Archive for July, 2009
Afghanistan: Thousands of U.S. Marines Move Into the World’s Largest Opium Production Area
July 2nd, 2009Via: AP / USA Today: Thousands of U.S. Marines poured from helicopters and armored vehicles into Taliban-controlled villages in southern Afghanistan on Thursday in the first major operation under President Obama’s strategy to stabilize the country. The offensive was launched shortly after 4:30 p.m. ET Thursday in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold and the world’s […]
California: Financial Emergency; State Will Issue IOUs; Government Offices Will Reduce Employee Hours
July 2nd, 2009Via: AP: California’s controller will start paying many of the state’s bills with IOUs as soon as Thursday after lawmakers failed to close the state’s worsening budget deficit, adding a new measure of indignity to a state sinking deeper into dysfunction. Lawmakers’ failure to act on Tuesday, the end of the fiscal year, also widened […]
Big Brother Untangles Baby Babble
July 2nd, 2009Via: BBC: In 2005, the artificial intelligence researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab set out to understand how children learn to talk. “We wanted to understand how minds work and how they develop and how the interplay of innate and environmental influence makes us who we are and how we learn […]
SEC Lawyer Raised Alarm About Madoff
July 2nd, 2009Via: Reuters: A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer warned about irregularities at Bernard Madoff’s financial management firm as far back as 2004, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation. Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent emails to a […]
Cynthia McKinney Among Humanitarian Activists Arrested by Israel for Trying to Deliver Medical Supplies to Gaza
July 1st, 2009Via: Telegraph: The group were on board an aid boat carrying humanitarian supplies near the Gaza coast when they were seized in international waters, according to the Free Gaza Movement. The small boat Spirit of Humanity was on its way to deliver medical supplies to Gaza when it was allegedly stopped by Israeli warships this […]
Murdoch CEO Labels Bloggers “Political Extremists”; Should Be Jailed as in China and Burma
July 1st, 2009Via: Prison Planet: A stinging attack by John Hartigan, the CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, labels bloggers and alternative media outlets as “political extremists”. Hartigan implies that bloggers should be jailed as they are in oppressive police states like China and Burma. In a speech to the National Press Club, Hartigan savagely dismissed blogs […]
Fisk: In Tehran, Fantasy and Reality Make Uneasy Bedfellows
July 1st, 2009I’m not coming down on any side here. While my gut feeling is that CIA/Mossad/MI6 are throwing gasoline on the fire, I can’t point to any evidence of that. The past doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the present, but being familiar with how the U.S. has screwed with Iran in the past, it’s […]
Digital Media Are Overwhelming Our Consciousness and Eclipsing Our Capacity for Reflection
July 1st, 2009Via: OnTheCommons: One of the more pernicious enclosures of the commons is the enclosure of time and consciousness. It’s pernicious because it is so subtle and rarely discerned. When commercial values such as productivity and efficiency become so pervasive and internalized, they crowd out other ways of being. Our very sense of humanity — full-bodied, […]
Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine
July 1st, 2009I know what you’ll be thinking as you read this: That my last job in the U.S. (Wall Street Chop Shop and “We Americans Were Very Clever”) was with Goldman Sachs. Good guess, but no. The firm that I worked for is dead now. Via: Rolling Stone: THE GREAT AMERICAN BUBBLE MACHINE From tech stocks […]
BlueHost Promotion: $3.95 Per Month
July 1st, 2009BlueHost just dropped the price of their outstanding hosting package from $6.95 per month to $3.95 per month. I don’t know what the boys and girls at BlueHost are thinking, but this seems like stark raving madness to me. In fact, I didn’t even believe it at first. I went into a “live chat” session […]
