of the coup attempt in progress in Ecuador at this very moment, I am posting the 2nd draft of a blog-book on the coup last year in Honduras. Patience. I’ll put some up, tidy it, then put up some more. But this is not a time to sit on something that shows the [...]
Canada, Honduras and the Coup d’Etat
Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans have protested the coup, denouncing the military, the local oligarchy and the US as the main perpetrators of Zelaya's removal.
But the extent to which countries like Italy, South Korea, Taiwan and Canada, all of which have significant trade and investment links with Honduras are connected to the coup has remained largely unexplored.
In Canada, with the exception of a few editorials in the mainstream media, little attention has been paid to what is certainly one of the most important events in the hemisphere over the last decade. While Canada’s links to Central America are much less significant than those of the US, they are still worth exploring.
Honduras
Far from calling for the return of Zelaya to power and condemning the military’s actions, Canada’s good-neighbour ambiguity has ignored the violence unleashed by the coup regime, and the position of organizations such as the UN General Assembly, whose members demanded that Zelaya be allowed to return to the presidency.
Canada also declined to condemn the military and the coup government after massive peaceful resistance marches across Honduras were violently repressed by the coup regime, which also moved to temporarily shut down radio and TV stations critical of the coup. Detentions, torture, disappearances, beatings and murders of anti-coup activists have continued unabated since the coup.
On November 29, the de facto government presided over the country's regularly scheduled presidential elections. Dr. Juan Almendares, former presidential candidate and ex-rector of the Autonomous University of Honduras, calls the November elections a "second coup."
"We are faced with a situation that’s very delicate, where there was a military coup, where a president is named, and then there is a second coup, which was the election, the fraudulent election," he said in an interview at his clinic in Tegucigalpa.
Almendares points out that the same soldiers that have beaten, tortured and killed Hondurans were responsible for guarding the ballot boxes on November 29.
"There is no doubt that there was fraud, because they were illegitimate elections," said Almendares.
Regardless, Canada’s Junior Foreign Minister Peter Kent’s praise for the country's controversial elections was glowing.
“While Sunday’s elections were not monitored by international organizations such as the Organization of American States, we are encouraged by reports from civil society organizations that there was a strong turnout for the elections, that they appear to have been run freely and fairly and that there was no major violence,” said Kent.
Canada alone in opposing the return of Zelaya in Honduras; here ...
USW Canada: USW’s Global Union Condemns Military Coup in Honduras
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
29 Sept - Op-Eds & FB Virus
Biotech Company to Patent Fuel-Secreting Bacterium
The bacterium’s product, which it secretes like sweat, is a class of hydrocarbon molecules called alkanes that are chemically indistinguishable from the ones made in oil refineries. The organism can grow in bodies of water unfit for drinking or on land that is useless for farming, according to the company, Joule Unlimited of Cambridge, Mass.
“We make very clean, sulfur-free hydrocarbons that drop directly into the existing infrastructure for the production of diesel fuel,” said William J. Sims, the chief executive of Joule. The object, he said, was not to be an alternative for fossil fuels, but “to become a viable replacement.”
Retiring Later Is Hard Road for Laborers
one in three workers over age 58 does a physically demanding job
15 Shocking Facts Show That the Middle Class is Being Wiped Out
The very foundations of the U.S. economy have rotted away and we now find ourselves on the verge of an economic collapse.
This economic nightmare has taken literally decades to develop, and both Democrats and Republicans have contributed greatly to this disaster.
As millions more Americans continue to climb on to the "safety net", how long is it going to be before it breaks?
The reality is that the system can only support so many people. We are now at a point where our anti-poverty programs are clearly unsustainable in the long-term, but nobody has a solution for how we are going to get all of these people off of these programs or how we are going to provide good jobs for all of them.
The cost of every U.S. government anti-poverty program is absolutely soaring. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is already running a budget deficit that is approaching 1.5 trillion dollars every year. If you cannot understand that we have a very serious problem on our hands then you are probably not awake.
The U.S. economic system is dying. Blaming the other political party is not a solution. Running around the country offering "hope" and "change" and giving people a vague sense that things will get "better" soon is not going to cut it either.
The American people need very real economic solutions to very real economic problems.
Our Acute Case of Fiscal Madness
VIRUS ON FB using your pictures.It says you have been tagged in a
picture, wants you to click on a link to see it, then hacks into your
computer & all your accounts, including banking & other secure
accounts.It destroys your computer.Once hacked into your computer, it
...sends e-mails to your friends telling them they have been tagged in
pictures & starts the process again.PLEASE RE-POST URGENT
Teambox is an Open Source, Social Network-Influenced Online Project Management App
Teambox works a lot like most project management software, but with a better flow of communication and overall organization. While that's the main draw, there are a couple of notable features. Projects can have permissions, so you don't have to give everyone access to the project. Teambox also works a a mobile app so you can use your smartphone for updates when you're away from the computer.
Opera Widgets
All four members of Project Gulf Impact were in hospital after "chemical poisoning"
Introduction to Microorganisms: Bacteria, Archaea, Fungi
Thaindian News
Sea-snot blizzard ’caused by Gulf spill’
The addition of oil may cause the sea snot to coalesce into giant blobs called marine mucilage, which can grow more than a hundred miles (160 kilometers) long, according to Roberto Danovaro at Italy’s Polytechnic University of Marche.
Phytoplanktons produce more mucus when there’s more carbon and less nitrogen and phosphorus available-”exactly the case created by the oil spill,” Danovaro said.
He added that if seas are consistently calm, mucilage could become very large and persist for months, allowing disease-causing bacteria to accumulate within the blobs, Danovaro said.
truthout
KBR Under Pressure From Congress Over Allegations of Poisoning Soldiers
Water map shows billions at risk of 'water insecurity'
Researchers compiled a composite index of "water threats" that includes issues such as scarcity and pollution.
The most severe threat category encompasses 3.4 billion people.
Writing in the journal Nature, they say that in western countries, conserving water for people through reservoirs and dams works for people, but not nature.
They urge developing countries not to follow the same path.
Instead, they say governments should to invest in water management strategies that combine infrastructure with "natural" options such as safeguarding watersheds, wetlands and flood plains.
One concept advocated by development organisations nowadays is integrated water management, where the needs of all users are taken into account and where natural features are integrated with human engineering.
One widely-cited example concerns the watersheds that supply New York, in the Catskill Mountains and elsewhere around the city.
The city invested in a programme of land protection and conservation; this has maintained quality, and is calculated to have been cheaper than the alternative of building treatment works.
Mark Smith, head of the water programme at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) who was not involved in the current study, said this sort of approach was beginning to take hold in the developing world, though "the concrete and steel model remains the default".
Muslim developer defends NY Ground Zero plan
Mr Gamal claims there has been a campaign of deception involving inaccuracies and falsehoods about the proposed Islamic Centre.
"The narrative is one of deception, and what's been fuelling the fire is misinformation about the project," he says, which is why this week the young developer is doing media interviews for the first time since the row intensified.
( Toxic Media using distortion and lies to flog Hate and Racism )
CCPA in Nova Scotia - Three exciting upcoming events
Managing the Margins of the Labour Market: Developments in Labour Market Regulation in Australia, the EU and Canada,
Identifying Hate in a Liberal Multicultural State
New study claims ADHD 'has a genetic link'Scientists from Cardiff University, writing in The Lancet, said the disorder was a brain problem like autism.
The bacterium’s product, which it secretes like sweat, is a class of hydrocarbon molecules called alkanes that are chemically indistinguishable from the ones made in oil refineries. The organism can grow in bodies of water unfit for drinking or on land that is useless for farming, according to the company, Joule Unlimited of Cambridge, Mass.
“We make very clean, sulfur-free hydrocarbons that drop directly into the existing infrastructure for the production of diesel fuel,” said William J. Sims, the chief executive of Joule. The object, he said, was not to be an alternative for fossil fuels, but “to become a viable replacement.”
Retiring Later Is Hard Road for Laborers
one in three workers over age 58 does a physically demanding job
15 Shocking Facts Show That the Middle Class is Being Wiped Out
The very foundations of the U.S. economy have rotted away and we now find ourselves on the verge of an economic collapse.
This economic nightmare has taken literally decades to develop, and both Democrats and Republicans have contributed greatly to this disaster.
As millions more Americans continue to climb on to the "safety net", how long is it going to be before it breaks?
The reality is that the system can only support so many people. We are now at a point where our anti-poverty programs are clearly unsustainable in the long-term, but nobody has a solution for how we are going to get all of these people off of these programs or how we are going to provide good jobs for all of them.
The cost of every U.S. government anti-poverty program is absolutely soaring. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is already running a budget deficit that is approaching 1.5 trillion dollars every year. If you cannot understand that we have a very serious problem on our hands then you are probably not awake.
The U.S. economic system is dying. Blaming the other political party is not a solution. Running around the country offering "hope" and "change" and giving people a vague sense that things will get "better" soon is not going to cut it either.
The American people need very real economic solutions to very real economic problems.
Our Acute Case of Fiscal Madness
In a flurry of blind panic and irrational exuberance, organizations from the European Central Bank to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suddenly abandoned everything we had learned, at a bitter cost, about economics during recessions and decided that fiscal austerity was the way to go while the world was in the depths of a slump — indeed, many claimed that spending cuts would actually be expansionary.
Not only was there an illogical push for austerity, but there also emerged a widespread demand for central banks to raise interest rates in the face of falling inflation and high unemployment.
This madness was exemplified by the O.E.C.D.’s economic outlook report in May, which supported these ideas. But the O.E.C.D. has suddenly changed its tune. “In the short term, the weakness can be dealt with [through] the prolongation of some of the monetary accommodation in some countries,” the O.E.C.D.’s secretary general, Angel Gurria, told Reuters on Sept. 17.
This is as close as such organizations ever get to admitting that they were wrong.
And speaking of the rewards of austerity, I think it’s worth checking to see whether there have been any.
Full Report: The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America
I: Casualties of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage
——-II: The Rise of the Economic Elite
——-III: Exposing Our Enemy: Meet the Economic Elite
——-IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat
——-V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy
——-VI: How to Fight Back and Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won
Full Report: The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America
I: Casualties of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage
——-II: The Rise of the Economic Elite
——-III: Exposing Our Enemy: Meet the Economic Elite
——-IV: The Financial Coup d’Etat
——-V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy
——-VI: How to Fight Back and Win: Common Ground Issues That Must Be Won
VIRUS ON FB using your pictures.It says you have been tagged in a
picture, wants you to click on a link to see it, then hacks into your
computer & all your accounts, including banking & other secure
accounts.It destroys your computer.Once hacked into your computer, it
...sends e-mails to your friends telling them they have been tagged in
pictures & starts the process again.PLEASE RE-POST URGENT
Teambox is an Open Source, Social Network-Influenced Online Project Management App
Teambox works a lot like most project management software, but with a better flow of communication and overall organization. While that's the main draw, there are a couple of notable features. Projects can have permissions, so you don't have to give everyone access to the project. Teambox also works a a mobile app so you can use your smartphone for updates when you're away from the computer.
Opera Widgets
All four members of Project Gulf Impact were in hospital after "chemical poisoning"
Introduction to Microorganisms: Bacteria, Archaea, Fungi
Thaindian News
Sea-snot blizzard ’caused by Gulf spill’
The addition of oil may cause the sea snot to coalesce into giant blobs called marine mucilage, which can grow more than a hundred miles (160 kilometers) long, according to Roberto Danovaro at Italy’s Polytechnic University of Marche.
Phytoplanktons produce more mucus when there’s more carbon and less nitrogen and phosphorus available-”exactly the case created by the oil spill,” Danovaro said.
He added that if seas are consistently calm, mucilage could become very large and persist for months, allowing disease-causing bacteria to accumulate within the blobs, Danovaro said.
- Global warming causes rise of gigantic mucus-like sea blobs - Oct 09, 2009
- Environmentalists worried over oil spill - Aug 10, 2010
- Giant Oil Plume Seen In Alabama - May 28, 2010
- Tiny Gulf sea creature could shed light on impact of oil spill - Aug 28, 2010
- Brad Pitt raises voice against oil spill - Aug 24, 2010
- Top Kill: BP's Latest Cork On The Gulf Gusher - May 26, 2010
- Oil spills increase arsenic levels in the ocean: Study - Jul 03, 2010
- NGO wants oil spills on Maharashtra coast probed (With Images) - Aug 23, 2010
truthout
KBR Under Pressure From Congress Over Allegations of Poisoning Soldiers
If a Congressman from Oregon has his way, then American taxpayers would not be expected to foot the legal bills for private military contractors like the former Halliburton subsidiary that allegedly allowed dozens of National Guard troops to be poisoned by a dangerous chemical in Iraq.
Legislation introduced to Congress by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) on Wednesday would require the military to notify Congress before accepting substantial legal liability on behalf of its contractors and prevent contractors guilty of gross negligence from winning new contracts.
The legislation could spell trouble for Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), the massive contractor that was secretly granted liability immunity as part of at least one wartime contract since 2001.
KBR has since split from Halliburton, its former parent company, and faces a list of lawsuits based on serious allegations, including poisoning soldiers with fumes from open burn pits in Iraq, allowing soldiers to be electrocuted in showers with faulty wiring, failing to protect female soldiers from sexual assault, participating in human trafficking, and the list goes on.
"KBR's repeated negligence has endangered our troops and cost lives," Blumenauer said. "Such a long record of alleged misconduct indicates to me that KBR did not fear being held responsible by anyone. Our war contracting process does too little to ensure that contractors act with the best interests of our troops and taxpayers in mind, and we're going to change that."
Researchers compiled a composite index of "water threats" that includes issues such as scarcity and pollution.
The most severe threat category encompasses 3.4 billion people.
Writing in the journal Nature, they say that in western countries, conserving water for people through reservoirs and dams works for people, but not nature.
They urge developing countries not to follow the same path.
Instead, they say governments should to invest in water management strategies that combine infrastructure with "natural" options such as safeguarding watersheds, wetlands and flood plains.
One concept advocated by development organisations nowadays is integrated water management, where the needs of all users are taken into account and where natural features are integrated with human engineering.
One widely-cited example concerns the watersheds that supply New York, in the Catskill Mountains and elsewhere around the city.
Water from these areas historically needed no filtering.
That threatened to change in the 1990s, due to agricultural pollution and other issues.The city invested in a programme of land protection and conservation; this has maintained quality, and is calculated to have been cheaper than the alternative of building treatment works.
Mark Smith, head of the water programme at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) who was not involved in the current study, said this sort of approach was beginning to take hold in the developing world, though "the concrete and steel model remains the default".
Muslim developer defends NY Ground Zero plan
Mr Gamal claims there has been a campaign of deception involving inaccuracies and falsehoods about the proposed Islamic Centre.
"The narrative is one of deception, and what's been fuelling the fire is misinformation about the project," he says, which is why this week the young developer is doing media interviews for the first time since the row intensified.
( Toxic Media using distortion and lies to flog Hate and Racism )
CCPA in Nova Scotia - Three exciting upcoming events
Managing the Margins of the Labour Market: Developments in Labour Market Regulation in Australia, the EU and Canada,
Identifying Hate in a Liberal Multicultural State
New study claims ADHD 'has a genetic link'Scientists from Cardiff University, writing in The Lancet, said the disorder was a brain problem like autism.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
25 Aug - Quick Picks / Articles
Image by NICK LINK aka FULL MAG via FlickrPost-recession report: Looking at the past tells us there is reason to worry
A new report by CCPA Senior Economist Armine Yalnizyan warns that if past recessions are any guide, between 750,000 and 1.8 million more Canadians will be counted as poor before recovery is complete.
Click here to read the full report.
Truth, Lies, Reality
Laura Knight Jadczyk / SoTT
The line demarcating that which is true from that which is not didn't appear in our own civilization overnight; rather, it developed gradually in Western philosophical thought. The issues of truth and falsehood have occupied many eminent thinkers and until postmodernism was thrust upon us by pathological thinking, truth and falsehood were, at least in theory, understood?
With postmodernism holding sway over our culture, the idea that no boundaries exist between 'real' and 'unreal' penetrates our lives in a way that is unhealthy and unwholesome. There are many contrasts in our symbolic/moral universes (our personal, mutual and collective realities), some of them more profound than others so that the effect of postmodernism on our thinking can produce greater or lesser stress in our lives depending on where and how it is applied. A few of these contrasts are things like black vs. white, day vs. night, sea vs. land, mountains vs. valley, moving into abstract contrasts like good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, justice vs. injustice, and, of course, truth vs. lies.
The view that anything goes, that everything is a real, but different, version of reality has led to a form of cultural schizophrenia from which we must emerge if we are to survive in a world that is changing as rapidly as ours. History plays a big part in this schizophrenic reality. There are a great many versions of reality and numerous narratives that have some sort of value, but then we come to the challenge of examining everything and determining which is morally, or more importantly, empirically correct.
As the brain interacts with its environment, synaptic circuits combine to form synaptic maps of the world perceived by the senses. These maps describe small segments of that world - shape, color, movement - and these maps are scattered throughout the brain. As the brain's synaptic network evolves, beginning at birth - or even before - these maps process information simultaneously and in parallel.
Based on our synaptic maps of the world, we are enabled to have a more or less objective view of reality.
There is a striking similarity between life and thought. Just as there are more potential life forms than the planet can hold, there are more potential ideas than our minds can possibly absorb and remember.
Just as evolutionary natural selection may generate change by choosing from among the many potential forms of life, so may thought be able to generate evolutionary change by choosing among many potential thoughts.
The master evolutionary mechanism is found in the wave function of the universe. The observer guides the selection from an infinite number of potential arrangements that the universe may assume from moment to moment.
Many individuals have decided that this Quantum Uncertainty means that you can "create your own reality" by what you believe, or depending upon what you give your attention to. This is a popular idea among many New Age types, and is actually the foundation of most religions whether they realize it or not. Let's have a look at what can be done with a little twist of scientific knowledge:
Declassified : Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
With postmodernism holding sway over our culture, the idea that no boundaries exist between 'real' and 'unreal' penetrates our lives in a way that is unhealthy and unwholesome. There are many contrasts in our symbolic/moral universes (our personal, mutual and collective realities), some of them more profound than others so that the effect of postmodernism on our thinking can produce greater or lesser stress in our lives depending on where and how it is applied. A few of these contrasts are things like black vs. white, day vs. night, sea vs. land, mountains vs. valley, moving into abstract contrasts like good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, justice vs. injustice, and, of course, truth vs. lies.
The view that anything goes, that everything is a real, but different, version of reality has led to a form of cultural schizophrenia from which we must emerge if we are to survive in a world that is changing as rapidly as ours. History plays a big part in this schizophrenic reality. There are a great many versions of reality and numerous narratives that have some sort of value, but then we come to the challenge of examining everything and determining which is morally, or more importantly, empirically correct.
As the brain interacts with its environment, synaptic circuits combine to form synaptic maps of the world perceived by the senses. These maps describe small segments of that world - shape, color, movement - and these maps are scattered throughout the brain. As the brain's synaptic network evolves, beginning at birth - or even before - these maps process information simultaneously and in parallel.
Based on our synaptic maps of the world, we are enabled to have a more or less objective view of reality.
There is a striking similarity between life and thought. Just as there are more potential life forms than the planet can hold, there are more potential ideas than our minds can possibly absorb and remember.
Just as evolutionary natural selection may generate change by choosing from among the many potential forms of life, so may thought be able to generate evolutionary change by choosing among many potential thoughts.
The master evolutionary mechanism is found in the wave function of the universe. The observer guides the selection from an infinite number of potential arrangements that the universe may assume from moment to moment.
Many individuals have decided that this Quantum Uncertainty means that you can "create your own reality" by what you believe, or depending upon what you give your attention to. This is a popular idea among many New Age types, and is actually the foundation of most religions whether they realize it or not. Let's have a look at what can be done with a little twist of scientific knowledge:
Declassified : Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Spying on Free Speech Nearly At Cold War Level
The ACLU said that the old political spying tendencies are running high again. Individuals and groups are being monitored and harassed for "little more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights."
Tariq Aziz: 'Britain and the US killed Iraq. I wish I was martyred'
WMD an illusion was to deter Iran, says former minister
• Nostalgia for Saddam Hussein rule – but he calls on US to stay
• Nostalgia for Saddam Hussein rule – but he calls on US to stay
“Hit Squads” Meant To “Liquidate” Taliban Leaders Killing Everyone But…
One might ask how America manages to consistently “get it wrong” when hunting the Taliban, why so many schools, hospitals, Mosques, funerals and wedding parties are attacked and how the Taliban manages to move thousands of fighters around the country openly in truck convoys with total impunity.
The answer is simple, when you talk to liars, you hear lies.
American special operations groups are the laughing stock of Afghanistan. They dart from one end of the country to the other, protecting drug shipments, settling personal grudges and working as enforcers for warlords, perhaps unknowingly or are we sure? With $65 billion dollars in opium/heroin revenue floating around, can anyone be trusted?
As egg producers consolidate, problems of just one company can be far-reaching
Just 192 large egg companies own about 95 percent of laying hens in this country, down from 2,500 in 1987, according to United Egg Producers, an industry group. Most of those producers are concentrated in five states: Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and California.
Arctic research station site chosen
Nunavut community of Cambridge Bay beats out Resolute Bay, Pond Inlet
drink a glass or two of water before meals, as that’s the best way to curb appetite and shed those pounds
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
22 July - Monopoly News
Remains of the Day: Is Unlimited Data Going the Way of the Dodo?
Bernanke's economy comment batters market
Stocks tumbled after Bernanke acknowledged the labor market's continued weakness while offering few specific options to stimulate lending and investment.
"The market sold off because unfortunately there is no remedy provided in Bernanke's commentary to the rising threat of deflation, the excess capacity in the economy and the malfunctioning of the credit system," said Joe Battipaglia, market strategist at Stifel Nicolaus in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
"We are now giving up on the notion of a standard recovery in the U.S. economy."
Obama signs sweeping Wall Street overhaul into law
President Barack Obama signed into law on Wednesday the most comprehensive financial regulatory overhaul since the Great Depression, vowing to stop risky behavior on Wall Street that imperiled the U.S. economy.
Obama, facing voter unrest over Wall Street bailouts that have failed to spark a strong Main Street job recovery, pledged taxpayers would never again have to pump billions of dollars into failing firms to protect the economy. Wealthy donors have started to steer more campaign contributions to Republicans, who voted overwhelmingly against the reforms.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an influential business group that often criticizes Obama's economic policies, said it would have the opposite effect.
"Such a broad, sweeping bill epitomizes a law with unintended consequences that creates more uncertainty for American businesses," said Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO of the Chamber.
The American Bankers Association expressed disappointment with the legislation, saying it "contains a tsunami of new rules and restrictions for traditional banks that had nothing to do with causing the financial crisis in the first place."
( There's a sense of timing for you. Scapegoat banks and Wall Street for the wrecking crew that destroyed the restraints in the system ; ex-President Clinton self-identified himself as responsible ; and the inevitable result of businesses reacting to a carrot dangled infront of their noses with guarantees against nasty consequences. This attacks the system of issuing loans to trustworthy repayers at the very moment when uncertainty has peaked. 'Fixing' the system ? Oh, he 'fixed' it all right. )
Google Explains Why Making Special Copyright Laws For Newspapers Is A Mistake
We've written a few times about how ridiculous the FTC's proposals to "save journalism" are. They're much more focused on saving newspapers, not journalism. And they seem to totally misunderstand the problem -- or to believe the problem is some amorphous threat from "internet aggregators," which is based on no actual evidence. Google has now responded to the FTC's proposal, and, as Jeff Jarvis notes, effectively "taken the FTC to school" on the basics of journalism economics and copyright.
What does the state want?
Crosbie Fitch (profile), Jul 21st, 2010 @ 4:59pmThe question is: what does the state want?
Would they preserve the centralised control of the newspaper corporations they know and love, or unleash umpteen zillion uncontrolled loudmouths?
If they can fix it so the indies starve in the gutter unless they go cap in hand to the news corps., then they will happily fix it so the latter remain paymasters.
The problem is, getting away with it.
They managed to steal a trillion from the taxpayer only recently to give to the corrupt bankers, so they aren't exactly amateurs at this sort of thing.
Would they preserve the centralised control of the newspaper corporations they know and love, or unleash umpteen zillion uncontrolled loudmouths?
If they can fix it so the indies starve in the gutter unless they go cap in hand to the news corps., then they will happily fix it so the latter remain paymasters.
The problem is, getting away with it.
They managed to steal a trillion from the taxpayer only recently to give to the corrupt bankers, so they aren't exactly amateurs at this sort of thing.
Re: Re: Some quibbles with Google.
Anonymous Coward, Jul 21st, 2010 @ 8:55pmYou are confusing intellectual "property" with physical property. The U.S. at one time was very skeptical of IP laws and it did perfectly well. Other nations that were also skeptical of such laws, or didn't even have them, also did well. For example, see
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm
and even the founding fathers have acknowledged some of the problems IP laws have caused and the success of nations without them. The difference with the nations you mention is that they often have oppressive institutions that take away our freedoms. It is the actions of their institutions that cause their problems. IP itself is implemented by an institution whereas its lack is not.
The fact is that art and music will be made perfectly fine without copy protection laws. The problem is that the federal (and local) govt(s) keeps getting in the way of its creation. For instance, native Americans used to make their own songs and dances and whatnot. It's perfectly natural. What did the federal government do? To quote from a book I'm reading entitled California Vieja by Phoebe S. Kropp (good book btw)
"the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) waged an extended campaign to discourage the Cupenos from performing old dances, games, rituals ... [they] feared that traditions would slow Indians' assimilation into white society ... by the early 1910s, the Pala agent reported ... that the Indians there performed dances only "for the purpose of attracting the attendance of white visitors" ... By 1918 the agent ... predicted ... the dances will disappear ..."
(P 98)
So basically these dances were only allowed for the purpose of attracting tourists because tourists helped generate revenue. and this wasn't even that long ago, only as late as 1918. People naturally creating music and dancing and traditions and culture and art without copyright and such is a perfectly healthy and natural thing for humans to do. For the government to come in and then decide that these cultural norms should be commoditized and that culture should be controlled by a handful of monopolists so that they can make money (ie: record labels and music CD's under copyright) is unacceptable. Instead, the govt should just mind its own business and focus on more important things instead of wasting tax dollars on making everyone's lives more miserable.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against.htm
and even the founding fathers have acknowledged some of the problems IP laws have caused and the success of nations without them. The difference with the nations you mention is that they often have oppressive institutions that take away our freedoms. It is the actions of their institutions that cause their problems. IP itself is implemented by an institution whereas its lack is not.
The fact is that art and music will be made perfectly fine without copy protection laws. The problem is that the federal (and local) govt(s) keeps getting in the way of its creation. For instance, native Americans used to make their own songs and dances and whatnot. It's perfectly natural. What did the federal government do? To quote from a book I'm reading entitled California Vieja by Phoebe S. Kropp (good book btw)
"the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) waged an extended campaign to discourage the Cupenos from performing old dances, games, rituals ... [they] feared that traditions would slow Indians' assimilation into white society ... by the early 1910s, the Pala agent reported ... that the Indians there performed dances only "for the purpose of attracting the attendance of white visitors" ... By 1918 the agent ... predicted ... the dances will disappear ..."
(P 98)
So basically these dances were only allowed for the purpose of attracting tourists because tourists helped generate revenue. and this wasn't even that long ago, only as late as 1918. People naturally creating music and dancing and traditions and culture and art without copyright and such is a perfectly healthy and natural thing for humans to do. For the government to come in and then decide that these cultural norms should be commoditized and that culture should be controlled by a handful of monopolists so that they can make money (ie: record labels and music CD's under copyright) is unacceptable. Instead, the govt should just mind its own business and focus on more important things instead of wasting tax dollars on making everyone's lives more miserable.
Patent enforcement companies speak at SF conference
The moderator asked Spangenberg a question about how he approaches companies to whom he wants to license his patents. "Do you initiate contact with them or just file a lawsuit?"
"File a lawsuit," said Spangenberg without hesitation, explaining why that, to him, is the best strategy in the post-MedImmune environment. "If you send a message, shortly thereafter you'll see a notice that you're a defendant in a declaratory judgment action, typically from Fish & Richardson or one of their other favored firms... Microsoft sues you based on that letter. Then they have the home field advantage."
He added: "I'm not criticizing them for doing it. I'm just saying, that's what's going to happen."
Acacia CEO Paul Ryan agreed that the Spangenberg's strategy is the only smart one a patent licensor can pursue these days. "If you're a small company, any offer of IP [to a large company] gives them an invitation to sue you."
Against Monopoly
Another player exploiting patents--to the cost of the consumer *
The New York Times has a good short article on the growth of patent trolls (which it terms as non practicing entities or NPEs) link here. The story hangs on the suit against EBay for $3.8 billion by XPRT Ventures which goes unmentioned thereafter.
It then describes the basic patent troll model: "The basic idea is that an investment firm buys a pre-existing patent for, say, $2 million. It then sues perhaps a dozen companies that use technology potentially overlapping the patent. Each firm that fights may end up paying $500,000 or more to defend itself and could also face penalties. The alternative is to settle for, say, $1 million or so. If just three firms pay up to avoid a battle, the patent owner makes big money."The article then switches to a "new" business response to the patent troll threat, the counter-troll that acquires patents to sue or cross license other firms by which its member companies might be sued for infringement. Thus for a generous annual fee, it seems to offer some insurance against loss.
*Copyright Notice: We don't think much of copyright, so you can do what you want with the content on this blog. Of course we are hungry for publicity, so we would be pleased if you avoided plagiarism and gave us credit for what we have written. We encourage you not to impose copyright restrictions on your "derivative" works, but we won't try to stop you. For the legally or statist minded, you can consider yourself subject to a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Canadian Court Lets Perfect 10 Case Against Google Move Forward
Last month, we wrote about a countersuit by Rapidshare, which detailed how Perfect 10 is now a "copyright troll," that (according to Rapidshare's claims) purposely tries to spread its works online in order to have more companies to sue. Obviously, a key target of Perfect 10 has been Google, though Perfect 10 keeps losing (and then continues to come up with ridiculous reasons to keep the lawsuit alive).
More Porn Companies Filing Mass Lawsuits Against File Sharers
THREsq reports that 65 "John Does" have been sued for accessing a gay porn movie via BitTorrent in a Texas court.
We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for July 21, 2010
Admitted to or not, all Homo sapiens live by a philosophy of fact or fiction; faith or reason; dogma or science; miracles or evidence. Worldwide, to one degree or another, I guess that at least 90% fall into the categories of fiction, faith, dogma, and miracles. Perhaps 1%-2% live inclusively by fact,reason, science, and evidence; leaving about 8% who live by some sort of mix. Any of these philosophies, chronicling Homo sapiens' existence, demand two bedrock affirmations: one defines what is PRIME in the known universe, and the other defines the origin and the nature of EVIL, the antithesis of PRIME. The first immutable paradigm, PRIME, is defined as first in time; first in existence; first quality, rank,degree, influence, importance, and value. The INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING is the only infallibly provable existent in the known universe that meets such a criterion of Prime qua Prime. Defined another way: When I am here everything is here. When I am gone everything is gone. Hence this infallible paradigm cannot be disproved or proven otherwise.
that is not the main reason I write this essay. That reason is to expose STATISM and THEISM as the very genesis of EVIL in the known universe. They are also known as Church, State, Religion, and Government. Both of them have an evolved history of planned intent to destroy and enslave PRIME via genocide, infanticide, slavery, rape, and torture. Among these endless statisms and theisms is the United States, which has historically employed all of them for its establishment and quest for empire. To the readers who are convinced that I'm crazy and a liar, I suggest the reading of HOWARD ZINN'S book, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, and the many works of NOAM CHOMSKY. Their documented evidence cannot be denied---Unless you're an ORWELLIAN automaton, MACHIAVELLIAN despot, or just a JINGOISTIC fool. This brings me to the primary reason that I chose to write this essay---MURDERED CHILDREN! It's preeminently proven that, by choice or policy, to harm children through acts of violence, robbery, murder, jealously, rape, torture OR by STATIST policy, primarily WAR, is the very genesis of EVIL! Therefore, ONE(allow me to repeat--ONE!) infant killed by military action, government orders, or by "smart" bombs suffering I.Q. meltdown is an act of pure EVIL in no way different than individual killing or voilence!! One graphic example of such warped morality: I recently watched an interview of Lyndon Johnson's daughter. When asked what words spoken by her dad are the most memorable to her. She said it was the following, "I only wish that I could do more for America's children who live in poverty and neglect." Like a napalm firestorm scorching across by mind, I wished for a chance to ask him , "What did you feel and think about when you gave orders to bomb and napalm Veitnam and Cambodia which resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands of children?" I would like to ask Obama a similar question as to what went through his mind when he picked General James Mattis, who said about the killing in Afghanistan, "It's fun to shoot people---you got guys that are a hell of a lot of fun to shoot 'em." In closing I righteously demand that people take their Just War and Collateral Damage, as justification for infanticide, and stick them where the sun never shines! Remember, any "human" who believes such crap has to accept such semantics for their OWN children, and we all know that is pure bullshit! LIKE THE LICENSE PLATE SAYS, "It should never hurt to be a child!" bob@bobclapp.com
Congress' confidence in Obama's war strategy slides
Congress overall still supports the U.S. mission and is unlikely to cut off funding
( Has war been declared yet ? Against whom and by whom ? Why, and what is the mission? Enquiring minds aren't receiving any answers to elementary questions. )
News Outlets Close to Suing Obama Administration Over Gitmo Rules
A coalition of major media organizations is on the verge of suing the Pentagon and the Obama administration over press limitations at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer for the news outlets said Tuesday.
( Wowsers. I'm sure the Administration that carries out global war and tortures for fun and profit is terribly concerned about what you might, maybe, someday, do. )
Need for Protection Against Ticks That Carry Lyme Disease Confirmed by New Research
There are some fairly easy preventative measures that individuals can take in order to prevent coming into contact with ticks:- Wear light-colored clothing so it's easy to see the ticks.
- Wear long sleeves and pants; tuck pants into socks or tape pants to boots.
- Use insect repellent containing DEET.
- Stay in the center of maintained trails.
- Perform frequent tick checks when you're outside.
- Do a tick check at the end of the day and again the following morning.
- Put your clothes in the dryer when you come home to dry out and kill the ticks.
"This data confirmed an increased chance of contracting Lyme disease in the metropolitan region of Chicago and sparked an interest in conducting further studies,"
API's Recycled Astroturf
API has launched a "new" Energy Citizens campaign to convince you, the average American, to help the oil industry trade group protect the lavish tax loopholes they currently enjoy. With that whole oil disaster in the Gulf, it looks like Congress might cut off the gravy train for oil companies when it comes to billions of dollars in tax breaks and direct subsidies every year. Now API has launched a new ad campaign to protect the handouts, as well as a new "grassroots" campaign to protect them.
Whooping Cough Epidemic Hits California
Six infants have died in California in what looks like the state's worst whooping cough epidemic in 50 years.
Monday, January 25, 2010
25 Jan - BlogNews
Persian Empire
Following a steady stream of recent philosophical visitors – Rorty, Habermas, Ricoeur – will Negri prove an appropriate guide for a country which is in Condoleeza Rice’s recent terms an ‘outpost of tyranny’, and as such most definitely outside of what America (though not Negri) understands by Empire?
It is impossible to ignore the Iranian experience of revolution – conceived in the first place precisely as coming ‘from below’ – and the manner in which it was all too quickly captured by repressive and reactionary factions. Many, it seems, put their faith in the long slow march of modernization, driven by the vast and technologically astute youth (the result of a post-revolutionary population boom in the 1980s). If there is to be a new Iranian revolution from below, it is unlikely to take the form of a plebeian carnival or quasi-Biblical ‘exodus’.
Robert Gates Confirms What U.S. Government Has Denied for Months: Blackwater Is in Pakistan
The Obama Brand: Feel Good While Overlords Loot the Treasury and Launch Imperial Wars
What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent, or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to re-inflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next fifteen to twenty years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, increasing the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan, which have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush's secrecy laws and restore habeas corpus.
Conspiracy Theories
Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.
( Self-fulfilling prophecy : the best way to deal with conspiracy suspicions is a conspiracy. )
Underwater, but Will They Leave the Pool?
A provocative paper by Brent White, a law professor at the University of Arizona,makes the case that borrowers are actually suffering from a norm asymmetry. In other words, they think they are obligated to repay their loans even if it is not in their financial interest to do so, while their lenders are free to do whatever maximizes profits. It 's as if borrowers are playing in a poker game in which they are the only ones who think bluffing is unethical.
That norm might have been appropriate when the lender was the local banker. More commonly these days, however, the loan was initiated by an aggressive mortgage broker who maximized his fees at the expense of the borrower s costs, while the debt was packaged and sold to investors who bought mortgage-backed securities in the hope of earning high returns, using models that predicted possible default rates.
Why Is a Utility Paying Customers?
As saving energy becomes a rallying cry for utilities and the government, Idaho Power is in the vanguard. Since 2004, it has been paying farmers like Mr. Erwin to cut power use at crucial times, resulting in drop-offs of as much as 5.6 percent of peak power demand.
In a related program, it pays homeowners to turn off their air-conditioners briefly at times of high demand.
Other efficiency initiatives by the utility, including one promoting attic insulation, have saved about 500,000 megawatt-hours of power since 2002, according to the company — roughly equal to the amount used by 5,000 gadget-filled homes over eight years.
Free Checking Could Go the Way of Free Toasters
Starting in July, banks will need explicit permission from customers before allowing them to use their debit cards to spend more than they have in their bank accounts on a one-time purchase. Similar restrictions will apply to A.T.M. withdrawals.
Banks earn billions in overdraft fees, money that helps pay for free checking.
A chunk of that revenue will disappear when some consumers elect not to sign up for the opportunity to spend more than they have. This week, Bank of America said that $160 million in overdraft fee revenue had already disappeared, because of changes it made in its policies ahead of the new federal rules.
When that money evaporates as other banks comply with the regulations, they’re going to try to make it up some other way, particularly if they’re paying more taxes to the federal government and have fewer ways to trade their way to outsize profits.
ACORN's Real Crime: Empowering the Poor
We've been getting an overload of bunk in recent weeks from a gaggle of Fox-brained Republican Congress critters. They've been flapping their gums to demonize and destroy a grassroots group that has offended them by--get ready to be outraged--organizing and helping to empower thousands of Americans who live in low-income and working-class neighborhoods all across the country.
ACORN is this grassroots group. For four decades, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has been going door to door, neighborhood to neighborhood, to extend basic democratic tools to people who've been dissed and dismissed by the political system. What ACORN's effort amounts to is civic education. Few members of the local chapters have ever been active in community decision making. After all, that process is usually held in the tight grip of moneyed interests who reside and work in distant, much tonier zip codes, and regular folks rarely are welcome.
Through ACORN, however, these powerless ones get an immersion in self-help democracy, learning how to operate in the public sphere to become both political and economic players. They form their own neighborhood organizations, elect officers, and choose a set of issues to push--from bank redlining to better garbage pickup, from rip-off utility bills to enforcement of antipollution regulations. They soon discover that working together, they have actual power to get things done through direct actions, group negotiations, and voter participation.
This demoWe've been getting an overload of bunk in recent weeks from a gaggle of Fox-brained Republican Congress critters. They've been flapping their gums to demonize and destroy a grassroots group that has offended them by--get ready to be outraged--organizing and helping to empower thousands of Americans who live in low-income and working-class neighborhoods all across the country.
An engaged, organized, educated, and motivated group of low-wage Americans with an agenda of progressive change is not a sight that delights the corporate establishment--especially when the group has proved to be an impressive force in congressional and presidential elections. This is why the money powers have unleashed (and funded) their snarling hounds of right-wing politics to go after ACORN with a blood lust.
The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now
You may now be surprised to find that you inadvertently gave Facebook the right to publicize your private information including status updates, photos, and shared links.
Want to change things back? Read on to find out how.
Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare
In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how shrimp are farmed in one region of India. The shrimp pond preparation begins with urea, superphosphate, and diesel, then progresses to the use of piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and antibiotics (including some that are banned in the U.S.), and ends by treating the shrimp with sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neurotoxicant), Borax, and occasionally caustic soda.
Upon arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA, and when researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics.
How Factory Farms Are Pumping Americans Full of Deadly Bacteria and Pathogens
After reading www.BirdFluBook.org, by Dr. Michael Greger, I was stunned to realize the extent to which we have endangered our health by allowing factory farms to flourish and produce 99 percent of the meat, dairy and eggs we eat. Not only are dangerous flu viruses mutating because of these concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), but we are also being exposed to some other very serious bacteria and pathogens. Things have gotten out of hand in our food production, especially in the livestock sector.
In Part I of my interview with Dr. Greger, he explained the growing potential of deadly flu viruses. In Part 2 of the interview, we discuss E. coli, salmonella and other worrisome pathogens.
The 15 most toxic places to live
On Street Tracing Haiti’s Pain, Survival Goes On
Avenue Poupelard crosses a major north-south thoroughfare, Avenue Martin Luther King. At their intersection, a sign in English — “We need help. Food. Water.” — has arrows pointing both east and west.
Haiti’s Homeless Are Short Hundreds of Thousands of Tents, Aid Groups Say
In Haiti, Many Amputees Have No Place to Go
Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm
Regulators and researchers can only guess how often radiotherapy accidents occur. With no single agency overseeing medical radiation, there is no central clearinghouse of cases. Accidents are chronically underreported, records show, and some states do not require that they be reported at all.
In June, The Times reported that a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer — and then kept quiet about it. In 2005, a Florida hospital disclosed that 77 brain cancer patients had received 50 percent more radiation than prescribed because one of the most powerful — and supposedly precise — linear accelerators had been programmed incorrectly for nearly a year.
Dr. John J. Feldmeier, a radiation oncologist at the University of Toledo and a leading authority on the treatment of radiation injuries, estimates that 1 in 20 patients will suffer injuries.
30 Japanese Hornets Massacre 30,000 Bees
Help desks under siege
Following a steady stream of recent philosophical visitors – Rorty, Habermas, Ricoeur – will Negri prove an appropriate guide for a country which is in Condoleeza Rice’s recent terms an ‘outpost of tyranny’, and as such most definitely outside of what America (though not Negri) understands by Empire?
It is impossible to ignore the Iranian experience of revolution – conceived in the first place precisely as coming ‘from below’ – and the manner in which it was all too quickly captured by repressive and reactionary factions. Many, it seems, put their faith in the long slow march of modernization, driven by the vast and technologically astute youth (the result of a post-revolutionary population boom in the 1980s). If there is to be a new Iranian revolution from below, it is unlikely to take the form of a plebeian carnival or quasi-Biblical ‘exodus’.
Robert Gates Confirms What U.S. Government Has Denied for Months: Blackwater Is in Pakistan
The Obama Brand: Feel Good While Overlords Loot the Treasury and Launch Imperial Wars
What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent, or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to re-inflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next fifteen to twenty years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, increasing the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan, which have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush's secrecy laws and restore habeas corpus.
Conspiracy Theories
Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.
( Self-fulfilling prophecy : the best way to deal with conspiracy suspicions is a conspiracy. )
Underwater, but Will They Leave the Pool?
A provocative paper by Brent White, a law professor at the University of Arizona,makes the case that borrowers are actually suffering from a norm asymmetry. In other words, they think they are obligated to repay their loans even if it is not in their financial interest to do so, while their lenders are free to do whatever maximizes profits. It 's as if borrowers are playing in a poker game in which they are the only ones who think bluffing is unethical.
That norm might have been appropriate when the lender was the local banker. More commonly these days, however, the loan was initiated by an aggressive mortgage broker who maximized his fees at the expense of the borrower s costs, while the debt was packaged and sold to investors who bought mortgage-backed securities in the hope of earning high returns, using models that predicted possible default rates.
Why Is a Utility Paying Customers?
As saving energy becomes a rallying cry for utilities and the government, Idaho Power is in the vanguard. Since 2004, it has been paying farmers like Mr. Erwin to cut power use at crucial times, resulting in drop-offs of as much as 5.6 percent of peak power demand.
In a related program, it pays homeowners to turn off their air-conditioners briefly at times of high demand.
Other efficiency initiatives by the utility, including one promoting attic insulation, have saved about 500,000 megawatt-hours of power since 2002, according to the company — roughly equal to the amount used by 5,000 gadget-filled homes over eight years.
Free Checking Could Go the Way of Free Toasters
Starting in July, banks will need explicit permission from customers before allowing them to use their debit cards to spend more than they have in their bank accounts on a one-time purchase. Similar restrictions will apply to A.T.M. withdrawals.
Banks earn billions in overdraft fees, money that helps pay for free checking.
A chunk of that revenue will disappear when some consumers elect not to sign up for the opportunity to spend more than they have. This week, Bank of America said that $160 million in overdraft fee revenue had already disappeared, because of changes it made in its policies ahead of the new federal rules.
When that money evaporates as other banks comply with the regulations, they’re going to try to make it up some other way, particularly if they’re paying more taxes to the federal government and have fewer ways to trade their way to outsize profits.
ACORN's Real Crime: Empowering the Poor
We've been getting an overload of bunk in recent weeks from a gaggle of Fox-brained Republican Congress critters. They've been flapping their gums to demonize and destroy a grassroots group that has offended them by--get ready to be outraged--organizing and helping to empower thousands of Americans who live in low-income and working-class neighborhoods all across the country.
ACORN is this grassroots group. For four decades, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has been going door to door, neighborhood to neighborhood, to extend basic democratic tools to people who've been dissed and dismissed by the political system. What ACORN's effort amounts to is civic education. Few members of the local chapters have ever been active in community decision making. After all, that process is usually held in the tight grip of moneyed interests who reside and work in distant, much tonier zip codes, and regular folks rarely are welcome.
Through ACORN, however, these powerless ones get an immersion in self-help democracy, learning how to operate in the public sphere to become both political and economic players. They form their own neighborhood organizations, elect officers, and choose a set of issues to push--from bank redlining to better garbage pickup, from rip-off utility bills to enforcement of antipollution regulations. They soon discover that working together, they have actual power to get things done through direct actions, group negotiations, and voter participation.
This demoWe've been getting an overload of bunk in recent weeks from a gaggle of Fox-brained Republican Congress critters. They've been flapping their gums to demonize and destroy a grassroots group that has offended them by--get ready to be outraged--organizing and helping to empower thousands of Americans who live in low-income and working-class neighborhoods all across the country.
An engaged, organized, educated, and motivated group of low-wage Americans with an agenda of progressive change is not a sight that delights the corporate establishment--especially when the group has proved to be an impressive force in congressional and presidential elections. This is why the money powers have unleashed (and funded) their snarling hounds of right-wing politics to go after ACORN with a blood lust.
The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now
You may now be surprised to find that you inadvertently gave Facebook the right to publicize your private information including status updates, photos, and shared links.
Want to change things back? Read on to find out how.
Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare
In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how shrimp are farmed in one region of India. The shrimp pond preparation begins with urea, superphosphate, and diesel, then progresses to the use of piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and antibiotics (including some that are banned in the U.S.), and ends by treating the shrimp with sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neurotoxicant), Borax, and occasionally caustic soda.
Upon arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA, and when researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics.
How Factory Farms Are Pumping Americans Full of Deadly Bacteria and Pathogens
After reading www.BirdFluBook.org, by Dr. Michael Greger, I was stunned to realize the extent to which we have endangered our health by allowing factory farms to flourish and produce 99 percent of the meat, dairy and eggs we eat. Not only are dangerous flu viruses mutating because of these concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), but we are also being exposed to some other very serious bacteria and pathogens. Things have gotten out of hand in our food production, especially in the livestock sector.
In Part I of my interview with Dr. Greger, he explained the growing potential of deadly flu viruses. In Part 2 of the interview, we discuss E. coli, salmonella and other worrisome pathogens.
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On Street Tracing Haiti’s Pain, Survival Goes On
Avenue Poupelard crosses a major north-south thoroughfare, Avenue Martin Luther King. At their intersection, a sign in English — “We need help. Food. Water.” — has arrows pointing both east and west.
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Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to Do Harm
Regulators and researchers can only guess how often radiotherapy accidents occur. With no single agency overseeing medical radiation, there is no central clearinghouse of cases. Accidents are chronically underreported, records show, and some states do not require that they be reported at all.
In June, The Times reported that a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer — and then kept quiet about it. In 2005, a Florida hospital disclosed that 77 brain cancer patients had received 50 percent more radiation than prescribed because one of the most powerful — and supposedly precise — linear accelerators had been programmed incorrectly for nearly a year.
Dr. John J. Feldmeier, a radiation oncologist at the University of Toledo and a leading authority on the treatment of radiation injuries, estimates that 1 in 20 patients will suffer injuries.
30 Japanese Hornets Massacre 30,000 Bees
Help desks under siege
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