Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Osbournes expose ignorance over Israeli human rights abuses

JERUSALEM (AFP) – British rocker Ozzy Osbourne, the "Prince of Darkness," was to perform in Israel on Tuesday despite a string of recent cancellations by other artists protesting its occupation of Palestinian lands.

When asked on Sunday whether he had any hesitation about performing in Israel on account of the conflict, Osbourne said he avoided politics because "I wouldn't know what I was talking about," according to the Ynet news service.

His wife and manager Sharon Osbourne added that "Britain has the IRA and no one cancels concerts there," referring to the Irish Republican Army, which fought British rule in northern Ireland until the 1990s.

When asked why he hadn't visited Israel before, Osbourne replied: "I don't know, I was drunk for years."

Read full story from Raw Story.

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GOP blocks senate bill to stop job outsourcing

The Senate on Tuesday blocked tax legislation that would have punished U.S. firms that export jobs. But the political symbolism of trying to save American jobs, not passing a bill, was the Democrats' closing argument on the economy in the waning weeks of the congressional elections.

Republicans complained that the vote used a serious subject — economic recovery — to score points with voters five weeks before the balloting in which all 435 House seats, 37 Senate seats and the Democratic majority are on the line. The bill in question, Republicans said, would make U.S. companies less competitive.

Read full story from Raw Story.

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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Future Volvo may be made OF batteries

Here's one problem companies face when trying to build practical electric cars: Batteries are heavy. If you want to give an electric car more range, that means you need a bigger battery, which means a heavier car, which means it takes more energy to move it. It's a tricky problem.

Volvo might have a solution. The Swedish car company recently announced that it has been working with Imperial College in London to develop a "composite blend of carbon fibers and polymer resin" that can serve as a car's body panels while also functioning as a battery, storing and releasing energy. Future Volvos could be literally made out of batteries. The company's press release candidly admits that "at the moment this is just a fascinating idea," but it does add that "tests are currently under way to see if the vision can be transformed into reality."

If it can, electric cars might get a whole lot cheaper, and the same material could be used to shrink the size of anything that requires a battery: think cell phones and laptops.

Read full story from Grist.

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Thursday, September 23, 2010

Redesigned Pizza Box Breaks Down Into Plates and Smaller Leftover Box

You might think it hyperbolic to refer to a redesign of the cardboard pizza box as a stroke of genius, but that's precisely what this is. Green Box's design breaks down into four plates and a smaller (fridge-friendly) box for leftovers. What a thorough use of materials.

Read full story from Good.

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Gulf Sea Food Not Tested for Heavy Metals

Despite claims from President Barack Obama and federal officials that Gulf seafood is safe and poses no long-term health risks, no testing for heavy metals is occurring in fish or shellfish in areas that have been reopened to commercial and recreational fishing.

Both National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and FDA officials told Raw Story that fish and shellfish being tested for the purpose of reopening waters to commercial and recreational fishing are not being tested for heavy metals.

Whenever Raw Story raised the lack of heavy metal testing, FDA and NOAA officials routinely referenced a “Mussel Watch” program. Yet neither agency seemed to have a clear grasp on how this program actually collected useful data related to the heavy metal levels in the seafood currently being fished and sold to market.

Read full story from Raw Story.

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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

U.S. Senators Want Power to Shut Down Foreign Websites

A bill introduced in the US Senate on Monday would give US law enforcement authorities more tools to crack down on websites engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act has received support from both parties and was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah.

The bill gives the Justice Department an expedited process for cracking down on websites engaged in piracy including having a court issue an order against a domain name that makes pirated goods available.
 

Read full story from Raw Story.

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Blue Dog Democrats Push to Keep Bush Tax Cuts for Wealthy

With Congress poised for a showdown over the Bush tax cuts, 24 members of the Blue Dog Coalition – a group of House Democrats who tout "fiscal responsibility" as their core belief – are championing the extension of $70-billion-per-year tax cuts for the highest income-earners.

The Democrats voiced their positions in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), both of whom – along with President Barack Obama – support allowing the high-end Bush tax cuts expire as scheduled at the end of this year.

"We believe in times of economic recovery it makes good sense to maintain things as they are in the short term," they wrote.

Thirty-one House Democrats signed the letter – their names were first reported by Christina Bellantoni of Talking Points Memo. All but seven are Blue Dogs, Raw Story has learned.

Read full story from Raw Story.

Below is the list of the 24 Blue Dogs, as compiled by Raw Story, who opposing letting the high-end Bush tax cuts expire.

Rep. Allen Boyd (FL)

Rep. Jim Costa (CA)

Rep. Jim Matheson (UT)

Rep. Glenn Nye (VA)

Rep. Lincoln Davis (TN)

Rep. Brad Ellsworth (IN)

Rep. Dan Boren (IN)

Rep. Mike McIntyre (NC)

Rep. John Barrow (GA)

Rep. Zack Space (OH)

Rep. Jason Altmire (PA)

Rep. Jim Cooper (TN)

Rep. Joe Donnelly (IN)

Rep. John Salazar (CO)

Rep. Frank Kratovil (MD)

Rep. Earl Pomeroy (ND)

Rep. Jim Marshall (GA)

Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (SD)

Rep. Sanford Bishop (GA)

Rep. Mike Ross (AR)

Rep. Travis Childers (MS)

Rep. Walt Minnick (ID)

Rep. Harry Mitchell (AZ)

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Monday, September 20, 2010

Pushing For a Global Internet Treaty

The proposal was presented at the Internet Governance Forum in Lithuania last week, and outlined 12 “principles of internet governance”, including a commitment from countries to sustain the technological foundations that underpin the web’s infrastructure.
The draft law has been likened to the Space Treaty, signed in 1967, which stated that space exploration should be carried out for the benefit of all nations, and guaranteed “free access to all areas of celestial bodies”.

Under the proposed terms of the law, there would be cross-border co-operation between countries to identify and address security vulnerability and protect the network from possible cyber attacks or cyber terrorism.

It would also uphold rights to freedom of expression and association, and the principle of net neutrality, in which all internet traffic is treated equally across the network.

"The fundamental functions and the core principles of the internet must be preserved in all layers of the internet architecture with a view to guaranteeing the interoperability of networks in terms of infrastructures, services and contents," reads the proposal.

"The end-to-end principle should be protected globally.”

Read full story from the Telegraph UK.

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Friday, September 17, 2010

Former O'Donnell Aides Claim She's Bad with Money

Attention Vermonters! Before you entrust Christine O'Donnell with helping fix the nation's economy, you should take a look at how she handles her own finances, both personal and campaign.

I personally would encourage you to read the following article from Politico before considering casting your vote her way!


Christine O'Donnell criticized by former aides

O’Donnell’s undisciplined approach to her campaign’s finances in 2008 foreshadowed the criticism she endured this year after reports of her own shaky personal finances surfaced.

At one point in 2008, the candidate traveled to California for a luncheon fundraiser organized by a friend in Los Angeles. Keegan said in addition to spending $3,000 on a trip for herself and two aides, the event itself failed to yield more than a few hundred dollars in contributions.

And a few days before the event, according to Keegan, half of the 500 invites came back to the campaign's PO Box address, requesting postage due.

Keegan, whose job was to oversee the campaign budget, said he repeatedly clashed with O'Donnell over expenses.

He said O'Donnell's phone service got cut off because she had failed to keep up with her payments, forcing her to trek to relatives’ homes to make campaign calls.

"It was always a misunderstanding," he said, describing her explanation when he would confront her about the recurring problems.

When O'Donnell wanted to place an order for hundreds of campaign T-shirts, Keegan said, she asked him to put the charge on his personal credit card.

"I said, ‘No, how are we going to pay for them? Her famous quote was always, 'have them invoice it.' I said, ‘We can't do that. In 20 days, we're going to have to pay for it.’ And it's not like we had all this money coming in," he explained. "Whenever Christine wanted money for something, she wanted everyone to stop paying somebody else."

That included halting payment of checks to staffers, which eventually led to several of them leaving, including Murray and Keegan before summer's end.

But before Keegan finished his projects in August 2008, he made sure he called all the vendors the campaign was using.

"I said, ‘Don't take any orders from her unless you get cash upfront,’" he warned.

Her campaign staffers weren’t the only ones who had issues with O'Donnell. Bill Lee, the 2008 GOP gubernatorial nominee who shared the ticket with her in November, said he attended many of the same political events as she did but decided to seek distance from her campaign.

"She would get off message and just be bizarre, so it reached the stage where I stopped making appearances with her. It was embarrassing,” Lee said. “More than that, I was asking for money from the same people and we went as a team and I really didn't want to be on her team after a couple of those things."

Read full story from Politico.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

L.A. Launches "Divest From Israel" Campaign

On April 1, 2010, in a no-holds-barred interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Israeli peacemaker Jonathan Ben Artzi, a PhD candidate at Brown University and nephew to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made clear his belief that equality and social justice will prevail in Israel when the government and people of the United States adopt a no-tolerance stance toward Israel’s abuse of Palestinians. Ben Artzi, whose family has lived in the region for nine generations, and who’s seen a lifetime of Israel’s abuse of Palestinians, declared:

“Sometimes it takes a good friend to tell you when enough is enough. As they did with South Africa two decades ago, concerned citizens across the US can make a difference by encouraging Washington to get the message to Israel that this cannot continue.”

Jonathan’s reference to South Africa is a testament to the powerful roll played by valiant Americans who participated in protests, boycotts and divestment actions nationwide, most between 1984 and 1989, which ultimately forced the white minority South African government to relinquish control over its oppressed Black majority.

Ben Artzi, a man of conscience and compassion, served 18 months in prison for refusing his mandatory service in Israel’s military. Ben Artzi goes on to say:

“If Americans truly are our friends, they should shake us up and take away the keys, because right now we are driving drunk, and without this wake-up call, we will soon find ourselves in the ditch of an undemocratic, doomed state.”

This week, Jonathan Ben Artzi should be pleased to know that a concerned and energized coalition of Americans has heeded the call to rescue out of control Israel from driving deeper into its ditch.
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Former Police Chief Argues FOR Prop 19

By Joseph D. McNamara

As San Jose's retired chief of police and a cop with 35 years experience on the front lines in the war on marijuana, I'm voting yes on Prop. 19.

Like an increasing number of law enforcers, I have learned that most bad things about marijuana -- especially the violence made inevitable by an obscenely profitable black market -- are caused by the prohibition, not by the plant. Legal marijuana is long overdue, but leading up to November, wrongheaded opponents will implore Californians with the same old mistaken arguments to stay the course. Prohibition advocates will promote fear, and they will ignore the vast bulk of law enforcement and medical experience on marijuana. People should not be fooled by cannabis opponents' appeal to prejudices and emotions when they argue:

1. Regulating cannabis will result in an explosion of use by young people.
On the contrary, pot smoking may decrease. Experience and research show that the United States has among the world's harshest marijuana laws, yet our consumption rate leads the world and is twice that of the Netherlands, where cannabis sales to adults have been allowed for decades. Prohibition doesn't keep marijuana away from young people. Annual U.S. government surveys consistently show that more than 80 percent of teenagers say that marijuana is "easy" or "very easy" to obtain. In a recent study from Columbia University, teenagers said it is easier to get illegal marijuana than age-regulated alcohol. Under today's laws, pot-dealing criminals getting rich on marijuana Prohibition don't ask for ID, but licensed dealers selling alcohol do.

2. Legalizing marijuana will just add one more harmful legal substance to the mix.

Marijuana is already in the mix. No one can dispute that marijuana already is widely available. At least 1 in 10 Californians consumed it in the past year, despite expensive government efforts. The November ballot's Proposition 19: The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 acknowledges this reality and enables us to manage the cannabis market. Furthermore, taxing legal cannabis sales will provide steady funding for local governments that may help avoid layoffs of police and teachers.

3. Drug gangs will keep selling marijuana even under legalization.

Silly. Who would buy pot on dangerous streets if they could get it at regulated stores without unsafe impurities? Al Capone and his rivals made machine-gun battles a staple of 1920s city street life when they fought to control the illegal alcohol market. No one today shoots up the local neighborhood to compete in the beer market. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that Mexican cartels derive more than 60 percent of their profits from marijuana. How much did the cartels make last year dealing in Budweiser, Corona or Dos Equis? Legalization would seriously cripple their operations. With more than 20,000 people in Mexico killed in the past three years in drug turf battles, which are spreading north of the border, undercutting the cartels is an urgent priority for both Mexicans' and Americans' safety.

Read full story from Alternet.org

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Buyer Beware: High Fructose Corn Syrup Changing Name to Corn Sugar

As the mounting pile of evidence that high fructose corn syrup is unhealthier than ordinary table sugar continues to grow, industry executives have buckled down and decided it's time for action. Honoring a longstanding American tradition, HFCS industry representatives have responded to that sprawling body of scientific research by doing what they do best -- launching a re-branding campaign. "High fructose corn syrup" may have (rightfully) acquired something of a stigma. But perhaps the public will forget all about the health ills associated with the stuff when it's called by its benign new name: "Corn Sugar".

Yes, the Corn Refiners Association (the lobbying group and manufacturing association that represents makers of high-fructose corn syrup) have embarked on an effort to ditch the troublesome name tag that even a slew of expensive TV ads couldn't spruce up. It had seemed that the public had made up its mind on HFCS, and recognized that the stuff was unhealthy; but maybe that was simply a semantics issue.

Read full story from Treehugger.com

Bravo comment:  New name, same harmful effects on your health!

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Dead Fish Clogging Mississippi Near Gulf

At first glance, you might not even notice the dead fish in the picture above -- there are too many of them. But no, that's not a gravely parking lot. It's a section of the Mississippi River that has been clogged with thousands of dead fish in the wake of the BP Gulf spill. And while investigation as to the cause of the mass fish kill is still underway, there are fears that new toxins in the water from spilled oil or chemical dispersants have played a role.

According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the fish were found and photographed in a bayou on the west side of the Mississippi late last week, in the Plaquemines Parish of Louisiana. Plaquemines was one of the earliest areas to be impacted by the BP Gulf spill, and it was also one of the heaviest hit. Now, this happening with alarming frequency:

Read full story from Treehugger.com

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North America's Largest Lithium-Ion Battery Plan Opens in Michigan

A123 Systems, the makers of advanced lithium-ion batteries, have just opened a new battery factory in Livonia, Michigan. They claim that "based on available data" it is the largest battery plant in North-America (some manufacturer might be keeping their capacity secret). This new facility should increase A123's manufacturing capabilities by "up to 600MW hours per year when fully operational, contributing to the company's plan to expand global final cell assembly capacity to more than 760MW hours annually by the end of 2011. " That's a lot of batteries! And, as previously noted, it should help drive prices down.

Read full story from Treehugger.com

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Sunday, September 12, 2010

Prof. Steven Jones finds evidence of thermitic reaction in WTC dust

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Friday, September 10, 2010

Former US Senator Joins 1,200+ Architects & Engineers in Questioning 9/11 Commission Report

A group of more than 1,200 architects and engineers is building what it hopes is a scientifically sound argument about one 9/11 claim: That the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed not by fires caused by the airplane collisions, but by a controlled demolition
At a press conference in Washington DC, Thursday, the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth offered evidence "that all three WTC skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, in NYC were destroyed by explosive controlled demolition."

The third building the group referred to was World Trade Center 7, a skyscraper that collapsed about eight hours after the main WTC towers fell. For many 9/11 "truthers," WTC7's collapse despite not being hit by a plane is the "smoking gun" proving that something other than airplanes brought down the towers. The WTC7 collapse was not addressed in the official 9/11 Commission report.

"That building fell completely into its own footprint," blogger Andrew Steele told WKTV in Utica. "You can watch on YouTube yourself and use your own common sense. Even if you don't have a scientific background ... if you have two eyes, you can see that fire alone did not bring down that building."

His claims, and those of the 1,270 architects and engineers who have signed on to the effort, were bolstered by the support of former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who said in a press release that "critically important evidence has come forward after the original government building reports were completed."

Gravel has been concerned with the events of September 11, 2001, for some time now. He has called for an independent investigation into 9/11.

"Unlike the first investigation, this commission should be granted subpoena power and full access to all governmental files and personnel," Gravel wrote. "George Bush should be forced to testify ALONE."

San Francisco architect Richard Gage said the way the towers collapsed was consistent with a controlled demolition, not a chaotic structural collapse.

"The official FEMA and NIST reports provide insufficient, contradictory, and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction," Gage said. "We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials."

But Gage added that "government investigators at the NIST have been forced to acknowledge the free-fall descent, an indicting fact, after being presented with analysis by AE911Truth petition signers."

On its Web site, the architects' and engineers' group lists facts that suggest explosives were used to take down the towers.

-- Rapid onset of "collapse"

-- Sounds of explosions at ground floor - a second before the building's destruction

-- Symmetrical "structural failure" -- through the path of greatest resistance -- at free-fall acceleration

-- Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic dust clouds

-- Expert corroboration from the top European Controlled Demolition professional

-- FEMA finds rapid oxidation and intergranular melting on structural steel samples


WTC7 exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e.

-- Slow onset with large visible deformations

-- Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires)

-- High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never "collapsed".

Read full story from Raw Story.


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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Physical Laws Possibly Not Constant Across Universe

New evidence supports the idea that we live in an area of the universe that is "just right" for our existence. The controversial finding comes from an observation that one of the constants of nature appears to be different in different parts of the cosmos.

If correct, this result stands against Einstein's equivalence principle, which states that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. "This finding was a real surprise to everyone," says John Webb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Webb is lead author on the new paper, which has been submitted to Physical Review Letters.

Even more surprising is the fact that the change in the constant appears to have an orientation, creating a "preferred direction", or axis, across the cosmos. That idea was dismissed more than 100 years ago with the creation of Einstein's special theory of relativity.

Moreover, the team's analysis of around 300 measurements of alpha in light coming from various points in the sky suggests the variation is not random but structured, like a bar magnet. The universe seems to have a large alpha on one side and a smaller alpha on the other.

This "dipole" alignment nearly matches that of a stream of galaxies mysteriously moving towards the edge of the universe. It does not, however, line up with another unexplained dipole, dubbed the axis of evil, in the afterglow of the big bang.

Earth sits somewhere in the middle of the extremes for alpha. If correct, the result would explain why alpha seems to have the finely tuned value that allows chemistry – and thus life – to occur. Grow alpha by 4 per cent, for instance, and the stars would be unable to produce carbon, making our biochemistry impossible.

Even if the result is accepted for publication, it is going to be hard to convince other scientists that the laws of physics might need a rewrite. A spatial variation in the fine-structure constant would be "truly transformative", according to Lennox Cowie, who works at the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii. But, he adds, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: "That's way beyond what we have here." He says the statistical significance of the new observations is too small to prove that alpha is changing.

If the interpretation of the light is correct, it is "a huge deal", agrees Craig Hogan, head of the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics in Batavia, Illinois. But like Cowie, he suspects there is a flaw somewhere in the analysis. "I think the result is not real," he says.

Read full story from New Scientist.

Bravo comment:  "As Above, So Below".  Why is it difficult for scientists to conceive the idea that the Universe itself may have a pole when all other spheres and galaxies do?  Seems a pretty elementary concept to me.

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Friday, September 3, 2010

Geologists Embracing Reality of Polar Shifts

Just north of a truck stop along Interstate 80 in Battle Mountain, Nev., lies evidence that the Earth’s magnetic field once went haywire.

Magnetic minerals in 15-million-year-old rocks appear to preserve a moment when the magnetic north pole was rapidly on its way to becoming the south pole, and vice versa. Such “geomagnetic field reversals” occur every couple hundred thousand years, normally taking about 4,000 years to make the change. The Nevada rocks suggest that this particular switch happened at a remarkably fast clip.

Anyone carrying a compass would have seen its measurements skew by about a degree a week — a flash in geologic time. A paper describing the discovery is slated to appear in Geophysical Research Letters.

It is only the second report of such a speedy change in geomagnetic direction. The first, described in 1995 based on rocks at Steens Mountain, Ore., has never gained widespread acceptance in the paleomagnetism community. A second example could bolster the theory that reversals really can happen quickly, over the course of years or centuries instead of millennia.

“We’re trying to make the case that [the new work] is another record of a superfast magnetic change,” says lead author Scott Bogue, a geologist at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

The last stable reversal occurred 780,000 years ago. Some geologists argue the Earth is overdue for a reversal and might even be entering one now, as the geomagnetic field has been getting weaker over the past 150 years or more.

Read full story from Science News.

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How the right taints America's image even when NOT in control

A delegation of Pakistani military officers was on a flight from Washington D.C. to Tampa, FL for a meeting with US Central Command when the officers were pulled off the flight for talking – because apparently when foreign people talk to one another on a plane, it’s best to jump to the conclusion that they are terrorists and then treat them as such.

Pakistani officials said the officer, weary from the journey to the US, had said, “I hope this is the final plane to the destination” causing a female passenger, who believed he was threatening the aircraft, to panic.

Major General Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistan military, said the officers had been cleared by subsequent security inspections.

“However, as a result of these checks, military authorities in Pakistan decided to cancel the visit and called the delegation back,” the army said in a statement.

Part of the strategy to success in Afghanistan involves a partnership with the Pakistani government. We are very much relying on the Pakistani military and police to help stamp out Taliban influence. When this delegation, which is trying to help us fight terrorists, is harassed as a result of one particular woman’s assumption upon hearing someone say that they are tired and looking forward to arriving at their final destination, that doesn’t exactly engender good feelings in the relationship that is already a little rocky.

All of the fear mongering and Islamophobia of those on the right is now having an impact on our ability to work with our allies.

Read full story from Blue Wave News.


Bravo comment: Add the fear-mongering over the non-Ground Zero non-Mosque, news of other mosques being denied in smallminded, er - I mean small town America, and the constant barrage of hate against Muslims from Fox News and you get a pretty good picture why the Taliban might be having some success recruiting these days.

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Contaminated Oysters Found in Gulf

NEW ORLEANS -- Sampling by environmental groups has found oysters contaminated with oil along the Louisiana coast befouled by the BP PLC oil spill, a finding that casts doubt on statements by state and federal officials that all seafood tested here is safe to eat.

Batches of oysters were sampled on Aug. 2 and 3 near the mouths of the Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers and laboratory tests revealed the animals were tainted by oil, according to Wilma Subra, a well-known Louisiana chemist working for environmental groups. The oysters were obtained from a reef and an old crab trap, she said.

She said oil was found in the animals even though there was no obvious sign of oil on them. She said the oil -- which she believes comes from the BP oil spill -- at the levels found in lab tests is very unusual.

"We found oysters in the shell and they appeared to have accumulated the hydrocarbons," Subra said. "I would think that these are indications that there is contamination in the oysters and additional sampling should be performed."

Read full story from WWLTV.
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Surprised? Richest Legislators, Mostly Democrats, Got Richer

The rest of the country is still struggling with high unemployment amid a sluggish-at-best economic recovery -- but the wealthiest members of Congress are in high cotton. Indeed, the top 50 wealthiest lawmakers saw their combined net worths increase last year, according to the Hill's annual analysis of financial disclosure documents.

Combined, the 50 lawmakers were worth $1.4 billion in 2009 -- an $85.1 million increase over their 2008 total -- the Hill reports. The members' total combined assets depreciated by nearly $36 million last year -- but Congress' well-to-do set also reduced their debts by a combined $120 million.

The list of 50 lawmakers spans both parties (27 Democrats and 23 Republicans) and both chambers of Congress (30 House members, 20 senators), the Hill reports.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts topped the list for the second year in a row; Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas made his debut in the top 10.

Here are profiles for the 10 most flush Hill power-and-money brokers:

1. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.): $188.6 million. Kerry's worth, which grew by $20 million in 2009, stems from his wife's assets. Teresa Heinz Kerry, of the Heinz ketchup family, inherited hundreds of millions upon the death of her previous husband, Sen. John Heinz.

2. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.): $160.1 million. Issa actually saw his minimum net worth drop by $4 million, partly due to the poor performance of a single investment fund. Issa's fortune stems from investments he and his wife made in the electronics market. Their company eventually became the largest producer of car anti-theft devices in the country. They sold the business in 2000.

3. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.): $152.3 million. Harman is married to audio-equipment mogul Sidney Harman; stock holdings from his company, Harman International Industries, helped Harman's net worth grow by $40 million last year. Sidney Harman is in the process of purchasing Newsweek; the magazine's massive debts will presumably drag down Harman's 2010 disclosure numbers a bit.

4. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa.): $83.7 million. No surprise here: The Rockefeller family name has for generations been a byword for fabulous riches. (Rockefeller's great-grandfather John Rockefeller was an oil magnate; inflation-adjusted figures still peg the founder of the Rockefeller fortune as the wealthiest man in history.) But the senator's uptick in personal wealth last year came mainly from his wife's investments.

5. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas): $73.8 million. McCaul saw his net worth double last year, mostly owing to stocks held by his wife. McCaul's father-in-law founded the radio empire Clear Channel Communications.

6. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.): $70.2 million. Warner made millions through investments in the cell phone industry, including the Nextel company.

7. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.): $56.5 million. Before his 2008 election to Congress, Polis made a fortune in online enterprises, transforming his family's greeting card company into BlueMountain.com and founding ProFlowers.com.

8. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.): $53.5 million. Buchanan grew wealthy as the owner of multiple auto dealerships in Florida.

9. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.): $49.7 million. Lautenberg co-founded a payroll services company in the 1950s that became one of the industry's global leaders.

10. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.): $46.1 million. Most of the California lawmaker's wealth comes from real-estate holdings and investments made by her husband.


Read full story from Yahoo!

Bravo comment:  It's important to note that most gains seemed to come from the lawmakers' spouses and so were not direct gains.  Still, it's no wonder Democrats aren't big on the idea of repealing the Bush tax cuts...

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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Second Oil Rig in 6 Mos Explodes in Gulf of Mexico

[Posted at 11:53 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that 12 people from the production platform are in water immersion suits as they await rescue.
Colclough told CNN there are reports the production platform is still on fire.
"We don't know what caused the rig to catch on fire," he told CNN, noting the incident is under investigation.
Asked about concerns regarding oil leaks or pollution, Colclough said "there are reports the rig was not actively producing any product, so we don't know if there's any risk of pollution."
The incident comes nearly five months after a separate explosion on a BP rig in the Gulf triggered oil leak disaster.

Breaking news from CNN.

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Wednesday, September 1, 2010

CEOs of Top 50 Job-Cutting Corps Earned $598 Million

The nation's biggest job-cutting companies paid their top executives an average of $12 million last year, according to a report released today.

The 50 U.S. chief executives who laid off the most employees between November 2008 and April 2010 eliminated a total of 531,363 jobs, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, a research group that works for social justice and against wealth concentration.

In "CEO Pay and the Great Recession," the institute said the $598 million in combined pay for the 50 executives would have paid one month's worth of average-sized unemployment benefits for each of the laid-off workers.

Read full story from McClatchy.

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Israeli Captain Who Admitted Killing Palestinian Girl Found Not Guilty

An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.

The soldier, who has only been identified as "Captain R", was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.

The manner of Iman's killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was "scared to death", made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died.

After the verdict, Iman's father, Samir al-Hams, said the army never intended to hold the soldier accountable.

"They did not charge him with Iman's murder, only with small offences, and now they say he is innocent of those even though he shot my daughter so many times," he said. "This was the cold-blooded murder of a girl. The soldier murdered her once and the court has murdered her again. What is the message? They are telling their soldiers to kill Palestinian children."

Read full story from The Guardian UK.

Bravo comment:  One good thing about America - if this had happened here, the defendent would have been publicly exposed, not protected with anonymity.  As long as Israel continues to condone this sort of thing, they can be neither surprised nor offended by Palestinian retaliation.


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33 Proven Conspiracy Theories (And Why You Shouldn't Discount 9/11 Truth)

Bravo comment:  The following is an intelligently written argument for looking past skeptics' denials of conspiracy theories when those skeptics use the official story as their argument - or when skeptics cherry pick the most fringe and improbable aspects to attack and discredit the entire theory.  It also contains a compilation of several conspiracy theories that proved to be true.  Will you read with an open mind?

Most people can't resist getting the details on the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-fetched they may seem. At the same time, many people quickly denounce any conspiracy theory as untrue ... and sometimes as unpatriotic or just plain ridiculous. Lets not forget all of the thousands of conspiracies out of Wall Street like Bernie Madoff and many others to commit fraud and extortion, among many crimes of conspiracy. USA Today reports that over 75% of personal ads in the paper and on craigslist are married couples posing as single for a one night affair. When someone knocks on your door to sell you a set of knives or phone cards, anything for that matter, do they have a profit motive? What is conspiracy other than just a scary way of saying “alternative agenda”? When 2 friends go to a bar and begin to plan their wingman approach on 2 girls they see at the bar, how often are they planning on lying to those girls?“ I own a small business and am in town for a short while.Oh yeah, you look beautiful.”

Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy. However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning. To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end. "The term "conspiracy theory" is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom, from "the people".

To many, conspiracy theories are just human nature. Not all people in this world are honest, hard working and forthcoming about their intentions.Certainly we can all agree on this.So how did the term “conspiracy theory” get grouped in with fiction, fantasy and folklore? Maybe that’s a conspiracy, just kidding. Or am I?

Skeptics are important in achieving an objective view of reality, however, skeptism is not the same as reinforcing the official storyline. In fact, a conspiracy theory can be argued as an alternative to the official or “mainstream” story of events. Therefore, when skeptics attempt to ridicule a conspiracy theory by using the official story as a means of proving the conspiracy wrong, in effect, they are just reinforcing the original “mainstream” view of history, and actually not being skeptical. This is not skeptism, it is just a convenient way for the establishment view of things to be seen as the correct version, all the time, every time. In fact, it is common for "hit pieces" or "debunking articles" to pick extremely fringe and not very populated conspiracy theories. This in turn makes all conspiracies on a subject matter look crazy. Skeptics magazine and Popular Mechanics, among many others, did this with 9/11. They referred to less than 10% of the many different conspiracy theories about 9/11 and picked the less popular ones, in fact, they picked the fringe, highly improbable points that only a few people make. This was used as the "final investigation" for looking into the conspiracy theories. Convenient, huh?

In fact, if one were to look into conspiracy theories, they will largely find that thinking about a conspiracy is associated with lunacy and paranoia. Some websites suggest it as an illness. It is also not surprising to see so many people on the internet writing about conspiracy theories in a condescending tone, usually with the words "kool-aid," "crack pot," or "nut job" in their articulation. This must be obvious to anyone that emotionally writing about such serious matter insults the reader more than the conspiracy theorist because there is no need to resort to this kind of behavior. It is employed often with an "expert" who will say something along the lines of, "for these conspiracies to be true, you would need hundreds if not thousands of people to be involved. It's just not conceivable."

I find it extremely odd that the assumption is on thousands of participants in a conspiracy. I, for one, find it hard to believe any conspiracy involving more than a handful of people but the fact remains that there have been conspiracies in our world, proven and not made up, that involved many hundreds of people. It's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact.

One more thing to consider, have you noticed that if the conspiracy is involving powerful interests with the ability to bribe, threaten or manipulate major institutions (like the mafia, big corporations or government) then don't you find it odd when people use one of those as the "credible" counter-argument? What I mean is, if you are discussing a conspiracy about the mafia, and someone hands you a debunking article that was written by the mafia, it doesn't seem like it would take rocket science to look at that with serious criticism and credibility. This is the case with many conspiracies. In fact, I am handed debunking pieces all the time written in many cases by the conspirators in question. Doesn't this seem odd to anybody else but me?

While intelligent cynicism certainly can be healthy, though, some of the greatest discoveries of all time were initially received (often with great vitriol) as blasphemous conspiracy theories -- think of the revelation that the earth was not the center of the universe, or that the world was not flat but actually round.

What follows are some of these most shocking modern conspiracy theories that turned out true after thorough investigation by our society. Some through congressional hearings, others through investigative journalism. Many of these, however, were just admitted to by those involved. These are just 33 of them, and I still had a long list of others to add. There are a total of 33 in this article. Many of these are listed with original and credible news clips on the matter, as well as documentaries.

Read full story from New World Order Report.


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