Sex, Lies and Oil Spills

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP's oil spill is a gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama's Katrina.
In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration's doorstep. For eight years, George Bush's presidency infected the oil industry's oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe.
The absence of an acoustical regulator -- a remotely triggered dead man's switch that might have closed off BP's gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) -- was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team. Acoustic switches are required by law for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway's North Sea operations. BP uses the device voluntarily in Britain's North Sea and elsewhere in the world as do other big players like Holland's Shell and France's Total. In 2000, the Minerals Management Service while weighing a comprehensive rulemaking for drilling safety, deemed the acoustic mechanism "essential" and proposed to mandate the mechanism on all gulf rigs.
Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies. In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service's 2003 study concluded that "acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly."
The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000. Estimated costs of the oil spill to Gulf Coast residents are now upward of $14 billion to gulf state communities. Bush's 2005 energy bill officially dropped the requirement for the acoustic switch off devices explaining that the industry's existing practices are "failsafe."
Bending over for Big Oil became the ideological posture of the Bush White House, and, under Cheney's cruel whip, the practice trickled down through the regulatory bureaucracy. The Minerals Management Service -- the poster child for "agency capture phenomena" -- hopped into bed with the regulated industry -- literally. A 2009 investigation of the Minerals Management Service found that agency officials "frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives." Three reports by the Inspector General describe an open bazaar of payoffs, bribes and kickbacks spiced with scenes of female employees providing sexual favors to industry big wigs who in turn rewarded government workers with illegal contracts. In one incident reported by the Inspector General, agency employees got so drunk at a Shell sponsored golf event that they could not drive home and had to sleep in hotel rooms paid for by Shell.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/sex-lies-and-oil-spills_b_564163.html

Israel's fated bleak future

By John J. Mearsheimer

President Barack Obama has finally coaxed Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. He and most Americans hope that the talks will lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, that is not going to happen. Instead, those territories are almost certain to be incorporated into a "Greater Israel," which will then be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.

There are four possible futures regarding Israel and the occupied territories. The outcome that gets the most attention is the two-state solution, where a Palestinian state would control 95 percent or more of the West Bank and all of Gaza, and territorial swaps would compensate the Palestinians for those small pieces of the West Bank that Israel would keep. East Jerusalem would be its capital.

The alternatives to a two-state solution all involve creating a Greater Israel — an Israel that effectively controls Gaza and the West Bank. In the first scenario, it would become a democratic binational state in which Palestinians and Jews enjoy equal political rights. This solution would mean abandoning the original Zionist vision of a Jewish state, since Palestinians would eventually outnumber Jews.

Israel could also expel most of the Palestinians from Greater Israel, preserving its Jewish character through ethnic cleansing. Something similar happened in 1948, when the Zionists drove 700,000 Palestinians out of the territory that became Israel. The final alternative is some form of apartheid, whereby Israel increases its control over the occupied territories, but allows the Palestinians to exercise limited autonomy in a set of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves.

The two-state solution is the best of these alternatives, but most Israelis are opposed to making the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state. There are about 480,000 settlers in the occupied territories and an extensive infrastructure of connector and bypass roads, not to mention the settlements themselves. A Hebrew University Truman Institute poll in March of West Bank settlers found that 21 percent believe that "all means must be employed to resist the evacuation of most West Bank settlements, including the use of arms." They needn't worry, however, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is committed to expanding the settlements throughout the occupied territories.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-perspec-0509-israel-20100509,0,5290017.story

Rasta inmates spend 10 years in isolation for hair

 

By DENA POTTER

JARRATT, Va. – Kendall Gibson would seem to be one of Virginia's most dangerous prisoners.

For more than 10 years he has lived in segregation at the Greensville Correctional Center, spending at least 23 hours every day in a cell the size of a gas station bathroom. In a temporary home for the worst of the worst — inmates too violent or disruptive to live among the rest of society's outcasts — he has been a permanent fixture.

He is there, he says, not for his crimes but for a crime he will not commit — a crime against God.

The only thing imposing about Gibson is his long black dreadlocks, resting on the front of his shoulders so they won't drag the ground as he shuffles along in his orange jumpsuit.

It is his hair — winding locks he considers a measure of his Rastafarian faith — that makes him a threat, according to Virginia Department of Corrections Operating Procedure No. 864.1.

The rule took effect on Dec. 15, 1999. Inmates had two choices: cut their hair no longer than their collars and shave their beards, or be placed in administrative segregation.

In the beginning, Gibson was among as many as 40 inmates who opted for confinement over cutting. By 2003, when a handful of the inmates filed a federal lawsuit against the department over their detention, 23 remained in segregation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100508/ap_on_re_us/us_rastafarian_segregation

Raw milk battle reveals FDA abandonment of basic human right to choose your food

 

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

 

(NaturalNews) The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF), an organization whose mission includes "defending the rights and broadening the freedoms of family farms and protecting consumer access to raw milk and nutrient dense foods", recently filed a lawsuit against the FDA for its ban on interstate sales of raw milk. The suit alleges that such a restriction is a direct violation of the United States Constitution. Nevertheless, the suit led to a surprisingly cold response from the FDA about its views on food freedom (and freedoms in general).

In a dismissal notice issued to the Iowa District Court where the suit was filed, the FDA officially made public its views on health and food freedom. These views will shock you, but they reveal the true evil intent of the FDA and why it is truly a rogue federal agency.

The FDA essentially believes that nobody has the right to choose what to eat or drink. You are only "allowed" to eat or drink what the FDA gives you permission to. There is no inherent right or God-given right to consume any foods from nature without the FDA's consent.

This is no exaggeration. It's exactly what the FDA said in its own words.

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/028757_raw_milk_FDA.html

'Starving yogi' astounds Indian scientists

by Rajesh Joshi

An 83-year-old Indian holy man who says he has spent seven decades without food or water has astounded a team of military doctors who studied him during a two-week observation period.

Prahlad Jani spent a fortnight in a hospital in the western India state of Gujarat under constant surveillance from a team of 30 medics equipped with cameras and closed circuit television.

During the period, he neither ate nor drank and did not go to the toilet.

"We still do not know how he survives," neurologist Sudhir Shah told reporters after the end of the experiment. "It is still a mystery what kind of phenomenon this is."

The long-haired and bearded yogi was sealed in a hospital in the city of Ahmedabad in a study initiated by India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the state defence and military research institute.

The DRDO hopes that the findings, set to be released in greater detail in several months, could help soldiers survive without food and drink, assist astronauts or even save the lives of people trapped in natural disasters.

"(Jani's) only contact with any kind of fluid was during gargling and bathing periodically during the period," G. Ilavazahagan, director of India's Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), said in a statement.

Jani has since returned to his village near Ambaji in northern Gujarat where he will resume his routine of yoga and meditation. He says that he was blessed by a goddess at a young age, which gave him special powers.

http://www.physorg.com/news192690076.html

Fantastic Photos of our Solar System

The Cassini spacecraft, which is now orbiting Saturn, looked back toward the eclipsed Sun and saw a view unlike any other. The rings of Saturn light up so much that new rings were discovered.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Out-of-This-World.html#

Rent a Boy Unrated

Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf

Best and worst case scenarios from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in Biloxi, Miss., on Thursday.

By Marisa Taylor

WASHINGTON — Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama's vow that his administration would launch a "relentless response effort" to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling

The exemptions, known as "categorical exclusions," were granted by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.

"Is there a moratorium on off shore drilling or not?" asked Peter Galvin, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration's continued approval of the exemptions. "Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred and nothing appears to have changed."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/07/93761/despite-spill-feds-still-giving.html#ixzz0nXhIsWeW

'There's a great future for you': Studies in Crap presents 1965's 'Your Career in Journalism'

By Alan Scherstuhl

 

​Your Career in Journalism

Author: M.L. Stein
Date: 1965
Publisher: Julian Messner, Inc.
Discovered at: Salvation Army, Olathe
The Cover Promises: Permanent, established institutions are not immune to change, so one of these pictures has some chicks in it.

Representative Quotes:

• "The journalist enjoys good standing in his community. He is even likely to be held in awe." (page 47).

• "The day may not be far off when a city editor will say to a reporter, 'Check your space gear. You're going to the moon.'" (page 86).

The easy thing would be for your Crap Archivist to treat M.L. Stein's perversely optimistic Your Career in Journalism like I would Edgar Whisenant's 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 or Rudy Giuliani's Leadership -- as Crap proved so absurd by time that its chief value comes from strip-mining it for hilarious quotes.

That's especially tempting thanks to jewels like these:

• "If you are a college graduate in journalism, you may land a job before you even leave the campus."

• "The story that a reporter worried and sweated over will be read by thousands and perhaps millions of people who will be informed, enlightened or amused. ... He has prestige and influence that most persons can never hope to attain."

​
And there's this, on landing that first big break:

• "By far the best idea is to go directly to a newspaper and ask the city editor for a job."

Or this goofy thought:

• "There is an accepted tenet in the newspaper business that an experienced copyreader can always get a job."

Experienced copyreaders? But it's so much easier to crowdsource those jobs to online commenters!

Easy as it is to laugh at Stein's optimism, remember that he writes with all the certainty of 1965, the last possible moment when it still made sense to hold an absolute faith in journalism, government, or most other chunks of the all-American bedrock. (These also included segregation, Frank Sinatra, and the idea that youth culture wasn't the only culture.)

Shocking Detail:
Sometimes, Stein seems admirably forward-thinking. He writes, "The door is no longer closed against you, girls, and you can often compete with men for the same positions at the same salary."

 

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/04/theres_a_great_future_for_you_studies_in_crap_presents_1965s_your_career_in_journalism.php

FCC hands Hollywood the keys to your PC, home theater and future

 

 

by Cory Doctorow

The FCC has given Hollywood permission to activate the "Selective Output Control" technologies in your set-top box. These are hidden flags that allow the MPAA to deactivate parts of your home theater depending on what you're watching. And it sucks. As Dan Gillmor notes, "Fans of old TV science fiction will remember the Outer Limits. Given Hollywood's victory today at the FCC -- they'll be able to reach over the lines and disable functions on your TV -- the intro to the show takes on modern relevance."

The FCC says that they're doing this because they believe that if they do so, the MPAA will start releasing first-run movies (the ones that are still in theaters) for TV. They say that Hollywood won't make these movies available unless they get Selectable Output Control because SOC will stop piracy.

This is ridiculous.

First, it's ridiculous because this can't ever stop piracy or get first-run movies into your living room. Even with SOC, the studios are not going to release high-value movies that are still in theatrical distribution for viewing in your house, where you could set up a tripod and high-quality camera (along with ideal lighting) in order to make your own camcordered copy and put it online.

Now, the FCC could have solved this by saying that only movies that are in their first theatrical release run can have SOC turned on, but they didn't, because they knew that the MPAA was lying through its teeth about using SOC to enable the "new business model" of showing you first run movies in your home.

Second, it's ridiculous because it's possible in the first place. The FCC (and the candy-ass consumer electronics companies) allowed for Selectable Output Control to be inserted into your devices even though they claimed all along that they would never allow it to be used. Read your Chekhov, people: the gun on the mantelpiece in act one will go off in act three. Allowing the MPAA to get SOC in your set-top box but "never planning on using it" is like buying a freezer full of chocolate ice-cream and never planning on eating it.

If the CE companies and FCC wanted to prevent SOC from being used, the best way of doing that would be to not include it in devices in the first place.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/07/fcc-hands-hollywood.html

Amy Goodman Strikes Back Against RNC Arrest, Files Lawsuit

by Yana Kunichoff

Amy Goodman, host of the "Democracy Now!" news program and two of her producers filed a federal lawsuit against the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis on Wednesday, following the journalists' arrest and mistreatment while covering the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Filed with the Center for Constitutional Rights in a federal court in Minnesota, the lawsuit says authorities violated the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to Goodman, her producers and other journalists when they interfered with their right to gather news.

This is not only a violation of freedom of the press, but a violation of the public's right to know. "When journalists are arrested, that has a chilling effect on the functioning of a democratic society," said Goodman, whose show airs on over 750 radio and TV stations across the country. "We shouldn't have to get a record to put things on the record."

According to a telephone conference with Goodman, she and her producers, Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous were arrested despite visibly holding their press passes and equipment and identified themselves as journalist. They were then physically assaulted, detained for a long period and had their cameras, video and other media equipment, as well as their personal belongings, searched and seized.

http://www.truthout.org/amy-goodman-strikes-back-against-rnc-arrest-files-lawsuit59324

Hugo Chavez Hires 200 People to Manage His Twitter Account

by Amy-Mae Elliott

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, who only recently signed up to Twitter, has rapidly risen up the ranks to become the top tweeter in the country, despite having previously described the service as a "tool of terror." The leader has also hired hundreds of staffers to reply to tweets.

Chavez ("Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela. Soldado Bolivariano, Socialista y Antiimperialista" according to his bio), has, at the time of writing, 239,994 followers and enjoys inclusion on 7,538 lists. Presumably some of which list people who are "threats to the open web."

With "Verified Account" status on the service, Chavez follows just five others, but it's unlikely the majority in Venezuela follow him — recent estimates put the percentage of the population that boast Internet access at just 31%, although this figure has risen under Chavez's rule.

However, it seems public engagement with the president's new online presence has been high with more than 50,000 messages reported in the two weeks since he's been tweeting. So how does Chavez find time to tweet to the people? A newly appointed team of 200 Twitter aides will help to lighten that load, reports the AP. Chavez said of the new hires, "I'm creating a team due to the avalanche of requests, and some grievances."

http://mashable.com/2010/05/08/chavez-popular-twitter/

10 amazing truths you already suspected

Part IV! Pink fried chicken, Oklahoma vaginas, French G-spots

By Mark Morford

This much you already know:

1) The Bible is more violent than the Quran. Wait, what? Really? It's true... sort of. Don't tell this fine racist patriot, but turns out the Bible, America's favorite misinterpreted hunk of swiped fairy tale mythology, is packed like "Saw IV" with wraths and attacks, smitings and genocides, hacked-off limbs and fiery explosions in the sky. Whereas, despite its bad rap and its rather nasty "convert-the-world" directive, the Quran's scriptures are largely peaceful documents that've been hijacked and distorted by fundamentalist jackals for political purposes, to justify all sorts of bias, intolerance and violence against those they hate and fear. Sound familiar?

2) High fructose corn syrup is nasty, obesity-causing swill. I know, right? But here's something you might not know: As a columnist who writes, let's say "unflatteringly" about fast food and the noxious ingredients therein, I've received sneering little letters in the past from the Corn Refiner's Association when I've attacked their sticky cash cow, as they try to claim their synthetic goop is no worse for you than sunshine and flowers. Lying is fun!

Fact: HFCS "prompts considerably more weight gain than sugar," says a big new Princeton study. Fructose also scars the liver. It's nasty stuff, it's in everything from ketchup to soup to the despicable Double Down sandwich, and it's inextricably tied into the federal corn subsidy and the impenetrable farm bill, which in turn is guarded like the Pope's own porn collection by one the most powerful, ruthless government lobbies in America. Upshot: Until the Obama admin takes on the brutal farm lobby, this gummy poison is going to keep right on making everyone thick and fat and stupid.

3) And what happens then? Why, we lose WWIII to the skinny terrorists, that's what. Seems American kids are becoming "too fat to fight," and the U.S. military is in a bit of a panic, as it's becoming increasingly difficult to find recruits who aren't so hugely overweight that they can't even do a single pull-up.

A group of more than 50 retired generals and admirals released a study saying that 30 percent of otherwise eligible recruits are just too chunky to be of any use to the military. And they take anyone. Alert the GOP! The biggest threat to America isn't the gays or the vaginas or the "weak on terror" liberals; it's your own overweight kids.

(At least we're not alone. China, too, is terrified of losing the Great War with Japan -- which is apparently coming around 2025 or so -- due to its own surfeit of obese youth. Yay fast food! You will kill us all!)

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/30/notes043010.DTL#ixzz0nAWIzThj

Video of SWAT Raid on Missouri Family

by Radley Balko

In February, I wrote the following about a drug raid in Missouri:

SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family's pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on.

They found a "small amount" of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.

So smoking pot = "child endangerment." Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone's safety.

Just so we're clear.

Now there's video... It's horrifying, but I'd urge you to watch it, and to send it to the drug warriors in your life. This is the blunt-end result of all the war imagery and militaristic rhetoric politicians have been spewing for the last 30 years—cops dressed like soldiers, barreling through the front door middle of the night, slaughtering the family pets, filling the house with bullets in the presence of children, then having the audacity to charge the parents with endangering their own kid. There are 100-150 of these raids every day in America, the vast, vast majority like this one, to serve a warrant for a consensual crime.

http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/05/video-of-swat-raid-on-missouri#commentcontainer

Sheeple: Signs That You Might Be Part Of The Herd…

by Giordano Bruno

Millions of people from countries across the world have begun to wake up to the very real threat of repressive and engineered Globalism, or what the financial elite and the politicians who work for them often refer to as "The New World Order". The movement against this centralization of economic and social power has gained traction in nearly every sphere, to the point where even the mainstream media has been forced on occasion to acknowledge its existence and prevalence. Those of us who have been working more than a few years in this activist organization, what many of us call the "Patriot Movement", or the "Liberty Movement", have seen incredible leaps and bounds in the fight against disinformation and the spread of unadulterated truth. Our work has gone viral, and our membership has skyrocketed, however, the task of diluting ignorance in the overall populace is far from over.

Every researcher, writer, and filmmaker who tackles the New World Order issue will suffer the unfortunate experience of running into people who are almost criminally uninformed, and this will happen on a regular basis. For a long time, our frustration was magnified by our inability to specifically define what it was that made these people the way they were. Were some just mentally inadequate, and unable to effectively process the facts? Were they so indoctrinated by the MSM that there was no turning back? Was there an innate difference in intuitive faculties that made some people quick in picking out a lie, and others slow? Many theories abound, but one thing was certain; in our quest to inform the masses, there were always going to be those who were incapable of hearing or understanding what we had to say, no matter how factual, rational, and refined our arguments. We now call these wonders of intellectual rustication "Sheeple"…

Sheeple can be found in every country, every ethnic background, every religious organization, and every subculture. After years of examination and experience, it has become much easier for the Liberty Movement to identify and categorize the various forms of sheeple, and come to terms with the triggers in the human mind that cause some to willfully ignore logic and wisdom.

http://waronyou.com/topics/sheeple-signs-that-you-might-be-part-of-the-herd/

Vote Republican

Drill baby drill

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.

 

By Elaine Tyler May

 

Forget the single girl and the sexual revolution. The pill was not anti-mother; it was for mothers. And it changed motherhood more than it changed anything else. Its great accomplishment was not in preventing motherhood, but in making it better by allowing women to have children on their own terms.

 

Today, we celebrate both motherhood and the pill. It is Mother's Day, and it is the 50th anniversary of the pill's approval by the Food and Drug Administration -- though the dream of an oral contraceptive is much older. The birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger first envisioned such a "magic pill" in 1912, two years before Congress established a national Mother's Day. She wanted to do more than honor mothers: She wanted to change their lives.

 

While in her 30s, Sanger had worked as a nurse in New York City, and she saw many poor mothers become sick and die from the strain of frequent pregnancies. A turning point, she would recall later, came when she heard a physician instruct Sadie Sachs, a frail 28-year-old mother of three who was desperate for contraception, to "tell Jake to sleep on the roof!" Sachs's death from a self-induced abortion inspired Sanger to begin her crusade for birth control.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/07/AR2010050702255.html

Moms Speak Out: End This Brutal War

by Rethink Afghanistan

Mother's Day was started in opposition to war and to denounce the death and destruction brought by war.

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

By Noah Shachtman

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.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/secretive-spy-plane-snooped-on-times-square-suspect-report#ixzz0nGJ6n8VX

New U.S. Push to Regulate Internet Access

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, whose authority over broadband lines has been questioned by a federal court, plans to use regulation on traditional phone networks to establish rules for Internet providers.

By AMY SCHATZ

WASHINGTON—In 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.

Amy Schatz and Spencer Ante discuss the federal government's plan to propose regulating broadband lines under decades-old rules designed for traditional phone networks. Plus, a live report from the Web 2.0 event and Yahoo's new ad blitz.

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/

Weeds 1, Monsanto 0, Farmers -1

by wufnik

 

This should come as no surprise, but The New York Times breathlessly informed us yesterday that US farmers are starting to have a hard time coping with Roundup-resistant weeds. That's right. Straight from the heart of the country where people don't want to see evolution taught, farmers are getting a real-life lesson in evolutionary theory. I bet no one, absolutely no one, saw this one coming.

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 mood—roundup-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/

A tweet from Bill Maher

What If Lightning Strikes An Oil Spill?

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

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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."

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/05/05/burr-teachers/

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.

 

http://www.unplugdesign.com/project2.html

Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with "rent boy"

By Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp

 Brandon K. Thorp

George Rekers and "Lucien" at Miami International Airport.

The pictures on the Rentboy.com profile show a shirtless young man with delicate features, guileless eyes, and sun-kissed, hairless skin. The profile touts his "smooth, sweet, tight ass" and "perfectly built 8 inch cock (uncut)" and explains he is "sensual," "wild," and "up for anything" — as long you ask first. And as long as you pay.

On April 13, the "rent boy" (whom we'll call Lucien) arrived at Miami International Airport on Iberian Airlines Flight 6123, after a ten-day, fully subsidized trip to Europe. He was soon followed out of customs by an old man with an atavistic mustache and a desperate blond comb-over, pushing an overburdened baggage cart.

That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami — the callboy's client and, as it happens, one of America's most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.

Reached by New Times before a trip to Bermuda, Rekers said he learned Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. "I had surgery," Rekers said, "and I can't lift luggage. That's why I hired him." (Medical problems didn't stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.)

Yet Rekers wouldn't deny he met his slender, blond escort at Rentboy.com — which features homepage images of men in bondage and grainy videos of crotch-rubbing twinks — and Lucien confirmed it.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-05-06/news/christian-right-leader-george-rekers-takes-vacation-with-rent-boy/