Don’t Look Down: 10 Peculiarly Precarious Modern Buildings

By Mike

The world's worst skyscraper disaster is still fresh in our minds, and every year sees a new calamity in our global obsession with building storey after storey, higher and higher. You would think that all architects would be careful to  make their buildings look as stable as mountains. You'd be wrong. Thanks to modern building materials and behind-the-scenes architectural wizardry,  the new field of precarious-looking urban architecture is on the rise – as these ten vertigo-inducing examples illustrate.

(Image via: arch daily)

Capital Gate, Abu Dhabi – the most acutely leaning building in the world. It bows out 18 degrees from the vertical – in comparison, Pisa's famous tower is only leaning at 3.99 degrees. Technologically ambitious and architecturally stunning, it looks like nothing on earth. (Well, okay, it does look like something in particular, but this is a family-friendly corner of the Web and we refuse to draw certain parallels).

(Image via: cosmoworlds)

And by the looks of the first concept drawings, Capital Gate was meant to be even more ambitious. How on earth would this design have stayed up? Judging from the reworked shape, the designers couldn't answer that question either.

(Images via: luxuo)

If you live in the Danish principality of Rødovre, you may see this queasy-making structure against the skyline. This 'Sky Village' is made up of 60 metre square blocks built up around the building's core. Exactly how is up to the buildiers – meaning that in theory, no two buildings would look alike. We applaud engineering flexibility, but our applause for rock-steady stability is louder. Exactly how will it stay upright, please?

(Image via: freshome)

It may look like a bad or possibly drunken attempt at Photoshopping – but the Walters Towers will soon be reality. Forming an enormous W (possibly standing for "weird"), this apartment block complex in Prague is the slightly fevered work of architects Bjarke Ingels Group, and for obvious reasons, uses the latest in load-bearing building materials.

(Image via: freshome)

Our questions are endless. Do the lifts go diagonally? Is it safe? How would it fit in with the current Prague skyline? Is it safe? Exactly how is the weight distributed? Oh, and is it safe?

(Images via: design boom)

How would you feel about living in a building that looks less built than balanced? This Singaporean residential complex by OMA comprises of 31 six-storey apartment buildings stacked up in a thrilling haphazard manner, with the aim of circulating fresh air around every building. Since this is Singapore, heat loss wouldn't be a problem – but what about air-con efficiency? And that certainly isn't a balcony-view for the squeamish.

(Images via: gayol87 and IASeNews)

Costing over $600 million and reaching 51 floors into the blue, the China Central Television Headquarters in Beijing was completed in December 2008. It is built of steel, and its two rakishly-skewed towers had to be joined in the dead of night when the metal was coolest, to prevent expansion distortion. The local nickname? "Big shorts".

(Image via: daylife / Reuters)

In February this year, it narrowly escaped damage when the nearby Television Cultural Centre caught fire after opening ceremony fireworks went awry. This event has sparked an inquiry into the widespread use of high-explosive fireworks in China – and into the subsequent attempt by national authorities to suppress coverage of the blaze.

(Images via: coolboom)

Commanding what must be one of the most spectacular views in Sydney, the Holman House teeters on the brink of architectural possibilities. Although not quite as unstable as the above photos suggests, the house juts out from the cliff edge so alarmingly that we commend its current occupants for their nerve (and try to hide our jealousy at having that view). But isn't the Sydney basin prone to earthquakes?

(Image via: dezeen)

The new Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro is an award-winning response to the question "How unconventional can we make a museum look?" Looking like a stylishly collapsing carpark (ahem, arguably), the front-facing "vertical boulevard" hides galleries, auditoriums and even an outdoor cinema perched on top. No word on what the residents of the surrounding tower-blocks think of this last feature.

(Image via: dezeen)

Due to open in 2011, the design is meant to channel the energy of the beach promenade, providing an extension of its movement rather than an interruption. If they could turn one side of those steps into a waterslide, we think it would be made completely perfect.

http://weburbanist.com/2009/09/22/10-peculiarly-precarious-buildings/

Sphere: Related Content

Iowa congressman: Same-sex marriage 'a purely socialist concept'

by Daniel Tencer

Same-sex marriage is a "purely socialist concept" and is part of a broader push by progressives to turn the United States into a socialist country, an Iowa congressman says.

Although his argument was not entirely clear, US House Representative Steve King, a Republican, seemingly told Radio America that, in order for a socialist agenda to be carried out, the "foundations" of marriage would have to be destroyed.

Rep. King said: "If there's a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off of one pot of resources earned by everyone, this is one of the goals they'd have to go to, is same sex marriage, because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal."

King concluded: "Not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept, in the final analysis."

Listen to the whole radio interview here.

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/09/iowa-congressman-same-sex-marriage-a-purely-socialist-concept/

Sphere: Related Content

Michael Klare, Energy Xtremism

 

by Tom Engelhardt

Talk about roller-coaster rides: the price of a barrel of crude oil, which was still under $20 the week after September 11, 2001, made it to $147 in July 2008, just before the global economic meltdown, only to hit a low of $32.40 early this year. And yet, in recent months, hardly noticed, it's crept back above $70 -- and this with "recovery" barely on the horizon and global industrial demand still muted at best. And that's the good news.

Surely, as economic activity picks up, oil demand will rise and prices will resume their upward march. And don't be fooled by a spate of announcements, as recently in the Gulf of Mexico, of new oil discoveries, as Michael Klare, author of the invaluable book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, indicates. If there is a surge in industrial demand globally, recent discoveries will have little impact on the growing supply of energy.

"It's still the one," energy expert Daniel Yergin says of oil in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Yergin, author of a classic history of oil, The Prize, claims that petroleum will dominate the global energy equation for decades to come. Look elsewhere and you can find sprightly scenarios for energy futures based on climate-friendly renewable energy sources. As Klare makes painfully clear, however, there's a third way -- and that is distinctly not good news. We are going to enter an age of Xtreme energy, he suggests, and the last-ditch efforts to keep our world on its normal course are likely to devastate the environment, accelerate climate change, inflict widespread pain, and create global conflict. It's not a pretty picture. Tom

The Era of Xtreme Energy

Life After the Age of Oil
By Michael T. Klare

The debate rages over whether we have already reached the point of peak world oil output or will not do so until at least the next decade. There can, however, be little doubt of one thing: we are moving from an era in which oil was the world's principal energy source to one in which petroleum alternatives -- especially renewable supplies derived from the sun, wind, and waves -- will provide an ever larger share of our total supply. But buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride under Xtreme conditions.

It would, of course, be ideal if the shift from dwindling oil to its climate-friendly successors were to happen smoothly via a mammoth, well-coordinated, interlaced system of wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and other renewable energy installations. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to occur. Instead, we will surely first pass through an era characterized by excessive reliance on oil's final, least attractive reserves along with coal, heavily polluting "unconventional" hydrocarbons like Canadian oil sands, and other unappealing fuel choices.

There can be no question that Barack Obama and many members of Congress would like to accelerate a shift from oil dependency to non-polluting alternatives. As the president said in January, "We will commit ourselves to steady, focused, pragmatic pursuit of an America that is free from our [oil] dependence and empowered by a new energy economy that puts millions of our citizens to work." Indeed, the $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed in February provided $11 billion to modernize the nation's electrical grid, $14 billion in tax incentives to businesses to invest in renewable energy, $6 billion to states for energy efficiency initiatives, and billions more directed to research on renewable sources of energy. More of the same can be expected if a sweeping climate bill is passed by Congress. The version of the bill recently passed by the House of Representatives, for example, mandates that 20% of U.S. electrical production be supplied by renewable energy by 2020.

But here's the bad news: even if all these initiatives were to pass, and more like them many times over, it would still take decades for this country to substantially reduce its dependence on oil and other non-renewable, polluting fuels. So great is our demand for energy, and so well-entrenched the existing systems for delivering the fuels we consume, that (barring a staggering surprise) we will remain for years to come in a no-man's-land between the Petroleum Age and an age that will see the great flowering of renewable energy. Think of this interim period as -- to give it a label -- the Era of Xtreme Energy, and in just about every sense imaginable from pricing to climate change, it is bound to be an ugly time.

An Oil Field as Deep as Mt. Everest Is High

Don't be fooled by the fact that this grim new era will surely witness the arrival of many more wind turbines, solar arrays, and hybrid vehicles. Most new buildings will perhaps come equipped with solar panels, and more light-rail systems will be built. Despite all this, however, our civilization is likely to remain remarkably dependent on oil-fueled cars, trucks, ships, and planes for most transportation purposes, as well as on coal for electricity generation. Much of the existing infrastructure for producing and distributing our energy supply will also remain intact, even as many existing sources of oil, coal, and natural gas become exhausted, forcing us to rely on previously untouched, far more undesirable (and often far less accessible) sources of these fuels.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175117

Sphere: Related Content

We're Number 37

Sphere: Related Content

The Decline of the English Department

How it happened and what could be done to reverse it

By William M. Chace

During the last four decades, a well-publicized shift in what undergraduate students prefer to study has taken place in American higher education. The number of young men and women majoring in English has dropped dramatically; the same is true of philosophy, foreign languages, art history, and kindred fields, including history. As someone who has taught in four university English departments over the last 40 years, I am dismayed by this shift, as are my colleagues here and there across the land. And because it is probably irreversible, it is important to attempt to sort out the reasons—the many reasons—for what has happened.

First the facts: while the study of English has become less popular among undergraduates, the study of business has risen to become the most popular major in the nation's colleges and universities. With more than twice the majors of any other course of study, business has become the concentration of more than one in five American undergraduates. Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04 (the last academic year with available figures):

English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to 3.9 percent
Foreign languages and literatures: from 2.5 percent to 1.3 percent
Philosophy and religious studies: from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent
History: from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent
Business: from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent

In one generation, then, the numbers of those majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent. Despite last year's debacle on Wall Street, the humanities have not benefited; students are still wagering that business jobs will be there when the economy recovers.

What are the causes for this decline? There are several, but at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself. What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture). In so doing, they have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/

Sphere: Related Content

Feathered dinosaur fossils find has Chinese scientists all aflutter

New discovery unearthed in rock formations in north-eastern China confirms birds evolved from dinosaurs, scientists claim

by Steven Morris

The discovery of five remarkable new fossils has confirmed that birds evolved from dinosaurs, Chinese scientists said last night.

Because the fossils, unearthed in north-eastern China, are older than previous discoveries of similar creatures, the find adds weight to the theory that birds descended from predatory dinosaurs.

The fossils all have feathers or feather-like structures. The clearest and most striking of the specimens can be seen to have four wings, extensive plumage and profusely feathered feet.

One of the scientists who made the discovery, Xu Xing, will reveal details of his find in Bristol at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

"These exceptional fossils provide us with evidence that has been missing until now," Xu said. "Now it all fits neatly into place and we have tied up some of the loose ends."

The finds date back to between 151m and 164m years ago, which suggest they are older than archaeopteryx, previously thought to be the oldest undisputed bird.

Xu, who is based in Beijing, said: "The fossils provide confirmation that the bird-dinosaur hypothesis is correct, and supports the idea that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs (the group of predatory dinosaurs that includes allosaurus and velociraptor)."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/sep/24/dinosaur-fossil-discovery-china

Sphere: Related Content

Oh Lord, please let my suffering end!

Sphere: Related Content

This world cannot exist half slave and half free

 

Sphere: Related Content

Caught between an Acorn and a Hard Place

Political Irony

Humor and Hypocrisy from the World of Politics

Congress was falling all over themselves to pass a bill punishing ACORN. In fact, they refer to the bill (in the bill itself) as the "Defund ACORN Act". The bill passed both the House and Senate.

There is only one problem with that — bills that punish a single person or organization without a trial are unconstitutional. Such a law is called a "bill of attainder" and is specifically barred by the constitution. So even though the law doesn't hide the fact that it is punishing ACORN, the language of the bill itself had to be written more broadly. So instead of defunding ACORN, it defunds "any organization" that has been indicted on charges of breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws, or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency.

So, are there any other organizations that have been indicted for those things and receive federal funding? Lucky for us, the Project On Government Oversight has a handy list of federal contractors who have been guilty of fraud. The top ten on the list starts with Lockheed Martin, followed by Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General dynamics, Raytheon, BAE, L-3 Communications, United Technologies Corp., SAIC, KBR. In fact, pretty much every major defense contractor is on the list. So if this bill is signed into law by Obama, it would explicitly defund the entire military-industrial complex.

http://politicalirony.com/2009/09/23/caught-between-an-acorn-and-a-hard-place/

Sphere: Related Content

Great start for Sotomayor

By Knute Berger

Corporations are artificial life forms, created and chartered by states. But some believe these life forms have all the rights, and more, of actual citizens. Yes, we live in Frankenstein's country.

And it gets worse. Some argue that corporations are, in effect, people, protected by the Constitution but also blessed with all the special rights of corporations, such as limited liability, perpetual existence, no need to act as responsible citizens but legally mandated to act only in their own self-interest. If we were smart, we individuals should probably all incorporate.

The sad state of affairs regarding corporate power in this country has long been troubling, and is currently being tested at the U.S. Supreme Court, which is deciding whether or not corporations have First Amendment the free speech rights of individuals. The right-wing of the court (Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy) tends to think they do. Granting such a right could hamper, perhaps eliminate, the public's ability to limit corporate campaign and political spending or speech, or even tobacco advertising. Campaign laws like McCain-Feingold could be thrown out the window.

One of the key precedents was the decision of the Gilded Age court in the 1880s to grant "personhood" to corporations. Determining the reach of that personhood is one of the issues at play in a case before the court now. During oral arguments last week, new Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor surprised some observers by raising questions about whether this 19th century case should be revisited. According to the Wall Street Journal:

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."

Even a mild, non-committal expression of a possible willingness to go back and revisit corporate personhood is surprising, provocative, and welcome. Sotomayor is unlikely to prevail in such a review with the current court make up, in fact, things are more likely to get worse for people and better for corporations in the short term. But it does suggest that Obama's pick won't be shy about tackling some of the big issues facing the court.

http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/19100/

Sphere: Related Content

Corporate Corruption Killing America

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

Anyone smart and strong enough to fight delusional thinking and who pays attention to current events should clearly see that corporate corruption of the US political system is so pervasive and powerful that there will be no genuine reform of both the health care and financial sectors.

I always believed that president Obama was just a different color corrupt politician who was subservient to the two-party plutocracy. His so-called reform efforts and ludicrous federal deficit spending should disappoint all his non-delusional supporters.

For health reform the only genuine and sensible reform legislation should have been not much more than a single sentence mandating that every American has a right to full Medicare coverage. Period. End of story. True reform. True universal health insurance.

Let the health insurance industry sell their garbage to those choosing it over Medicare and as supplemental insurance, as is done today, to cover what Medicare does not. The one major reason why the US spends more of its wealth on health care than any other nation, but with lousy results for the population as a whole is that so many Americans and their employers buy costly private health insurance. Some things essential for human survival require government programs, like police and fire protection. The overwhelming opinion of those in Medicare is very positive. In fact it is far more positive than those using private health insurance.

http://www.countercurrents.org/hirschhorn170909.htm

Sphere: Related Content

Tears of Fire: Mourning in the Macabre Killing Fields of Afghanistan

 

by Chris Floyd   

"I took some flesh home and called it my son."

The NATO airstrike that killed more than 70 civilians near Kunduz earlier this month was a deadly confluence of two primary elements that characterize the living hell of Afghanistan: relentless violence and crushing poverty.

The villagers were slaughtered while trying to siphon gasoline from two fuel tankers that the Taliban had hijacked from the occupation forces. The trucks were stranded in the ford of a shallow river. Unable to get the trucks out, the insurgents invited local villagers to come gather the fuel for themselves. The prospect of salvaging a can or two of free fuel to help them get through the coming winter drove many of the villagers out into the dead of night. At about 1 a.m, an airstrike ordered by a German commander struck the fuel tankers and the surrounding area.

The result was a firestorm that ripped the villagers to pieces and roasted their bodies beyond all recognition. But that was not the end of it, nor, perhaps, the worst of it. For then the survivors of the slain had to come to the smoking field and try to find their loved ones amidst the gruesome, ungodly residue.

The Guardian's Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who has contributed some of the most remarkable reporting from the Terror War's fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, spoke to some of the survivors. Their stories speak with bleak and harrowing eloquence of the reality of the war, beyond all the pious rhetoric and strategic reviews and "serious" analysis in the imperial courts.

Below are some excerpts, but you should read the entire piece, which was the top story, blazoned across the top of the front page, in the print edition of Saturday's Guardian. Saturday editions of UK papers are generally the equivalent of Sunday editions of US paper, the big showcase edition of the week. Try to imagine a major American paper giving up such prime real estate to let the victims of the "good war" in Afghanistan tell their story in their own words.

From the Guardian:

At first light last Friday, in the Chardarah district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, the villagers gathered around the twisted wreckage of two fuel tankers that had been hit by a Nato airstrike. They picked their way through a heap of almost a hundred charred bodies and mangled limbs which were mixed with ash, mud and the melted plastic of jerry cans, looking for their brothers, sons and cousins. They called out their names but received no answers. By this time, everyone was dead.

What followed is one of the more macabre scenes of this or any war. The grief-stricken relatives began to argue and fight over the remains of the men and boys who a few hours earlier had greedily sought the tanker's fuel. Poor people in one of the world's poorest countries, they had been trying to hoard as much as they could for the coming winter.

"We didn't recognise any of the dead when we arrived," said Omar Khan, the turbaned village chief of Eissa Khail. "It was like a chemical bomb had gone off, everything was burned. The bodies were like this," he brought his two hands together, his fingers curling like claws. "There were like burned tree logs, like charcoal.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1839-tears-of-fire-mourning-in-the-macabre-killing-fields-of-afghanistan.html

Sphere: Related Content

I don't mean to alarm you

Sphere: Related Content

More Teen Births in Religious States

By Julia Whitty

Why is this not a surprise? The states with the strongest conservative religious beliefs also tend to have the highest rates of teen pregnancies and births. This according to a new paper forthcoming in Reproductive Health.

I posted a blog on a similar story a while back about religious teens having more abortions.

Live Science reports that this little piece of paradox is likely due to the fact that communities with high religiosity frown upon contraception as well as sex education. The combination is as good as a euphemism for pregnancy.

The top 10 states for conservative religious beliefs:

1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. South Carolina
4. Tennessee
5. Louisiana
6. Utah
7. Arkansas
8. North Carolina
9. Kentucky
10. Oklahoma

The top 10 states for teen births:

1. Mississippi
2. New Mexico
3. Texas
4. Arkansas
5. Arizona
6. Oklahoma
7. Nevada
8. Tennessee
9. Kentucky
10. Georgia

Researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh speculates: "We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/09/more-teen-births-religious-states

Sphere: Related Content

TIME TO CHANGE BERNANKE'S MEDICATION?

Secret White House letter to G-20

by Greg Palast

I still get a thrill whenever I get my hands on a confidential memo with "The White House, Washington" appearing on the letterhead. Even when—like the one I'm looking at now—it's about a snoozy topic: This week's G-20 summit.

But the letter's content shook me awake, and may keep me up the rest of the night.

The 6-page letter from the White House, dated September 3, was sent to the 20 heads of state that will meet this Thursday in Pittsburgh. After some initial diplo-blather, our President's "sherpa" for the summit, Michael Froman, does a little victory dance, announcing that the recession has been defeated. "Global equity markets have risen 35 percent since the end of March," writes Froman. In other words, the stock market is up and all's well.

While acknowledging that this year's economy has gone to hell in a handbag, Obama's aide and ambassador to the G-20 seems to be parroting the irrational exuberance of Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke who declared last week that, "The recession is very likely over." All that was missing from Bernanke's statement was a banner, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED."

And the French are furious. The White House letter to the G-20 leaders was a response to a confidential diplomatic missive from the chief of the European Union Fredrik Reinfeldt written a day earlier to "Monsieur le Président" Obama.

We have Reinfeldt's confidential note as well. In it, the EU president says, despite Bernanke's happy-talk, "la crise n'est pas terminée (the crisis is not over) and (continuing in translation) the labor market will continue to suffer the consequences of weak use of capacity and production in the coming months." This is diplomatic speak for, What the hell is Bernanke smoking?

May I remind you Monsieur le Président, that last month 216,000 Americans lost their jobs, bringing the total lost since your inauguration to about seven million. And rising.

The Wall Street Journal also has a copy of the White House letter, though they haven't released it. (I have: read it here , with the EU message and our translation.) The Journal spins the leak as the White House would want it: "Big Changes to Global Economic Policy" to produce "lasting growth." Obama takes charge! What's missing in the Journal report is that Obama's plan subtly but significantly throttles back European demands to tighten finance industry regulation and, most important, deflects the EU's concern about fighting unemployment.

Europe's leaders are scared witless that the Obama Administration will prematurely turn off the fiscal and monetary stimulus. Europe demands that the US continue pumping the economy under an internationally coordinated worldwide save-our-butts program. As the EU's Reinfeldt puts it in his plea to the White House, "It is essential that the Heads of State and Government, at this summit, continue to implement the economic policy measures they have adopted," and not act unilaterally. "Exit strategies [must] be implemented in a coordinated manner." Translating from the diplomatique: If you in the USA turn off fiscal and monetary stimulus now, on your own, Europe and the planet sinks, America with it.

http://www.gregpalast.com/time-to-change-bernankes-medication-secret-white-house-letter-to-g-20/

Sphere: Related Content

Tanks for the subsidies

Sphere: Related Content

Think Again: Why Can’t the Media Explain Our Woes (and Why Other Countries Don’t Have Them)?

By Eric Alterman

The most moving part of President Barack Obama's powerful speech Wednesday night was undoubtedly the letter from which he read, sent to him from "our beloved friend and colleague" Ted Kennedy. Kennedy had asked, back in May when he wrote it, that the letter should not be opened until after his death. As Obama reported, Kennedy "expressed confidence that this would be the year that health care reform—'that great unfinished business of our society,' he called it—would finally pass," and in doing so, define "the character of our country." Indeed, it is amazing that while Kennedy served for more than four decades in the Senate and dedicated much of his energy and superb legislative skills to the passage of just such a program, the problem has only gotten worse over time.

Given the degree of the problem, it can difficult to understand, writes Serge Halimi, editor of France's prestigious Le Monde Diplomatique, why Barack Obama, who has established himself as one of America's most effective diagnosticians of what ails our health care system, is proposing so modest a reform to address its failures. As the president told a Montana town hall meeting this past August, "We are held hostage by health insurance companies that deny coverage, or drop coverage, or charge fees that people can't afford for care they desperately need … We have a health care system that too often works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people."

Halimi answers his own question: "American politics is so poisoned by money flowing from industrial and financial lobbies that the only proposals ensured a smooth ride through Congress are those that cut taxes." Indeed, according to BusinessWeek, in 15 states more than half of the "market" is held by one private health care company, and this kind of monopoly profit is not going to go off quietly into the night. And yet this essential fact is often missing from a media debate that focuses on nonexistent, often crazy issues like imaginary "death panels" and whether or not Sarah Palin would be forced to murder her own child.

Late in the dog days of August, The Washington Post published a piece by T.R. Reid, a reporter who has left the paper and written a book called The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, delineating what he called "five myths about health care around the world." It's worth reading the piece, not only for the information it offers, but for the picture of just how far our debate has drifted from reality. Barack Obama is right. We do have a health care system that is not only unsustainable in the long term, but a great shame on the heads of those of us who can afford to buy the health care we need whenever we need it. Not only are the alleged horror stories about "socialized medicine" untrue, but its superiority to our own system is largely absent from our debate.

In addition to the issues Reid raises—I have not yet read his book—I did some research on this question while writing Why We're Liberals, and I found the following:

• The United States and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all of their citizens.
• Nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations.
• The United States ranks 84th in the world for measles immunizations and 89th for polio. These figures are particularly shocking given that Americans spend almost two and a half times the industrialized world's median on health care, nearly a third of which is wasted on bureaucracy and administration.
• Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the 19th percentile of industrialized nations. Doctors here perform more high-end medical procedures, such as coronary angioplasties, than in other countries, but most of the wealthier Western countries have more CT scanners than the United States does, and Switzerland, Japan, Austria, and Finland all have more MRI machines per capita. Nor is our system more efficient. The United States spends more than $1000 per capita per year—or close to $400 billion—on health care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for example, spends only about $300 per capita. And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens; despite those extra hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year, we leave 45 million people without any insurance.
• Meanwhile, the Finns, for instance, devote less than half of what we do to medical care, as a percentage of GDP, and yet their infant mortality rate is half that of the United States—and one-sixth that of African-American babies—while their life expectancy rate is greater. The United States ranked 42 in life expectancy behind not only Japan and most of Europe but also Jordan, Guam, and the Cayman Islands, according to the most recent census figures.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/09/ta091009.html

Sphere: Related Content

Why doing good sometimes makes you into a bad person

Researchers have found that, after doing something ethically sound, people are more - not less - likely to do something immoral, or even illegal

by Aditya Chakrabortty

 

Green is good. You think before you print; you buy your organic whatever; you sort-of sympathise with the bumper sticker injunction to "live simply so that others may simply live". It might not be as cheap or as easy – but it's the right thing to do. Isn't it?

Well, consider this: a person who makes the decent, green choice is much more likely to behave badly afterwards, according to researchers at the University of Toronto. Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong split 156 students between two online shops: one a conventional store, the other mainly selling green alternatives. Within both groups, some could actually buy things while others were allowed only to browse.

All the students were then handed cash to share with an anonymous person however they chose. The students who had looked around the eco-shop but not bought anything gave most generously; mere exposure to the goods prompted them to behave better. However, those who had actually made green purchases were far stingier than even the conventional shoppers.

Next, all the guinea pigs sat a simple computer test to identify repeatedly which side of the screen was showing more dots, with the twist that picking the right-hand side always earned them more money – even if it was incorrect. Finally, the students were told the amount they'd won, and invited to take that exact amount out of an envelope full of money.

What happened? The conventional shoppers played it reasonably straight, whereas the green consumers cheated far more and even stole extra cash, pocketing nearly a third more money than they were entitled to. Having done their good deed, the greens apparently felt they'd proved their moral worth – allowing them to behave immorally and illegally. Psychologists call this "the licensing effect". Another recent study from Stanford University showed that white Americans who supported Obama were much more willing than others to express racist opinions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/sep/22/brain-food

Sphere: Related Content

Unemployment Lines

Sphere: Related Content

Magazines: The Other Media Implosion

By paulgillin

The newspaper industry's malaise has spread to the magazine business. Ad pages were off 20.1% in the most recent month, according to Media Industry Newsletter (Min), and those figures are down from an already depressed October last year. Of the 155 titles tracked by Min, 143 are down for the year. The carnage is worst in luxury titles like Architectural Digest (down 49.4%), Veranda (down 47.4%), W (down 45.5%), Town & Country (down 45.2%), Conde Nast Traveler (down 45.1%) and Gourmet (down 42.7%). Bucking the trend is Family Circle (up 13.9%) and several fitness titles.

The magazine industry's troubles can be traced to the alarming trends in newsstand sales, which are off 37% since 2001, according to MediaPost. Newsstand sales are important because they're far more profitable than subscription sales and are also a significant source of circulation promotion. However, it appears that not many people are buying magazines on newsstands any more. Check out these numbers covering total annual newsstand sales:

Title	2001	2009	Change
Woman's Day	1,610,000	410,147	-74.5%
Redbook	556,355	154,609	-72%
Playboy	522,804	203,245	-71%
Country Living	380,192	134,884	-64.5%
National Enquirer	1,648,554	591,269	-64%
Reader's Digest	749,099	270,045	-64%
ESPN The Magazine	54,346	25,154	-63%

One title that's gone against the grain over the last eight years is The Economist, which is up 82% in that time. One reason might be innovations like a new service that enables New York City residents who receive text alerts from the magazine to order single copies delivered overnight. As long as the order is placed by 9 p.m. on Thursday, the customer can have a hard copy of that week's new issue in hand in time for the Friday commute. That's before the newsstands are even stocked. The Economist says it can provide the service at no additional charge over the newsstand price because it doesn't have to pay distribution middlemen.

Not that magazines' troubles are any solace to beleaguered newspaper publishers. Fitch Ratings says the decline in newspaper ad revenues will continue for at least another year, due to continued weakness in the print advertising market. The forecast is especially dour because it comes off terrible 2008 numbers and because most media markets are expected to enjoy a modest upturn in 2010 off of dismal results this year. PriceWaterhouseCoopers earlier forecast incremental newspaper advertising declines of 4.5% a year through 2013, noting that circulation revenue is falling in line with readership. Meanwhile, publishers are relying more and more upon circulation revenue to boost the bottom line. MediaPost documents several recent price increases by daily publishers and notes that circulation now makes up 39% of The New York Times revenue, compared to 27% five years ago.

Coupon Clipping

We somehow missed writing about this two months ago, when the survey was released, but the Newspaper Association of America just spent a lot of money on research that demonstrates that consumers rely upon newspaper advertising as an essential shopping tool. The survey of more than 3,000 consumers found that 59% cited newspapers as the "medium they use to help plan shopping or make purchase decisions," while 82% "took action as a result of newspaper advertising." Other media were way behind.

When you think about it, these results aren't surprising. Retail purchases are local, and newspapers still do the best job of delivering local advertising. It's also less convenient for a consumer to print and clip a coupon from the Internet than it is to cut it out of the newspaper. Finally, local display advertising has a better chance of catching the attention of passersby than an online banner ad, which many people block anyway. One thing the research makes clear is the importance of coupons: 90% of respondents said the presence of a coupon made it more likely they would read or look at an ad, making it the single most important influencing factor in stimulating an action. The NAA released the research as a series of short reports, all of which can be downloaded here.

http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/magazines-the-other-media-implosion.html

Sphere: Related Content

The Media Void Lives

by Case Wagenvoord

Back when we were a nation, death didn't upset us. It was a fact of life best expressed by Gus in Lonesome Dove, "Life is short; some are shorter than others." Middle class homes all had parlors where the bodies of love ones were displayed before burials.

When we went to war, we honored the dead through photographs and drawings. Mathew Brady brought the Civil War home to America with his horrific photographs of corpse-strewn battlefields. World Wars, Korea and Vietnam featured film footage and photographs of the fallen.

It kept our leaders honest. The public accepted the death of the young only as long as they felt the war was necessary. But if, as in Vietnam, the war appeared to be unnecessary, the public, shocked by scenes of carnage, turned against it.

But, that was when we were a nation. Now that we are a corporate state, things are different. Corporate states thrive on dishonest wars. In dishonest wars, public support is tenuous at best' so wars must be sanitized and reduced to video games.

This means no more dead bodies, no more film clips of grieving parents of children killed in airstrikes. In the public's eye, war now takes place in a sterile void where there is neither blood nor death. It's war that isn't really war, a make-believe Noh drama in which the public quickly loses interest, especially if it's been going on for eight years.

Our corporate masters like it that way. It gives them a great deal of latitude to wreak havoc on the world while its citizens sit comatose and unaware.

But, God help the media that allows reality to dribble into this void!

Recently, the Associated Press released a photograph of a wounded Marine who later died.

The outcry showed that hypocrisy is the cement that hold the corporate state together. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the Associated Press lacked "common decency." He spoke of the "pain and suffering inflicted upon the Marine's family."

I hate stating the obvious, but I have no choice here. Since when did bombing civilians cease to display a lack of "common decency?" Which caused the Marine's family more anguish, the photograph or the death of their son in an unnecessary war?

 

http://belacquajones.blogspot.com/2009/09/media-void-lives.html

Sphere: Related Content

Will Ferrell stands up for the real health care victims

Sphere: Related Content

GOP health care plan

Sphere: Related Content

The One-Sided War on the Streets of Honduras

"They're the Only Ones Using Violence," Human Rights Leader Bertha Oliva Observes of the Coup Regime on Day Two of Zelaya's Return

By Jeremy Kryt

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS, SEPTEMBER 22, 2009: Government forces attacked a peaceful crowd outside the Brazilian Embassy Tuesday morning, in an apparent attempt to dispel support for deposed President Mel Zelaya. Mr. Zelaya had returned to the country on Monday after almost three months in exile.

Mel Zelaya addresses a crowd of thousands in front of Brazilian Embassy on Monday. D.R. 2009, Jeremy Kryt.

"It was terrible repression," said National Congressman Marvin Ponce, who was with Zelaya in the Embassy until around nine o'clock the night before. "This is a reflection of their philosophies, this government of putchists. They don't respect human rights. They don't want a political dialogue," said Ponce, and he ought to know: The Congressman was himself assaulted during a nonviolent protest last month, suffering several broken bones, including his right arm, which was fractured in three places.

Eye-witness testimony indicated that the soldiers and police fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and live rounds into the crowd.

"It was brutal," said resistance organizer Juan Barahona, director of El Bloque Popular. "I was outside the embassy when the police began their dispersal. Afterwards we reorganized, and marched through some of the poor barrios. But the police attacked us there as well."

The day before, thousands had gathered in front of the Brazilian Consulate in the Colonia Palmira, to welcome home Mr. Zelaya with chanting and songs. The de facto government imposed a curfew starting at four p.m., and cut power to the Embassy; but Zelaya's supporters stayed on in the streets all night long, defying orders to disperse.

This reporter spent most of Monday inside the embassy with Mr. Zelaya. The ousted President addressed the thousands gathered outside, urging them to pursue a nonviolent resistance to "Los Golpistas."

"We will continue the struggle for democracy," said Zelaya, as the crowd voiced their desire for a new constitution. "This time I won't be caught napping," joked Zelaya, referring to the episode on June 28, when the military accosted him in his pajamas.

http://www.narconews.com/Issue60/article3822.html

Sphere: Related Content

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, Dead Hand.

 

By Nicholas Thompson

 

Valery Yarynich glances nervously over his shoulder. Clad in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel is hunkered in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington, DC. It's March 2009—the Berlin Wall came down two decades ago—but the lean and fit Yarynich is as jumpy as an informant dodging the KGB. He begins to whisper, quietly but firmly.

"The Perimeter system is very, very nice," he says. "We remove unique responsibility from high politicians and the military." He looks around again.

Yarynich is talking about Russia's doomsday machine. That's right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called "the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination." Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.

Chart source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,

Natural Resources Defense Council

The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn't matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret. With the demise of the USSR, word of the system did leak out, but few people seemed to notice. In fact, though Yarynich and a former Minuteman launch officer named Bruce Blair have been writing about Perimeter since 1993 in numerous books and newspaper articles, its existence has not penetrated the public mind or the corridors of power. The Russians still won't discuss it, and Americans at the highest levels—including former top officials at the State Department and White House—say they've never heard of it. When I recently told former CIA director James Woolsey that the USSR had built a doomsday device, his eyes grew cold. "I hope to God the Soviets were more sensible than that." They weren't.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=all

Sphere: Related Content

House on fire

by Mark in Santa Rosa

 

My own thoughts on the subject suggest that there's no real intent among Dems to actually implement ANY  policy or program which might somehow infringe on corporate profit. There's a ROLE to be played, rhetoric to be repeated.  The masses need to be placated.

 

I KNOW - without question - that politicians understand what most "Joe Six-pack" Americans want because they know  what to promise on the campaign trail. I believe I understand enough about the technical workings of Congress to know that  the party in power can pretty much do what it wants to do - most especially when the party in power also controls the White House.

 

To me, that means we COULD have had reform for Wall Street. We COULD have ended evil george's wars. We COULD have  restored this to a nation of laws. We COULD have repealed evil george's tax cuts for the rich and made Social Security solvent.  We COULD simply open Medicare to all Americans. Many of those things COULD have been done by now. No, not all of them,  at least not completely. But by now, it SHOULD look as though we're heading in the right direction.

 

So if I can easily win a fight but I don't, what does that mean? I think it means I chose not to. It's like when I wrestle with my  four-year-old grandson. I put on a good show - play the role. I tell him I'm going to win this time - repeat the rhetoric.  It LOOKS (to him) like I'm trying to pin him. HE thinks he "won" - hey, he's four. But the truth is, if for some reason I felt it  was in my own best interest to pin him, I could do so without effort. I think this quote from Douglas Adams sums it up nicely,  even though Adams is ostensibly writing about the President of the Galaxy:

 

"The President in particular is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the  government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason  the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to  draw attention away from it." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe 

 

His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.

 

http://www.bartcop.com/house-on-fire-mark.htm

Sphere: Related Content

Justice for True Patriots

Yesterday, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced the Justice Act, which would provide much-needed fixes to the three provisions of the Patriot Act that expire at the end of this year. This is good news, because on Tuesday the Department of Justice said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) (PDF) that it was open to reforming parts of the Patriot Act. We're going to hold you to that, DOJ!

Earlier this year, the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office released a report, called Reclaiming Patriotism (PDF), that details the parts of the Patriot Act that need fixing most. Since the 38-page report isn't exactly light fare, we'll sum up the must-know parts for the upcoming Patriot Act debate:

First, the three provisions that will expire at the end of the year:

1. Section 206, a.k.a. the "roving wiretap" provision: Section 206 allows the FBI to get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to wiretap a target without having to provide the target's name or even their phone number. The provision only requires that the target is described "with particularity," and that the FBI tell FISC why it had to tap the phone after it was tapped. It basically lacks any kind of specificity that, you know, a real warrant would need.
   
2. Section 6001, a.k.a. the "lone wolf" provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA): Section 6001 authorizes the government to get secret surveillance orders against individuals who are not associated with any international terrorist group or foreign nation. As the report points out, an international terrorist acting independently of any organization or country is pretty pie-in-the-sky unlikely.
   
3. Section 215, a.k.a. the "library provision": The term "any tangible thing" should raise your hackles. Like the previous two provisions, Section 215 also lowers the bar on the standard of proof needed to get a court order to surveill. Before the Patriot Act was passed, probable cause showing that the target of surveillance was the agent of a foreign power was required. After Patriot, Section 215 allows the FBI to only claim that the items or information sought is relevant to an investigation. That means the person being surveilled doesn't necessarily have to be the target of the investigation or even be suspected of involvement in terrorism.

The ACLU is also concerned about provisions of the Patriot Act that are not expiring, but which would be amended under Sen. Feingold's bill. For example, the National Security Letter statute, which permits the FBI to secretly demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet service providers, banks, and credit companies, without any suspicion or prior judicial approval. To make matters even worse, the statute allows the FBI to put gag orders on NSL recipients, prohibiting them from discussing the record demand. The ACLU have filed three lawsuits on behalf of NSL recipients, and most recently, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that the NSL statute's gag provisions violated the First Amendment.

The Justice Act would also fix the worst parts of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). You remember the FAA, right? That was the law Congress passed last year that immunized telecoms from lawsuits for wiretapping innocent Americans, in collusion with the National Security Agency. In passing the FAA, Congress — with the help of then-Sen. Obama — basically signed away our Fourth Amendment rights by allowing the government to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications.

We hope Congress and the president will take this opportunity to not only right that wrong, but also fix the overbroad sections of the Patriot Act by passing the Justice Act and signing it into law, restoring Americans' privacy rights.

http://blog.aclu.org/2009/09/18/justice-for-true-patriots/

Sphere: Related Content

Twitteleh

Sphere: Related Content

From toxic waste to toxic assets, the same people always get dumped on

Trafigura is just another case of global fly-tipping. It's all too easy for firms to protect profit and pass risk to the poor world

by George Monbiot

It was revolting, monstrous, inhumane – and scarcely different from what happens in Africa almost every day. The oil trading company Trafigura has just agreed to pay compensation to 31,000 people in Ivory Coast, after the Guardian and the BBC's Newsnight obtained emails sent by its traders. They reveal that Trafigura knew that the oil slops it sent there in 2006 were contaminated with toxic waste. But the Ivorian contractor it employed to pump out the hold of its tanker dumped them around inhabited areas in the capital city and the countryside. Tens of thousands of people fell ill and 15 died. While the settlement says that the slops could at worst have caused a range of short-term low-level flu-like symptoms, and anxiety, it is one of the world's worst cases of chemical exposure since the gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. But in all other respects the Trafigura case is unremarkable. It's just another instance of the rich world's global fly-tipping.

On the day that the Guardian published the company's emails, it also carried a story about a shipwreck discovered in 480 metres of water off the Italian coast. Detectives found the ship after a tip-off from a mafioso. It appears to have been carrying drums of nuclear waste when the mafia used explosives to scuttle it. The informant, Francesco Fonti, said his clan had been paid £100,000 to get rid of it. What makes this story interesting is that the waste appears to be Norwegian. Norway is famous for its tough environmental laws, but a shipload of nuclear waste doesn't go missing without someone high-up looking the other way.

Italian prosecutors are investigating the scuttling of a further 41 ships.

But most of them weren't sunk, like Fonti's vessel, off the coast of Italy; they were lost off the coast of Somalia. When the great tsunami of 2004 struck the Somali coast, it dumped and smashed open thousands of barrels on the beaches and in villages up to 10km inland. According to the United Nations, they contained clinical waste from western hospitals, heavy metals, other chemical junk and nuclear waste. People started suffering from unusual skin infections, bleeding at the mouth, acute respiratory infections and abdominal haemorrhages. The barrels had been dumped in the sea, a UN spokesman said, for one obvious reason: it cost European companies around $2.50 a tonne to dispose of the waste this way, while dealing with them properly would have cost "something like $1,000 a tonne." On the seabed off Somalia lies Europe's picture of Dorian Gray: the skeleton in the closet of the languid new world we have made.

The only people who have sought physically to stop this dumping are Somali pirates.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/sep/21/global-fly-tipping-toxic-waste

Sphere: Related Content

Micropayments for news: The holy grail or just a dangerous delusion?

By Mathew Ingram

No matter how many times people like Clay Shirky or Mike Masnick try to pop the bubble of faith around micropayments as a cure for what ails the newspaper industry (or even the media industry as a whole), another believer emerges to argue that a secure and extensible micropayment system is a big part of the answer. The latest to make an impassioned plea is Jeff Reifman, the co-founder of NewsCloud, a "community-driven news aggregator" funded by the Knight Foundation.

In a recent blog post, Reifman outlines why he believes that micropayments can solve the newspaper industry's problems. His post is a response to one by Steve Outing at Editor & Publisher, which carried the somewhat argumentative title "Your News Content Is Worth Zero To Digital Consumers," and argued that charging people for news isn't going to work unless that news is highly targeted to a specific niche. (Google CEO Eric Schmidt made a similar point recently about why The Wall Street Journal has been able to charge, and Paul Graham echoes that point as well.)

If you want to go back through some of the reams of text that have been written about micropayments for news, Clay's essay from 2003 is a good place to start — especially since it lists the half-dozen or so attempts to create such a system that failed miserably. (Are you listening, Steve Brill?) There's also a good roundup at the Freakonomics blog from awhile back that is well worth reading.

Reifman defends his approach by pointing to several successful models of payment for services, including iTunes, text messaging, TiVo, and broadband Internet. The first thing that leaped out at me is that three of those four things — iTunes, text messaging and broadband Internet — are a result of something approaching a monopoly (or an oligopoly or cartel, in the case of text messaging and broadband Internet). Apple can charge for music because it controls access to the songs from all the major record labels. Phone companies and cable companies can charge usurious rates for text messaging and Internet because they have little or no real competition. How does any of that apply to newspapers?

In his comments at the Freakonomics blog, Clay Shirky says the "fantasy that small payments will save publishers…is really a fantasy that monopoly pricing power can be re-established over users." I think there's a lot of truth to that. Newspapers have spent the past 100 years or so with a stranglehold on both the tools of mass publishing and the means of distribution, and much of what has happened to them over the past decade is a result of them losing both of those things. The unfortunate reality is that even the best micropayment system is not going to recreate that system of artificial scarcity and control — and some have argued that micropayments could even be bad for journalism as a whole, putting pressure on individual stories to be revenue generators.

Does that mean newspapers can't make any money? Not at all. I think Mike Masnick has done a great job of pointing out how a media business can make money even if it gives content away for free — his company Techdirt does it, plenty of musicians and artists do it. And they do it by using the free content to promote the aspects of their business that have *real* scarcity rather than artificial scarcity.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/09/micropayments-for-news-the-holy-grail-or-just-a-dangerous-delusion/

Sphere: Related Content

Crystal Lee Sutton

Sphere: Related Content

UK Anti-Piracy Plans Cost More Than Music Industry ‘Losses’

by enigmax

As the UK file-sharing debate reaches fever pitch, with opinionated artists being shipped in by the bus load to condemn it, inevitably attention is turning to the costs associated with trying to end it. According to a boss at ISP BT, not only are the government's plans doomed to fail, but could end up costing ISPs a staggering £1m a day.

As Lily Allen leads a procession of artists showing a united front against online music piracy and calls ever louder for the government to do something about it, the cold light of day has kicked in. Just how much is the hoped-for crackdown on illicit file-sharers going to cost?

Yesterday, speaking with the UK's The Mirror, John Petter, boss of ISP BT's consumer division, said that measures to tackle Internet piracy will be costly.

Noting that ISP profit margins are already small, Petter said he fears that the process could cost ISPs a staggering £365m a year.

However, according to Jupiter Reseach, whose figures the BPI uses when trying to convince others how much money they lose, the British music industry will lose £200m worth of business to online piracy in 2009.

If the BPI's 'losses' figures are to be believed (and we have to go along with the ridiculous premise of 1 download = 1 lost sale in order to do so), saving £200m worth of business will end up costing ISPs almost double that amount.

"Their [music industry] claims are melodramatic and assume people would buy all the music that is illegally downloaded, which is nonsense," said Petter, adding that laws are already in place to deal with illicit file-sharing, but the industry doesn't want to use those particular ones because it would hurt their public image.

Petter's final point is possibly the most important one. He believes that the war against file-sharing will lead to a technological arms race as Internet users find new ways to hide their activities.

Indeed, by spending a measly £3.00 per month on a cheapo VPN service from the likes of SwissVPN, it's possible for any user to tunnel right out of the UK and no-one in the country will have a clue what they are doing on their connection. Not the BPI, not ISPs, not the government.

That's around 10p per day to defeat a £1m a day system that isn't even in place yet. Something doesn't add up.

http://torrentfreak.com/uk-anti-piracy-plans-cost-more-than-music-industry-losses-090922/

Sphere: Related Content

A nasty acorn

Sphere: Related Content

ACORN: The Most Cost-Effective Investment the Government (and Foundations) Have Ever Made

The real purpose of the right's attacks on ACORN is to destroy a remarkably successful 50-year-old grassroots model for defending the poor and workers.

By David Morris

To understand the current attacks on ACORN, and the organization itself, we need to go back more than 60 years, to the 1930s and the New Deal, when for the first time, the federal government accepted responsibility for directly helping the non-working poor.

These programs were expanded in the 1940s, but in the 1950s, a backlash erupted against the poor, driven by several factors.

The postwar prosperity dramatically reduced the number of poor families, and an increasing number of black women were added to the welfare rolls, injecting race into the debate.

Meanwhile, a Republican White House mostly left welfare matters to the states.

The myth of welfare recipients as lazy, immoral chiselers began to circulate. States adopted punitive laws to reduce welfare rolls. Special units of welfare departments conducted "midnight raids" to see if the recipients were involved in a relationship with a man, something that would result in a cut-off of benefits. The average grant declined.

In desperation, low-income mothers in dozens of big cities organized for survival. They came together to collectively negotiate not only with welfare offices for benefits, but with utilities to eliminate deposits required from low-income households and with the post office to install locks on mailboxes in apartment houses to prevent the theft of welfare checks.

Several veterans of the civil rights movement worked to bring local welfare-rights organizations together into a national organization.

In June 1966, a coordinated national day of action brought tens of thousands of people into the streets in 16 major cities. Two months later, representatives of 75 local welfare-rights organizations convened in Chicago to create the National Welfare Rights Organization.

Led by George Wiley, a Ph.D. chemist and leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, NWRO was an unusual organization. It was a federation of local groups that coordinated local and national actions. Black women comprised a majority of its leadership.

NWRO's successes led to rapid growth. By 1969, it boasted over 500 chapters with 22,500 dues-paying families.

In the late 1960s, a growing number of people looked to create a broad-based anti-poverty movement, an idea embraced by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Poor People's Campaign, in which NWRO played an important role.

In 1972, when Wiley left NWRO, he told the New York Times, "The welfare-rights movement created a political and economic crisis around the issue of welfare which could have led to reform or repression. What we are witnessing is repression, and we need a broad, organized movement to counter it."

Wiley wanted to use the NWRO model to build a coalition of the working poor, unemployed, seniors and the lower middle class around issues such as national health insurance, consumer rights, housing and tax reform.

After a tragic accident took Wiley's life in 1973, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, created by two former NWRO organizers Wiley had sent to Little Rock, Ark., in 1970, became the primary vehicle for implementing his vision.

Led by Wade Rathke, ACORN had affiliates in 20 cities by 1980. Today, it has about 400,000 low- and moderate-income members in more than 100 cities in 40 states.

ACORN is one of the few grassroots neighborhood organizations capable of wielding power on a national scale.

It is unique in the combination of strategies it uses: organizing, direct action, lawsuits, lobbying and the provision of direct services.

That ACORN is a federation of self-governing locals with a national board comprised largely of poor people seems to both amaze and gall the right.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/142812/acorn:_the_most_cost-effective_investment_the_government_%28and_foundations%29_have_ever_made

Sphere: Related Content

ACORN could have gotten away with it if they said this

Sphere: Related Content

Drunk, near-naked Yeltsin found hunting pizza near White House

Boris Yeltsin's drinking 'almost created an international incident', according to Bill Clinton.

Russian leader Boris Yeltsin was once found near the White House late at night dressed in his underwear, seemingly drunk and looking for pizza, according to a new book detailing Bill Clinton's presidency.

The claim comes in a 700-page expose, parsed from hours of secret recordings made by the former US president and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Taylor Branch, excerpts of which were published in USA Today.

Clinton "relayed how Boris Yeltsin's late-night drinking during a visit to Washington in 1995 nearly created an international incident" Taylor told the paper.

Yeltsin had been staying at Blair House, metres from the White House, when he was discovered roaming by secret service agents. When confronted trying to hail a taxi, the former president slurred that he was looking for pizza.

Yeltsin, who died in 2007, is remembered for embarrassing drunken incidents, once seizing the baton from a bandmaster in Germany to conduct and playing the spoons on the president of Kyrgyzstan's bald head.

The book, by a long-time Clinton friend, also details the then president's views of candidates vying to succeed him. In Clinton's view George W Bush "was unqualified to be president ... but he had shrewd campaign instincts".

John McCain, who would eventually lose to Bush and again to Barack Obama in 2008, "might make a good president, but he had no idea how to run."

The book, released next week, is based on 79 taped interviews, which where kept largely secret from Clinton's staff, despite being conducted in the Treaty Room and other locations around the White House.

The tapes were apparently hidden in Clinton's sock drawer.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/drunk-nearnaked-yeltsin-found-hunting-pizza-near-white-house-20090923-g0vv.html

Sphere: Related Content

Zen GPS

Sphere: Related Content

Dick: the secret house organ of the Republican Party

 

Sphere: Related Content

Everyone seems to be agreeing with Bin Laden these days

 

Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message that we're losing Afghanistan

by Robert Fisk

Obama and Osama are at last participating in the same narrative. For the US president's critics – indeed, for many critics of the West's military occupation of Afghanistan – are beginning to speak in the same language as Obama's (and their) greatest enemy.

There is a growing suspicion in America that Obama has been socked into the heart of the Afghan darkness by ex-Bushie Robert Gates – once more the Secretary of Defence – and by journalist-adored General David Petraeus whose military "surges" appear to be as successful as the Battle of the Bulge in stemming the insurgent tide in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq.

No wonder Osama bin Laden decided to address "the American people" this week. "You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said in his 9/11 eighth anniversary audiotape. "The time has come to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby." There was no more talk of Obama as a "house Negro" although it was his "weakness", bin Laden contended, that prevented him from closing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In any event, Muslim fighters wold wear down the US-led coalition in Afghanistan "like we exhausted the Soviet Union for 10 years until it collapsed". Funny, that. It's exactly what bin Laden told me personally in Afghanistan – four years before 9/11 and the start of America's 2001 adventure south of the Amu Darya river.

Almost on cue this week came those in North America who agree with Obama – albeit they would never associate themselves with the Evil One, let alone dare question Israel's cheerleading for the Iraqi war. "I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan," announces Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the senate intelligence committee. "I believe it will remain a tribal entity." And Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, does not believe "there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan".

Colin Kenny, chair of Canada's senate committee on national security and defence, said this week that "what we hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan has proved to be impossible. We are hurtling towards a Vietnam ending".

Close your eyes and pretend those last words came from the al-Qa'ida cave. Not difficult to believe, is it? Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-everyone-seems-to-be-agreeing-with-bin-laden-these-days-1790058.html

Sphere: Related Content