Friday, May 7, 2010
The pill: Making motherhood better for 50 years
It sparked protests and controversy, and is credited with spurring the women's liberation movement. Now, the contraceptive method known as 'The pill' is turning 50.
Moms Speak Out: End This Brutal War
by Rethink Afghanistan (videos)
In honor to this tradition, we created a new video that puts the focus back where it belongs: On ending a war.
Help us get the word out about this costly, brutal war, share this video with your friends and family.
http://www.facebook.com/rethinkafghanistan
Army Spy Plane May Have Snooped on Bomber
Investigators were able to track wannabe terrorist Faisal Shahzad through his anonymous, pre-paid cell phone exactly how, they won't say. But there was a tantalizing explanation posted and then quickly yanked from the website of WCBS TV. "In the end, it was secret Army intelligence planes that did him in. Armed with his cell phone number, they circled the skies over the New York area, intercepting a call to Emirates Airlines reservations, before scrambling to catch him at John F. Kennedy International Airport."
Jeremy Scahill, relying on a source in U.S. Special Operations, says those planes were likely RC-12s, equipped with a Guardrail Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) system. The planes are designed to pluck all kinds of communications from the air. But from the ground, they could easily be mistaken for an executive aircraft. The RC-12 is based on the Hawker-Beechcraft King Air B200 suit-carrier. And while earlier versions of the aircraft were covered in odd-looking antennas, the latest aircraft are far less conspicuous.
Variants of the planes are at the center of "Project Liberty," a crash project by the Air Force to send more airborne spies to Afghanistan. The first of an estimated 37 aircraft began flying there last December.
"It sucks up everything. We've got these things in Jalalabad [Afghanistan]. We routinely fly these things over Khandahar. When I say everything, I mean BlueTooth would be effected, even the wave length that PlayStation controllers are on. They suck up everything. That's the point," Scahill's source tells him.
New U.S. Push to Regulate Internet Access
WASHINGTONIn a move that will stoke a battle over the future of the Internet, the federal government plans to propose regulating broadband lines under decades-old rules designed for traditional phone networks.
The decision, by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, is likely to trigger a vigorous lobbying battle, arraying big phone and cable companies and their allies on Capitol Hill against Silicon Valley giants and consumer advocates.
Breaking a deadlock within his agency, Mr. Genachowski is expected Thursday to outline his plan for regulating broadband lines. He wants to adopt "net neutrality" rules that require Internet providers like Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. to treat all traffic equally, and not to slow or block access to websites.
The decision has been eagerly awaited since a federal appeals court ruling last month cast doubt on the FCC's authority over broadband lines, throwing into question Mr. Genachowski's proposal to set new rules for how Internet traffic is managed. The court ruled the FCC had overstepped when it cited Comcast in 2008 for slowing some customers' Internet traffic.
In a nod to such concerns, the FCC said in a statement that Mr. Genachowski wouldn't apply the full brunt of existing phone regulations to Internet lines and that he would set "meaningful boundaries to guard against regulatory overreach."
Some senior Democratic lawmakers provided Mr. Genachowski with political cover for his decision Wednesday, suggesting they wouldn't be opposed to the FCC taking the re-regulation route towards net neutrality protections.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703961104575226583645448758.html
Audit the Fed Amendment Modified – Allows Fed To Keep Secrets
Ron Paul just posted the following message on Facebook:
Ron Paul: "Bernie Sanders has sold out and sided with Chris Dodd to gut Audit the Fed in the Senate. His "compromise" is what the Administration and banking interests want: they'll allow the TARP and TALF to be audited, but no transparency of the FOMC, discount window operations or agreement with foreign central banks. We need to take action and stop this!"
John Tate (Campaign for Liberty) immediately sent out the following alert:
Dear C4L Member,
Any time you find out Senator Chris Dodd is in support of something – watch out.
According to our sources on the Hill, Senator Bernie Sanders caved to pressure from the White House and Chris Dodd and stripped out the Paul-Grayson language from his Fed transparency amendment.
What Sanders is now proposing is essentially the Watt amendment we all opposed last year in the House. In addition, it supports just a one-time audit.
Talking Points Memo reports that, "In order to allay some of the White House's and the Fed's concerns, Sanders has agreed to limit the scope of what the Government Accountability Office would be allowed to audit–but his plan will still require thorough review of all the Fed's emergency lending, beginning December 1, 2007."
Call Senator Sanders' office at (202) 224-5141 and tell him how you feel about this last-minute sell out.
Click here for contact information for your senators and urge them to oppose the Sanders Sellout. Tell them to put back in the original Paul/Grayson language.
A vote could come even late tonight or early tomorrow. Let your senators know where you stand right away.
The American people deserve a real audit.
In Liberty,
John Tate
President
http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-05-06/audit-the-fed-amendment-modified-allows-fed-to-keep-secrets/
Sphere: Related ContentWeeds 1, Monsanto 0, Farmers -1
Here's how The Times presents it:
Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers' near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.
To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.
"We're back to where we were 20 years ago," said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. "We're trying to find out what works."
Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.
Well, this turns out to not be a new problem, exactly. In fact, there were Round-up resistant weeks ten years ago, found in a soybean field. And the problem has spread since then. And The Times, which has never expressed much reluctance for any new crackpot scheme that also manages to benefit corporate America, ominously intones:
The superweeds could temper American agriculture's enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn't kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.
Roundup originally made by Monsanto but now also sold by others under the generic name glyphosate has been little short of a miracle chemical for farmers. It kills a broad spectrum of weeds, is easy and safe to work with, and breaks down quickly, reducing its environmental impact.
Note that reference to a miracle. The Times is sneaky that way. Note also, if you actually go and read the article, that the enterprising Times reporters, William Neuman and Andrew Pollock, somehow manage to make it through the entire article without a single mention of the fact that Roundup-resistant seeds have been hugely controversial. Nor do they mention Monsanto's interesting legal strategies to force farmers to stay on the Monsanto dole. They do, however, pass along some interesting and possibly scary statistics, depending on your moodroundup-resistant crops "account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States."
They also blame it on the farmers, a pretty neat trick when you think about it:
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2010/05/06/weeds-1-monsanto-0-farmers-1/
How About We Try the Free Market Solution?
by John Cole
This makes no sense to me:
The White House said it backed "significantly" raising the cap on damages faced by energy firms that pollute the environment, as it demands BP pays in full for the Gulf oil spill.Officials also hit out at fresh complaints by Republicans that it had not acted quickly enough in the immediate aftermath of an explosion on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico last month, which triggered the huge slick.
Under a law introduced after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster in Alaska in 1989, oil companies are bound by law to pay for the full clean-up and containment costs of any oil seeping from their facilities after an accident.
But the legislation caps the damages for which the firm is liable at 75 million dollars unless the company is guilty of "gross negligence." Bills introduced in the House and the Senate would fix the cap at 10 billion dollars.
Here's a revolutionary idea- why don't we get rid of the limit altogether! If BP or Exxon cuts corners and makes a hash of things, and they cause 60 billion dollars worth of damage, they are on the hook for the whole 60 billion dollars! And if they can't pay for the whole bill, the company is liquidated, the shareholders get wiped out, and the company ceases to exist.
Why don't we give that a shot?
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/05/06/how-about-we-try-the-free-market-solution/
Oil and Water and Leaky Hydraulics Don’t Mix?
By: emptywheel
I wanted to call your attention to this excellent story from the Houston Chronicle describing some of the potential causes of the Deepwater Horizon spill. The short version appears to be that they were switching the drill chamber over from mud to water, which exposed what may be a potentially faulty concrete job, which brought gas to the surface. When that happened, and the blowout preventer was activated, the BOP failed, potentially because of leaky hydraulics.
As the Chron story explains, BP should not have been replacing the mud with water unless they were very sure of the cement job done the day before.
Experts say well-capping poses special hazards. One arose that day as crews were replacing the mud with seawater in pipes going from the ocean floor to the rig.
Deep gases exert astounding upward pressure on a well. "Drilling mud," a heavy fluid used to lubricate the drill and bring up bits and pieces of rock, is used as the main line of defense against the upward pressure, or a disastrous eruption of gas.
The mud was being displaced so the riser could be detached from the rig and the wellhead, and the well could be capped with a final cement plug. But seawater is much lighter than mud. The pressure the riser was applying to the well would have lessened by as much as 38 percent, experts said.
That could prove significant.
Investigators likely will be considering whether the drill hole and the casing pipe were secured properly with cement a day earlier.
"The big question is how confident were they in the casing cementing job," said Elmer "Bud" Danenberger, who recently retired as chief of offshore regulatory programs for the Minerals Management Service. "They shouldn't have begun this (riser) operation until they were confident in that."
Now, as the MMS recently found, problems with the cementing process have been one (but not necessarily the only) cause in a plurality of blowouts in recent years. Though most of those cementing-related blowouts occurred in far shallower waters than this well.
Cementing problems increased significantly during the current period as these problems were associated with 18 of the 39 blowouts, compared with 18 of the 70 blowouts with identified contributing factors during the previous study. During the current period, all but one of the blowouts associated with cementing problems occurred in wells with water depths less than 400 ft.
The Chron notes that HAL claimed it had tested its cement job in its "we worked to spec" statement from last week, but had not released the results of that test. A number of comments on oil boards suggest this is where a fight over liability between BP and HAL might break out–whether the tests showed the concrete was sufficient or not, and if there were doubts, whether the BP guy in charge should have called a halt to efforts to remove the rig.
In any case, for whatever reason, at the moment they were replacing the mud with seawater, gas and oil surged out of the hole, which is when the BOP should have–but failed to–prevent the blowout.
When the alarms go off "you shut it down," said Daniel Becnel, an attorney from Reserve, La., who has filed lawsuits on behalf of fishermen, oystermen and other Louisiana residents claiming damages from the spill. "They've got panic switches all over the place."
Those switches are supposed to activate a blowout preventer on the ocean floor, a huge and complex tower of valves and pipe crimpers designed to shut down a well in an emergency. It didn't work.
Although it had been tested beforehand, BP now says robot submarines have discovered at least one problem with the blowout preventer, though it is unclear whether it caused the malfunction.
"We have found that there are some leaks on the hydraulic controls," said Bob Fryar, senior vice president of BP's exploration and production operations in Angola, in southwestern Africa.
Is anyone besides me wondering why BP's Vice President in charge of exploration in Angola is the one discussing this malfunctioning blowout preventer off the coast of Louisiana? Because I am.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/05/05/oil-and-water-and-leaky-hydraulics-dont-mix/
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well
by Greg Palast
I've seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon's name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was ... British Petroleum (BP).
That's important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.
Tankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn't happen, but it does. And when it does, the name of the game is containment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf last week, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans (OSRP), which the company itself drafted and filed with the government.
What's so insane, when I look over that sickening slick moving toward the Delta, is that containing spilled oil is really quite simple and easy. And from my investigation, BP has figured out a very low-cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates.
That's because responding to a spill may be easy and simple, but not at all cheap. And BP is cheap. Deadly cheap.
To contain a spill, the main thing you need is a lot of rubber, long skirts of it called a "boom." Quickly surround a spill, leak or burst, then pump it out into skimmers, or disperse it, sink it or burn it. Simple.
But there's one thing about the rubber skirts: you've got to have lots of them at the ready, with crews on standby in helicopters and on containment barges ready to roll. They have to be in place round the clock, all the time, just like a fire department, even when all is operating A-O.K. Because rapid response is the key. In Alaska, that was BP's job, as principal owner of the pipeline consortium Alyeska. It is, as well, BP's job in the Gulf, as principal lessee of the deepwater oil concession.
Before the Exxon Valdez grounding, BP's Alyeska group claimed it had these full-time, oil spill response crews. Alyeska had hired Alaskan natives, trained them to drop from helicopters into the freezing water and set booms in case of emergency. Alyeska also certified in writing that a containment barge with equipment was within five hours sailing of any point in the Prince William Sound. Alyeska also told the state and federal government it had plenty of boom and equipment cached on Bligh Island.
But it was all a lie. On that March night in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound, the BP group had, in fact, not a lick of boom there. And Alyeska had fired the natives who had manned the full-time response teams, replacing them with phantom crews, lists of untrained employees with no idea how to control a spill. And that containment barge at the ready was, in fact, laid up in a drydock in Cordova, locked under ice, 12 hours away.
As a result, the oil from the Exxon Valdez, which could have and should have been contained around the ship, spread out in a sludge tide that wrecked 1,200 miles of shoreline.
And here we go again. Valdez goes Cajun.
http://www.truthout.org/slick-operator-the-bp-ive-known-too-well59178
Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth
-
Whether it took the Earth 4.5 billion years to get to where it is today (or a mere seven days), destroying it might take a lot less time. Sam Hughes presents a host of methods for ending the planet -- and life -- as we know it. Enjoy!
- By Sam Hughes
10. Total existence failure
You will need: nothing
Method: No method. Simply sit back and twiddle your thumbs as, completely by chance, all 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms making up the planet Earth suddenly, simultaneously and spontaneously cease to exist. Note: the odds against this actually ever occurring are considerably greater than a googolplex to one. Failing this, some kind of arcane (read: scientifically laughable) probability-manipulation device may be employed.
Utter, utter rubbish.
9. Gobbled up by strangelets
You will need: a stable strangelet
Method: Hijack control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, New York. Use the RHIC to create and maintain a stable strangelet. Keep it stable for as long as it takes to absorb the entire Earth into a mass of strange quarks. Keeping the strangelet stable is incredibly difficult once it has absorbed the stabilizing machinery, but creative solutions may be possible.
A while back, there was some media hoo-hah about the possibility of this actually happening at the RHIC, but in actuality the chances of a stable strangelet forming are pretty much zero.
Earth's final resting place: a huge glob of strange matter.
8. Sucked into a microscopic black hole
You will need: a microscopic black hole. Note that black holes are not eternal, they evaporate due to Hawking radiation. For your average black hole this takes an unimaginable amount of time, but for really small ones it could happen almost instantaneously, as evaporation time is dependent on mass. Therefore you microscopic black hole must have greater than a certain threshold mass, roughly equal to the mass of Mount Everest. Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since one needs a reasonable amount of neutronium, but may possibly be achievable by jamming large numbers of atomic nuclei together until they stick. This is left as an exercise to the reader.
Method: simply place your black hole on the surface of the Earth and wait. Black holes are of such high density that they pass through ordinary matter like a stone through the air. The black hole will plummet through the ground, eating its way to the center of the Earth and all the way through to the other side: then, it'll oscillate back, over and over like a matter-absorbing pendulum. Eventually it will come to rest at the core, having absorbed enough matter to slow it down. Then you just need to wait, while it sits and consumes matter until the whole Earth is gone.
Highly, highly unlikely. But not impossible.
Earth's final resting place: a singularity of almost zero size, which will then proceed to happily orbit the Sun as normal.
Source: "The Dark Side Of The Sun," by Terry Pratchett. It is true that the microscopic black hole idea is an age-old science fiction mainstay which predates Pratchett by a long time, he was my original source for the idea, so that's what I'm putting.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp.html
Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling
WASHINGTONIn a decisive and vulgar 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court once again upheld the constitution's First Amendment this week, calling the freedom of expression among the most "inalienable and important rights that a motherfucker can have."
"It is the opinion of this court that the right to speak without censorship or fear of intimidation is fundamental to a healthy democracy," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. "Furthermore, the court finds that the right to say whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want, is not only a founding tenet, but remains essential to the continued success of this nation."
Added Ginsburg, "In short, freedom of speech means the freedom of fucking speech, you ignorant cocksuckers."
The decision came Monday in response to the case of a Charleston, WV theater troupe that had been sued by city officials for staging a sexually explicit play with public funds. Reversing the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the theater, an outcome free-speech advocates are calling a victory and Justice Ginsburg called "a bitch-slap in the face of all those uptight limp-dicks."
The ruling in City of Charleston v. The Kanawha Players marks the first time in 220 years that the nation's highest court has taken such a fiercely profane stance.
During oral arguments, Charleston's chief counsel Dan Roy said his clients could restrict any public speech they deemed offensive, an argument quickly dismissed by Justice John Paul Stevens, 90, who turned to his colleagues and made a repeated up-and-down hand motion intended to simulate masturbation.
"I'm beginning to wonder if you really understand what 'abridging the freedom of speech' means at all," said Stevens, a 34-year veteran of the court known for his often-nuanced interpretations of the First Amendment. "I'm also wondering whether you and your fat-faced plaintiffs over there need to have some respect for constitutionally protected expression fucked into your empty hick skulls."
Justice Clarence Thomas, who voted with the majority, wrote a concurring opinion in which he made little mention of established court precedents but emphasized that he himself had viewed materials "way, way nastier than this stupid play."
"I don't know what kind of bullshit passes for jurisprudence down in the 4th Circuit these days," Thomas wrote. "But those pricks can take their arguments about speech that 'appeals only to prurient interests' and go suck a dog's asshole."
http://www.theonion.com/articles/supreme-court-upholds-freedom-of-speech-in-obsceni%2C17372/
Hey Arizona, Don't Fuck With This Mexican... MACHETE has some Cinco De Mayo words for you!!!
| Hey folks, Harry here and earlier today Robert Rodriguez and Danny Trejo dropped by my house with a package. Rodriguez is calling this his "Illegal" trailer. You see, Robert talked Fox into letting him put together a Cinco De Mayo message for ARIZONA - given. Well, the way things are in Arizona at this moment - it is kinda insane that there is a movie that was shot over a year ago waiting to be released that is about - THIS EXACT ISSUE... but if, Danny Trejo and buddies went Revolution Wacko as a result. Make no bones about it, this is a pure Mexploitation film, but like real exploitation at its height, that shit was pulled straight out of the headlines, even sometimes slightly before the headlines were the headlines. Frankly - that's just kinda cool. We've all known about this silly fun project of Robert's for a while, but then... an entire fucking state just goes fucking nuts... And us being Texans - we're usually quite aware of the lunacy of our surroundings here. But really, ARIZONA... what the hell? For your pure enjoyment here you go my friends, Happy CINCO DE MAYO! Spread this Everywhere!!!
If you can't see it above, go to... http://www.aintitcool.com/node/44943 |
Senator Robert Byrd Threatens West Virginia Coal Companies
by Daniel Kessler
West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd published an op-ed today aimed directly at the coal industry, and, although he doesn't use its name, Massey Energy, owner and operator of the Upper Big Branch coal mine, which recently killed 29 West Virginians and injured 2 others. Byrd, whose word carries great weight in Congress on coal matters, says that coal mining in West Virginia is a privilege that should not abused and that those that do abuse it should suffer the consequences.
Writes Byrd:
First and foremost, the coal industry must respect the miner and his family. A single miner's life is certainly worth the expense and effort required to enhance safety. West Virginia has some of the highest quality coal in the world, and mining it should be considered a privilege, not a right. Any company that establishes a pattern of negligence resulting in injuries and death should be replaced by a company that conducts business more responsibly. No doubt many energy companies are keen for a chance to produce West Virginia coal.
...
Time will tell just how far Byrd is willing to go. If he really wants to hold coal's feet to the fire, he can support the comprehensive climate soon to be introduced in the Senate, a body he has called home for decades.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/byrd-smacks-coal.php
Burr ‘Couldn’t Imagine’ Supporting A Bill To Prevent Mass Teacher Layoffs
By Pat Garofalo
One of the many devastating results of the Great Recession has been the damage wrought on state budgets, which have led to dramatic cuts in education, including plenty of teacher layoffs. Part of this pain was alleviated by the economic stimulus package passed last year, but the depth and length of the recession means that many states are still in very bad shape.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has crafted a $23 billion bill meant to help states avoid making mass teacher layoffs, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised will reach the floor sometime. "We will be pushing hard for this in the Senate," Harkin said.
Thus far, Harkin has received no Republican support for his effort. When National Journal asked Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) if he would back the bill, he scoffed that he "couldn't imagine" a situation in which he would give a bill preventing teacher layoffs his blessing:
Another GOP member, Richard Burr of North Carolina, said he hadn't seen the bill but "couldn't imagine" he would support it, positing that it's not the role of the federal government to hire teachers.
Burr might want to spend some time imagining what teacher layoffs in his own state would look like. There are currently 3,700 fewer teachers working in North Carolina than there were last year, and cuts for the next school year "will be even worse."
Dream Ball Project
To the children in The Third World; Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Congo and etc, who can't enjoy football freely because of poverty, war and natural disaster, having a football means a lot and can be a dream and hope to escape from their poor life.
However, the children are so poor that they can not buy a football. So, they play football with the ball made of plastic bag or a coconut palm leaves Therefore, giving them their own footballs which can give them hope, is our aim of this project.
We suggest this Dream Ball made of relief boxes delivered to those poor children by recycling.
A. Create patterns that can help making a ball on the surface of an aid box.
B. Activities of giving aid boxes to children in The Third World.
C. The used aid boxes will be recycled as a football by children with the patterns on boxes.
D. By making Dream Ball with the children together, the aid organizations will get the chance to be friendly with them.
Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with "rent boy"
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