Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Hakone – Japan’s Amazing Open Air Museum
Iran declares war on mullets, ponytails for men; approves of hair gel and Elvis 'dos
Remember now, just months ago an Iranian cleric decreed: "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes." Wonder what disasters the verboten hairdos for men cause?
More: France 24, Reuters (image: Reuters)
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/05/iran-declares-war-on.html
Bill Keller's self-defense on "torture"
Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said the newspaper has written so much about the issue of water-boarding that "I think this Kennedy School study -- by focusing on whether we have embraced the politically correct term of art in our news stories -- is somewhat misleading and tendentious."
Whether an interrogation technique constitutes "torture" is what determines whether it is prohibited by long-standing international treaties, subject to mandatory prosecution, criminalized under American law, and scorned by all civilized people as one of the few remaining absolute taboos. But to The New York Times' Executive Editor, the demand that torture be so described, and the complaint that the NYT ceased using the term the minute the Bush administration commanded it to, is just tendentious political correctness: nothing more than trivial semantic fixations on a "term of art" by effete leftists. Rather obviously, it is the NYT itself which is guilty of extreme "political correctness" by referring to torture not as "torture" but with cleansing, normalizing, obfuscating euphemisms such as "the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks" and "intense interrogations." Intense. As Rosen puts it: "So, Bill Keller, 'the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks' is plainspeak and 'torture' is PC? Got it."
Worse, to justify his paper's conduct, Keller adds "that defenders of the practice of water-boarding, 'including senior officials of the Bush administration,' insisted that it did not constitute torture." Kudos to Keller for admitting who dictates what his newspaper says and does not say (redolent of how Bush's summoning of NYT officials to the Oval Office caused the paper to refrain from reporting his illegal NSA program for a full year until after Bush was safely re-elected).
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/03/keller/index.html
A High-Risk Egg Race To Save The Sea Turtles
As the oil spill coats Gulf Coast beaches, rescuers are hatching a daring plan to save as many as 70,000 sea turtle eggs from the disaster.
Each year, thousands of newly hatched sea turtles scramble from their nests in the Florida Panhandle's sandy beaches and Alabama coasts into the water. With those waters fouled by oil and chemical dispersant, a whole generation of sea turtles could be harmed or even destroyed.
Hundreds of turtles and birds have already died in the oil spill, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is determined that this year's hatchlings won't be among the casualties. Biologists plan to relocate all the nests from the Gulf Coast to Florida's eastern coast, agency spokesman Chuck Underwood tells NPR's Scott Simon.
"They'll be allowed to complete their incubation, and hopefully the turtles will emerge," Underwood says. Then "we can collect them and release them to the ocean."
In a couple of weeks, he says, the rescue team will dig up an estimated 700 to 800 nests, place them in foam containers and ship them overland to Florida's far side.
They don't make car seats for baby turtles, but it turns out some companies do specialize in transporting wildlife — like FedEx, which will be delivering the eggs. Another big name is offering luxury accommodations for the eggs when they reach their destination: the Kennedy Space Center.
"The space center's provided the opportunity for us to utilize one of their large, climate-controlled warehouses," Underwood says. It even has a wildlife contractor on staff.
"We have a lot of partners involved that normally would not all necessarily agree on something," Underwood says. "But the general consensus is this is at least an opportunity to try to do something in a situation that has been less than ideal for wildlife."
But playing with Mother Nature has its risks. There are some things the rescuers just don't know. "Once we get them there and they emerge, there's a lot of questions: Are they going to be put on the beach and released into the surf? And are they going to go into the ocean like they would normally do? Or are they going to do circles? We just honestly don't know."
Even if the little guys make it to the water, we won't know if they're OK for another 35 years.
"This is a very slow-maturing species," Underwood says. "Thirty-five years from now, they will reach their sexual maturity and begin coming back to the beaches." Only then might we find out whether the rescued turtles went back to the Gulf or not. Or if they even survived.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128276036
Monday, July 5, 2010
Why Did It Take a Rock Magazine to Report the Military's Total Disaster in Afghanistan?
Anyone in the Pentagon press corps could have written the story that took down McChrystal. So why did it appear in Rolling Stone?
The controversial Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal didn't just expose poor judgment on the part of the U.S. military's key leader in Afghanistan. It also illustrates one of the most persistent shortcomings of American corporate journalism.It's no surprise that a protracted and fruitless military conflict has produced backbiting at the highest levels. That's the expected result of a flawed policy. But it is -- or should be -- curious that Michael Hastings's piece appeared in a rock magazine whose cover photograph features a G-strung Lady Gaga with automatic rifles jutting out of her brassiere.
Anyone in the Pentagon press corps could have written Hastings' story. So why did it appear in Rolling Stone?
First, let's give Rolling Stone its due; it's not an ordinary music magazine. Before launching it in 1967, Jann Wenner and Ralph Gleason worked at Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker that ran high-impact investigative stories on Vietnam and the CIA. Despite its healthy circulation, Ramparts lost money and closed its doors for good in 1975. Then as now, no "business model" (i.e., reliable advertising base) existed for political magazines, left or right.
Wenner focused instead on music and the counterculture, but he also hired Hunter S. Thompson as his national affairs correspondent. One result was Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, praised as the least factual and most accurate account of that year's presidential race.
In 2009, Rolling Stone revived the Gonzo tradition by running Matt Taibbi's critical profile of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street firm with close ties to the Treasury Department. This was another example of an RS irregular scooping beat writers on a huge story. Taibbi's piece drew heat, but most of his critics begrudgingly conceded that his main point was correct.
Hastings has likewise taken criticism from the Pentagon press corps. Lara Logan, CBS's chief foreign affairs correspondent, appeared on CNN's Reliable Sources this weekend to cast aspersions on his methods, to defend the Pentagon beat writers, and to lament the article's effect on General McChrystal's career. "Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has," she claimed (as if critical reporting isn't exactly the service journalists are supposed to provide). Responding to Hastings' point that beat writers wrote glowingly about McChrystal to ensure future access to him, Logan labeled that view "insulting and arrogant."
Arizona governor says immigration leads to beheadings
"Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there, that have been beheaded," she says
Arizona's Republican governor is trumpeting her anti-immigration credentials as part of her re-election campaign --and her latest remarks about decapitation are sure to cause a firestorm.
Gov. Jan Brewer recently signed a new law that allows Arizona police officers to demand immigrants to produce documentation proving their legality.
In an interview with Fox News, Brewer said, "We cannot afford all this illegal immigration and everything that comes with it, everything from the crime and to the drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings."
"Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there, that have been beheaded," she added.
The Arizona Guardian followed up on Brewer's remarks, finding them completely false.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0702/arizona-governor-immigrants-beheading/
Pelosi Funded the War Escalation Thursday Night
What it means: The Peace Movement's Progress.
How it worked: Democrats Forced to Cheat to Fund War.
What it looked like: Live Blog of the Vote.
How they voted on the Rule that allowed the war escalation funding to move forward.
How they voted on disaster relief, teacher funding.
How they voted on ending war funding.
How they voted on limiting war funding to withdrawal.
How they voted on an amendment to require the president to present Congress with a National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan and a withdrawal plan and completion date, and to require that Congress vote by July 201 1 "if it wants to allow the obligation and expenditure of funds for Afghanistan in a manner that is not consistent with the president's announced policy of December 2009 to begin to drawdown troops by July 2011."
Participate
Peace of the Action
Washington, D.C., July 4-17
Brown Bag Lunch Vigils
Everywhere, third Wednesday of every month
National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now
Albany, July 23-25
PDA Grassroots Leadership Conference
Cleveland, July 23-25
Hemp Phytoremediation Program Can Help With Gulf Oilspill Crisis
Wisdom dictates that especially when in a crisis, use effective solutions applied at the level of cause. Since our environmental problem is too much pollution, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, from Maine to Hawaii, the solution is to use strategies that effectively remove the pollution.
We all know that hemp was helpful in cleaning up the toxins around Chernobyl, and with a bit of planning by a mastermind alliance, can be used to clean up the environmental mess again.
An immediate end to hemp prohibition will allow us to use this biomass champion in a hemp phytoremediation program. "Phytoremediation can be defined as the decontamination of soil, sediment or water using plant growth. Industrial hemp, Cannabis sativa L., is renowned for its ability to grow rapdily. In one growing season, fibre hemp can yield 250 to 400 plants per square metre, with each plant reaching up to 5 metres in height. As a result, hemp has been identified as a plant with the potential to serve as a phytoremediator."
The same way hemp was used to clean up the toxins around Chernobyl, we should be using hemp to clean up the toxins from the Gulf of Mexico "oil spill" (more like a volcano) and other environmental crisis situations.
The McGraw-Hill Companies reported in 2000 "Overall, phytoremediation has great potential for cleaning up toxic metals, pesticides, solvents, gasoline, and explosives."
February, 2000: Chernobyl (Ukraine) - Using Plants To Clean Soil
"Phytoremediation is a process that takes advantage of the fact that green plants can extract and concentrate certain elements within their ecosystem. For example, some plants can grow in metal-laden soils, extract certain metals through their root systems, and accumulate them in their tissues without being damaged. In this way, pollutants are either removed from the soil and groundwater or rendered harmless."
"In 1998, Phytotech, along with Consolidated Growers and Processors (CGP) and the Ukraine's Institute of Bast Crops, planted industrial hemp, Cannabis sp., for the purpose of removing contaminants near the Chernobyl site. Cannabis is in the Cannabidaceae family and is valuable for its fiber, which is used in ropes and other products...
Overall, phytoremediation has great potential for cleaning up toxic metals, pesticides, solvents, gasoline, and explosives. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that more than 30,000 sites in the United States alone require hazardous waste treatment. Restoring these areas and their soil, as well as disposing of the wastes, are costly projects, but the costs are expected to be reduced drastically if plants provide the phytoremediation results everyone is hoping for."
To understand how to use hemp to solve our environmental problems, read the book HEMP FOR VICTORY: A GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTION by Richard M. Davis, founder and curator of the USA Hemp Museum.
So let's end hemp prohibition now and form a mastermind alliance to use hemp to help us solve our problems now. HEMP FOR VICTORY!
$800 billion wasn't put to work
"We opened the window behind me and threw eight hundred billion dollars out of it."
That was how an aide to a local congressman described to me the economic-stimulus act when it passed in the winter of 2009.
The aide didn't mean it would all be a waste. Or would fail to boost a cratering economy.
He meant that what was unusual about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, other than its staggering cost, was that it was a smorgasbord. A huge experiment in infusing borrowed cash into a gazillion pre-existing channels, from government social programs to grants for road construction to walking-around money in worker paychecks.
It was an emergency. Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott described it as "Congress flying blind."
So here we are a year and a half later. It seems obvious the experiment helped stop a free fall. You can see that in areas where the stimulus has ended. The housing market, for instance, propped up for months by stimulus tax credits, has dropped sharply since that program expired.
But you don't have to be an economist to see that Congress swung and missed on the issue of jobs.
All that spending hasn't gotten many back to work. Take the freshest data for Seattle and King County. In the first three months of 2010, the act is credited with paying for 2,712 jobs here. That's in a county with a labor force of 1.1 million and 90,000 more currently jobless.
A few thousand jobs in three months is better than nothing. But it's also not much. It shifts King County's unemployment rate by only two-tenths of a percentage point.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2012274678_danny04.html
How to overthrow the government: tips from 10 scifi revolutionaries
It's the July 4 weekend, so naturally our thoughts turn to independence, and bloody, lovely revolution. Unfortunately, overturning your colonial rulers is hard work. So we've collected tips from the ten greatest science fiction revolutionaries, to help you prevail.
Luke Skywalker (Star Wars)
At the end of Return Of The Jedi, Luke doesn't just defeat Darth Vader in combat — he also proves that the Empire's main ideology is wrong. The Dark Side of the Force is not stronger than the Light Side. This is as powerful a blow against the Empire as launching a million X-wing fighters, because it undermines the Emperor's whole reason for being in charge. Instead of Vader converting Luke to the Dark Side, Luke brings Vader back to the light.
The Doctor (Doctor Who)
The Doctor has overthrown more oppressive planetary governments than almost anyone. For a while there, he was toppling two or three a year.
His greatest revolutions, arguably, happen in "The Happiness Patrol," "The Sunmakers," and "The Long Game." And in all three cases, he's very interested in controlling the state's propaganda apparatus. This is especially true in "The Sunmakers," where he takes over the government's broadcasting center and announces that the revolution has been a success — before it's even started. Why wait until you've actually won to declare victory? Life is short, even for a Time Lord. (Go to about 3:40 in the video below.)
Flynn and Tron (Tron)
When Tron and Flynn lead the attack against the Master Control Program, they're outgunned, even though Flynn has amazing user powers. But when Tron attacks the Master Control Program's main enforcer, the program Sark, the MCP starts to panic. And the MCP makes a crucial mistake, putting all of its functions into Sark. This causes Sark to become giant and super-powerful, but it also creates a giant target — and leaves the MCP itself unprotected. Boo yah!
Paul Muad'Dib (Dune)
In the first Dune book, Paul proves he's the Kwisatz Haderach, and then launches an assault on the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV with the help of his Fremen allies. They win partly by riding on the enormous sandworms that are native to the planet Arrakis, aka Dune. But also, when Paul wins an audience with Shaddam, he threatens to destroy the spice, melange, that allows navigators to see and travel between worlds, unless Shaddam steps down as Emperor in favor of Paul. Faced with the loss of the all-important spice, the Spacer's Guild urges Shaddam to fold.
Captain Kirk (Star Trek)
I don't think Captain Kirk ever overthrew a repressive regime without first causing its computer systems to explode. It's just the way you do things, in James Tiberius' playbook: Step one, detonate the mainframe, and the system will collapse like a house of cards. Step two usually involves giving an impassioned speech with your shirt ripped in strategic places. But really, Kirk knows that most evil regimes are either run by a computer, or utterly dependent on a computer for their surveillance and social control infrastructure. And most computers can be talked into self-destructing. Oh, and if someone accuses you of being Archons, just run with it — especially if it freaks them out.
http://io9.com/5574009/how-to-overthrow-the-government-tips-from-10-science-fiction-revolutionaries
Copyright scholars talk Copyright Termination
Dwiff sez, "Three copyright scholars - including David Nimmer [ed: legendary copyright expert] - discuss copyright termination and the pivotal role played in case law by Superman, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Lassie and Winnie-the-Pooh. Starts slow, but well worth the listen."
Intellectual Property Colloquium - Copyright TerminationCopyright law has long recognized in authors an unwaivable right to terminate certain contracts and licensing agreements. A handful of high-profile cases have already called substantial attention to this termination provision, with disputes touching such iconic characters as Superman, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Lassie, and Winnie the Pooh. In this edition of the IP Colloquium, copyright guru David Nimmer joins UC Berkeley Professor Peter Menell and UCLA Professor Doug Lichtman in an informal conversation about the termination right, its controversies, and the implications for modern copyright practice.
One day late but irrelevant nevertheless
An Independence Day Carol
by Michael Dare
After a long day of oppressing the masses, George W. Bush is visited by the ghost of Ken Lay on the 4th of July. Lay's leg is chained to bags of pennies equal to the amount of money he stole in his lifetime. Lay tells Bush that his chain is even longer, pointing outside to thousands of ghosts of dead crooks flying by, moaning and groaning while firmly attached to endless chains of their booty. Bush notices the ghost of Richard Nixon chained to the tombstones of every soldier killed in Vietnam during his term, and an iPod strapped to his head playing his 18,000 hours of White House tapes over and over. Bush asks Lay if there's any way he can avoid this fate, and Lay tells him to dismantle his taping system, and late that night, he will be visited by three spirits.
After destroying all the recording devices he can find, Bush falls asleep at his desk in the oval office. He's rudely awoken by the rattling chains of the Ghost of Independence Days Past, who gives him a brief history of the founding fathers and their battle against the tyranny of King George, reading to him the declaration of independence and making him understand the significance of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Tiny Tim hobbles along on his crutches. Bush awakens to find himself alone. He falls back asleep.
He's then startled awake by the Ghost of Independence Days Present, who shows him the current spirit of the declaration of independence in the world, the struggling poor vs. the ruthless masters. He sees the poverty and suffering of the oppressed and the direct link to his policies gone awry. Tiny Tim is about to die. Bush wakens again to find himself alone in the Oval Office.
Finally, he's visited by the Ghost of Independence Days Future, where gangs of fiery rebels fight off the clones and robots of the massive armies of the New World Order in a devastated post-apocalyptic world where everything is radioactive, there is no God, and any adherents to any religious faith, whether Christian, Muslim, or Jew, are hunted down and slaughtered for causing all this mess. Tiny Tim is dead at the feet of a mammoth statue of Bush, pushed over and beheaded.
The next morning, Bush wakes up with a smile on his face and a vow to do better. He is a changed man. He buys Tiny Tim a brand new motorized wheelchair and massively funds stem cell research. He pardons all prisoners of political or victimless crimes, withdraws all American troops from everywhere, reinstitutes taxes on the rich, doubles the death tax, disbands the DEA and CIA, gives all American car manufacturers one year to switch from the internal combustion engine to ones that work on water or air, recalls all voting machines and goes back to paper ballots, backs a bill making all campaign contributions of any size illegal, signs the Kyoto Protocols and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, cancels the Patriot Act, cuts all funding to Israel until they adopt a mandatory "Adopt a Palestinian" Day, cuts the defense budget in half, spends the difference on universal health and car insurance for all Americans, and marries Dick Cheney in the world's biggest gay wedding watched by 99% of all TV viewers around the world.
After leaving office, he devotes the rest of his life to Greenpeace, the ACLU, and the dismantling of all nukes, aircraft carriers, and tanks. In his later years, he and Dick are often seen walking hand in hand daintily removing all remaining land mines on earth with Tiny Tim's discarded crutch.
Bush had no further intercourse with Spirits. He sidetracked a massive portion of defense spending into the creation of bigger and better fireworks displayed across America on the 4th of July, letting the people see their taxes go up in smoke right in front of their eyes instead of in a foreign land. It was always said of him that he knew how to keep Independence Day well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One! Now get out of my way!
The End
Sphere: Related Content
Friday, July 2, 2010
What Are We? New Experiments Suggest We're Not Purely Physical
by But a series of new experiments suggest this may be all wrong, and that part of us exists outside of the physical world. The implications of these experiments have been downplayed because, until recently, quantum behavior was limited to the microscopic world. However, this 'two-world' view (that is, one set of physical laws for small objects, and another set of laws for the rest of the universe, including us) has no basis in reason, and more importantly, is being challenged in labs around the world.
We're trapped in an outdated paradigm. A few more equations, we're told, and we'll know it all -- any day now. There's no adventure left, no lost gardens in far away lands. But we all intuitively know there's more to existence than our science books grant. It's the same nostalgic yearning that gives religion its persistent power over humanity.
It was this search that lured me into science. My life has been a journey that began as a young boy when I persuaded myself to make a trip (by bus and trolley) to Harvard. I hoped the men of science would receive me kindly, but when I got there the guard wouldn't let me in. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, when the palace guard said "go away." I went around the building and stood by some dumpsters trying to look inconspicuous. A short balding guy came walking up with a bunch of keys -- the janitor, I thought. After I slipped in, he asked me if he could help. "No," I said "I'm looking for a Harvard doctor. I'm trying to induce melanin synthesis in albino chickens." My words met with a stare of surprise. Seeing the impact they were having, I went on, although I was certain he didn't know what DNA was. As we got to talking, I told him I worked in the school cafeteria myself, and was good friends with the janitor up the street. He asked if my father was a doctor. "No," I laughed. "He's a professional gambler. He plays poker."
I didn't know he was Stephen Kuffler, the world-famous neurobiologist who had been nominated for the Nobel Prize. At the time, however, I felt like a schoolmaster lecturing a pupil. I told him about the experiment I had performed in my basement--how I altered the genetic makeup of a white chicken to make it black. "Your parents must be proud," he said. "No, they don't care what I do," I replied. "They think I'm out in my treehouse." He insisted on introducing me to a "Harvard doctor." I hesitated -- I didn't want him to get into trouble. "Don't worry about me," he said with a little grin.
He took me into a room crammed with sophisticated equipment. A "doctor" looking through an instrument was about to insert an electrode into the nerve of a caterpillar [the "doctor," Josh Sanes, was a graduate student, now Director of Harvard's Center for Brain Science]. "I'll stop back later," my new friend said. From that moment on everything was a dream come true. The doctor and I talked all afternoon. And then I looked at the clock. "Oh no!" I said, "I have to go!" I hurried home and went straight to my treehouse. That evening, the call of my mother penetrated the woods: "Rob--by! Time for dinner!"
No one had any idea that evening - including me − that I had met one of the greatest scientists in the world. Kuffler is often referred to as the "Father of Modern Neuroscience." As a medical student I used his From Neurons to Brain as a textbook. Yet it wasn't what I learned from his book that was most relevant to understanding the world. It was startling to realize, after studying neurobiology, that objects, indeed our own bodies, are nothing but representations in our mind -− that we can't see anything through the bone surrounding the brain.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/science-spirituality-what_b_624292.html
RCA graduate show features 'Menstruation Machine'
By David Rowan
The Royal College of Art's summer graduate show is a pretty reliable source of new talent. Last year's highlights included Min-Kyu Choi's folding 240V mains plug, which Wired featured last August, and Dominic Hargreaves' fold-up bicycle -- two radically different but equally smart takes on space-saving foldable product designs.
Last week I had a sneak preview of the graduate show for the design interactions course, in the company of department head Anthony Dunne. There's a definite playful vibe this year -- the show is less about tech-driven products designed to be marketed as it is about provoking thoughts, debates and (very often) smiles. And oh boy, there's material here to smile at.
Some examples:
Hiromi Ozaki has designed a "Menstruation machine" -- a wearable metal suit that allows a boy "to experience the painful bleeding of menstruation" (video embedded below). Yep, the suit is designed to release blood stored in its reservoir over the course of the cycle. Hiromi lives her musical life as Sputniko! – and if you hear her Google Song once, it's a certainty that you'll be humming it a week later.
Then there's the Floppy Legs Portable Hard Drive, by James Chambers -- a portable disk drive that stands up if it detects liquids nearby (it uses an Arduino microcontroller with servo motors). It's part of Chambers's project to conceptualise how technology would evolve if in the natural world. So he's created The Attenborough Design Group (named after Sir David) to develop a bunch of imagined products that would adapt to changing circumstances. These include the Gesundheit Radio, which sneezes occasionally to expel potentially damaging dust; and the AntiTouch Lamp, which sways away if you get too close to its delicate halogen bulb.
You may also enjoy the "Genetically Engineered Sound Garden", part of a project on "acoustic botany" by David Benqué, in which plants are engineered to make music.
There's also Nuclear is Good, by Oliver Goodhall, a persuasion-based exercise designed to convince the public that nuclear-power stations offer a clean, near limitless energy solution that could allow us to meet CO2 emission targets.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-06/28/royal-college-art-graduate-show-menstruation-machine
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Fox still hasn't done Jones Act research
Fox News' Steve Doocy falsely claimed that "foreign ships that want to come help in U.S. waters can't unless" the Jones Act is "lifted by the president." In fact, foreign ships are already involved in the oil spill response, and the Jones Act allows for exceptions in the case of an oil spill.
Doocy claims foreign ships can't help in the Gulf unless Jones Act is "lifted by the president"
From the June 28 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
DOOCY: It's day 70 into the Gulf crisis, and as oil keeps gushing into the water, the Jones Act remains in place. That means foreign ships that want to come help in U.S. waters can't unless it's lifted by the president. Florida Senator George LeMieux has sent President Obama a formal letter asking him to waive the Jones Act and allow international cleanup equipment into the Gulf. He's joining us this morning from Pensacola.
OK, you know, Senator, so many people say every skimmer on the planet should be down there in the Gulf, off the coast of Florida and Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana, and they're not. And you think it's because of the Jones Act. Why?
LeMIEUX: Well, I think that's part of the problem. They cite the Jones Act. They cite other legal encumbrances that are keeping these ships from coming to the Gulf of Mexico.
In fact, foreign-flagged ships are already involved in oil spill response
National Incident Command: "15 foreign-flagged vessels are involved" in the response. A June 18 document released by National Incident Commander Adm. Thad Allen and a June 15 press release from the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center state: "Currently 15 foreign-flagged vessels are involved in the largest response to an oil spill in U.S. history. No Jones Act waivers have been granted because none of these vessels have required such a waiver to conduct their operations as part of the response in the Gulf of Mexico."
Acting Maritime administrator: "[T]wenty-three percent of the vessels responding to the oil spill are not U.S.-flag," and they are "not in violation of the Jones Act." David Matsuda, acting Maritime administrator, stated in June 17 congressional testimony that "[d]uring the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico, U.S.-flag vessels have been used in every situation where U.S. vessels and crew are available. Seventy-seven percent of the vessels providing oil spill response in the Gulf are U.S.- flagged." He added: "Even though twenty-three percent of the vessels responding to the oil spill are not U.S.-flag, none of these are known to be in violation of any U.S. law or regulation. Vessels that do not call upon points in the United States are not in violation of the Jones Act."
Fox News advocates shutting down public libraries
When I give talks to library groups, I always finish by reminding librarians that they're powerful advocates for fair use and privacy, because "you look like a total jerk when you criticize librarians."
Case in point: this Fox Chicago piece proposing that Illinois shut down its library system:
I also always open my library talks with a joke: "You know, with library budgets on the chopping block and Wall Street thriving, there's only one answer: securitize bonds based on library fines!"But keeping libraries running costs big money. In Chicago, the city pumps $120 million a year into them. In fact, a full 2.5 percent of our yearly property taxes go to fund them.
That's money that could go elsewhere - like for schools, the CTA, police or pensions
One of the nation's biggest and busiest libraries is the $144-million Harold Washington Library in the Loop. It boasts a staggering 5,000 visitors a day!.
Once again, Fox comes through:
We know we spend a lot on them. But libraries do bring in some revenue: more than $2 million in fines is collected annually by Chicago public libraries.Are Libraries Necessary, or a Waste of Tax Money? (Thanks, Scott!)
(Image: St. Thomas Public Library, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from bluefootedbooby's photostream)
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/30/fox-news-advocates-s.html
Why The Greater Depression Still Lies Ahead
Obama, Bernanke pile on debt when de-leveraging is needed.
by Michael PentoIf policymakers do not understand the real cause of a problem, they will in all likelihood be unable to provide a genuine solution.
Messrs. Barack Obama, Benjamin Bernanke and Timothy Geithner do not understand the real cause of this debt crisis. They are politicians first and economists or students of the market second--if at all. Therefore, it is not wise to count on them to tell us when the Great Recession is over, or to provide a plan to prevent another one in the future.
The cause of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the Great Recession beginning in 2007, was one and the same: an overleveraged economy. Excessive debt levels are the direct result of the central bank providing artificially low interest rates and of superfluous lending on the part of commercial banks.
The easy money provided by banks eventually brings debt in the economy to an unsustainable level. At that point, the only real and viable solution is for the public and private sectors to undergo a protracted period of deleveraging. The ensuing depression is, in actuality, the healing process at work, which is marked by the selling of assets and the paying down of debt.
Unfortunately, our politicians today are focused on fighting this natural healing process by promoting the accumulation of more debt. During this latest economic contraction, the Federal Reserve took interest rates to near 0%, and the Obama administration is leveraging up the public sector to record levels in a bid to re-leverage the private sector. The government's philosophy is tantamount to sticking a frostbitten man in the freezer so he won't have to suffer the pain associated with the thawing of his extremities.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/30/greater-depression-still-ahead-personal-finance-economy.html
Surprising new studies on statins dispute & reputation of big pharma: media silent on nutrition
by Anne Hart 
It's looking more like statins aren't reducing that many heart attacks and strokes after all, according to the latest studies on statins. Basically, it's one of the radio talk show personalities that yesterday (and repeated this morning) has let the public know more about the latest studies on statins and where to read one study. Also read the June 29, 2010 Los Angeles Times article by Melissa Healy about this latest study, Rift Over Statins.
You also can read the study from its primary source, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Read the study yourself, "Statins and All-Cause Mortality in High-Risk Primary Prevention: A Meta-analysis of 11 Randomized Controlled Trials Involving 65,229 Participants." Archives of Internal Medicine, 2010; 170(12):1024-1031. You also might want to take a look at the article, "Drug Company Pleads Guilty to Health Fraud," Life Extension magazine, March 2010.
The media is now disseminating this dispute between medical studies and the claims of the big prescription drug industries. The consumers' questions keep asking whether most doctors are controlled by big pharma's claims? And what happens to dissenting doctors that don't want to prescribe? Do they get intimidated by insurance companies who may want them to prescribe in order to get insurance?
Also a British study of more than 2 million patients found that those using statins were significantly more likely to suffer cataracts.The five-year study found that for every 10,000 patients on statins, up to 307 more had cataracts than non-statin users. Read the article about the study, "Heart drugs may increase cataract, kidney failure risk," published May 22, 2010 in The Age.
Patients and consumers in general wonder whether doctors who don't prescribe drugs, but use nutrition and certain supplements instead, usually make patients pay out of pocket because the doctors can't get insurance based on nutritional solutions or treatments using food-based products such as vitamins or minerals?
These are questions patients have about the decision to go with statins. Patients have to decide as a first line of treatment whether to go with food as medicine without being called a quack follower--unless of course, you work with licensed dietitians with R.D. certification or nutritionists and naturopaths with M.D. or D.O. degrees who really know their food biochemistry.
Basically, disputes almost always are about following the big money. And when it comes down to statins or any other drug, the lawyers are waiting in the wings for symptoms to show up. So what's the latest statins dispute about? The answer is the reputation of drugs. How are the various media handling news of the statins studies?
The dispute in the latest news concerns statins, the cholesterol-lowering prescription drugs that earn about $26 billion a year for their makers. Basically, news articles and medical studies in scientific journals are pummeling the reputation of the widely prescribed medications in one area even as it advanced their stature in another.
A meta-analysis — a review of previous studies — published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that statins do not lower death rates among patients with risk factors but no evidence of established cardiovascular disease who take them as a preventive measure, according to the Los Angeles Times article.
Study: US media redefined torture after US started practicing it
The US news media radically changed how it reported on the issue of waterboarding after it emerged that US forces had used the practice, says a new study from Harvard University.
The study also found a double standard when defining waterboarding, with news sources commonly referring to waterboarding as "torture" when talking about foreign countries using the practice, but declining to do so when it's being carried out by the United States.
The study (PDF) reports:
From the early 1930's until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002-2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.
The study went on to note a marked difference in the way waterboarding is portrayed when the individuals doing the waterboarding are American, and when they're not.
[N]ewspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.
The study, from Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, may be the first empirical evidence of what many media critics have been accusing the US media of, anecdotally, for some time: That the press changed its standards for "torture" once it became known the US was practicing it.
Pre-Crime? Try Pre-Diagnose and Pre-Drug: Psychiatrists target infants as mental patients
By CCHR International
A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect "brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk" in infants just a few weeks old. We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or brain abnormality to start with. There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one. So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the "associated with schizophrenia risk" amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.
For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, "researchers now believe" they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or "new evidence suggests" evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease. But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of "belief" —no evidence to support the theory. One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains. They've spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the "belief" in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science. As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, "There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder." —Allen Frances (And Frances isn't the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.)
The logical question the press should be asking is what are the American Journal of Psychiatry and "the Director of UNC Schizophrenic Research" really after? What is their goal?
As we have exposed in the article "Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global" there is a concerted push being headed by Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry and other pharmaceutically funded psychiatrists for the global implementation of a new mental health paradigm; preventative mental health, i.e., pre-diagnosing (diagnosing children before they develop a "mental disorder") and pre-drugging children ( before they show "signs" of the mental disorder). There is an obvious push for the same pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging agenda with this latest study, which claims "major cases of schizophrenia are usually not diagnosed until a person begins witnessing its related symptoms like delusions and hallucinations as a teenager or adult . However, by that time, the disease [notice the term disease despite no medical evidence of disease] crosses the stage of preliminary treatment and is difficult to treat." In other words, if we wait to administer drugs to them it may be too late.
Rep. Gohmert Warns Of Baby Terrorists
by Walid Zafar
Speaking on the House floor last night, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) continued his assault on common sense by making the generally nonsensical claim that terrorists were recruiting pregnant women in order for them to have U.S.-born children who would, several decades from now, attack the United States and "destroy our way of life." Gohmert made the comments while discussing border security and Arizona's controversial new immigration law.
Gohmert: I talked to a retired FBI agent who said that one of the things they were looking at were terrorist cells overseas who had figured out how to game our system. And it appeared they would have young women, who became pregnant, would get them into the United States to have a baby. They wouldn't even have to pay anything for the baby. And then they would turn back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists. And then one day, twenty...thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life. 'Cause they figured out how stupid we are being in this country to allow our enemies to game our system, hurt our economy, get setup in a position to destroy our way of life.
Watch:
Law enforcement agencies have long warned that criminal elements (including suspected terrorists) are actively exploiting our porous borders to gain entry into the United States. But Gohmert's claim is new and based solely on an unsubstantiated conversation with a retired FBI agent. No news accounts or national security alerts seem to support this conclusion. We contacted Gohmert's office to seek a clarification but got no response.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Summer in Iraq
by William Rivers Pitt
So, yeah, every day is a busy day in the dust and mountains of Afghanistan, and June has been exceptionally busy even by that high standard. For the longest time - the better part of a decade, actually - Afghanistan was the war that nobody heard about. People died every day, the Bush-era strategies failed and failed again, but all eyes were focused on the war in Iraq. The script has been flipped, Afghanistan gets the headlines now, and the ongoing war in Iraq has been relegated to the back pages, if it makes the papers at all.
It would be a hell of a thing if this country, its people and its "mainstream" media could focus on more than one thing at a time, wouldn't it? Because we are still at war in Iraq, too. Soldiers are still dying there - 38 this year, seven this month - along with dozens of Iraqi service members and policemen. Hundreds of Iraqi civilians are killed and wounded every month, just like in Afghanistan, but we have somehow allowed ourselves to accept the farcical notion that things are settled enough over there that we can ignore what's going on.
Think again, folks, because it's high summer in Iraq, and tempers are getting very short. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, the ugly effect of this ongoing conflict continues to grind the people into the ground:
At least three times a week, Maher Abbas brings one of his two young children or his elderly mother to the hospital to be treated for dehydration, stomach bugs or heat exhaustion. Lack of water and electricity are killing his family and his business, he said. Abbas's comments reflect a wave of fury that has erupted across this country of 30 million as Iraq's sweltering summer begins. Most people are having to deal with electricity shortages that leave them with no respite from the heat and no water when their household electric pumps shut off.
Seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, Iraqis are taking to the streets to demand basic services they have not received, despite many promises and the expenditure of billions of dollars by the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Their anger has forced the hand of Electricity Minister Karim Wahid, who resigned Monday. In a news conference the same day, Wahid said the ministry could not keep up with demand and did not have enough money, adding that the situation was out of its control.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki defended his government and Wahid. He blamed Iraqis for consuming too much electricity, squatters for tapping into and overwhelming the electrical grid, and the previous parliament for not approving billions of dollars for infrastructure projects to be undertaken with several foreign firms, forcing the government to take out about $2.1 billion in bonds this year. He also warned that Iraqis should expect power cuts for two more years.
Two years. Think about that. Americans will be voting in another presidential election before the Iraqi people can even begin to hope for more than a few hours of reliable electricity a day, and they've been dealing with this situation for a very long time already.
LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
by Ted Rall
PORTLAND, OREGON--In 1967 animal researchers conducted an interesting experiment. Two sets of dogs were strapped into harnesses and subjected to a series of shocks. The dogs were placed in the same room.
The first set of dogs was allowed to perform a task--pushing a panel with their snouts--in order to avoid the shocks. As soon as one dog mastered the shock-avoidance technique, his comrades followed suit.
The second group, on the other hand, was placed out of reach from the panel. They couldn't stop the pain. But they watched the actions of the first set.
Then both groups of dogs were subjected to a second experiment. If they jumped over a barrier, the dogs quickly learned, the shocks would stop. The dogs belonging to the first set all did it.
But the second-set dogs were too psychologically scarred to help themselves. "When shocked, many of them ran around in great distress but then lay on the floor and whimpered," wrote Russell A. Powell, Diane G. Symbaluk and P. Lynne Honey in Introduction to Learning and Behavior. "They made no effort to escape the shock. Even stranger, the few dogs that did by chance jump over the barrier, successfully escaping the shock, seemed unable to learn from this experience and failed to repeat it on the next trial. In summary, the prior exposure to inescapable shock seemed to impair the dogs' ability to learn to escape shock when escape became possible."
The decrease in learning ability caused by unavoidable punishment leads to a condition called "learned helplessness."
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/
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