New York: Gasoline Pumps Run Dry
November 1st, 2012Via: Reuters:
Drivers and homeowners scrambled to secure fuel for their cars and generators in the U.S. Northeast on Wednesday as storm-hit gasoline stations started to run dry.
More than half of all gasoline service stations in the New York City area and New Jersey were shut because of depleted fuel supplies and power outages, frustrating attempts to restore normal life, industry officials said.
Reports of long lines, dark stations and empty tanks circulated across the region. Some station owners were unable to pump fuel due to a lack of power, while others quickly ran their tanks dry because of increased demand and logistical problems in delivering fresh supplies.
The lack of working gasoline stations is likely to compound travel problems in the region, with the New York City subway system down until at least Thursday and overland rail and bus services severely disrupted.
Homeowners and businesses relying on back-up generators during the power cuts, including many Wall Street banks in lower Manhattan, may also run short of fuel.
Man Killed Over Fantasy Game Cards
November 1st, 2012Via: WSTP:
For someone who doesn’t play the fantasy card game “Magic: The Gathering,” watching a round and trying to understand what is going on is difficult.
The pace is fast. There are cards and dice. A round can be over before you know it.
The game has recently taken the local spotlight for a very dark reason: Sean Dugas, 30, one of the area’s most active players, was killed, according to police, by two Magic players who robbed him for his collection of cards.
Sweden Pays Jobless Youth to Move to Norway
November 1st, 2012Via: Telegraph:
A Swedish town has taken to paying people to look for work in Norway in an attempt to reduce soaring youth unemployment.
Under a scheme organised by the local authorities in the town of Soderhamn and by Sweden’s national employment office, anyone aged between 18 and 28 can volunteer to take a “Job Journey” to Oslo and attempt track down gainful employment.
Those who sign up get a ticket to the Norwegian capital and are put up in an Oslo youth hostel for a month, with Soderhamn council picking up the £20 a night bill. The package also includes on-the-spot guidance on how to get a job in Sweden’s northern neighbour.
“We had an unemployment rate of over 25 per cent, so we had to find solutions,” Magus Nilsen, the man in charge of the project at Soderhamn council, told the Daily Telegraph. “Going to Norway to find work has always been quite popular with young people, but sometimes they want to go but don’t know how to find a job or accommodation so we thought we’d give them a bit of help with both.”
Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Arrested Again
November 1st, 2012This piece below says that this was Stein’s first arrest, but she was also (apparently) arrested while trying to take part in a one of the presidential debates. You know, land of the free, where legitimate presidential candidates aren’t allowed to participate in presidential debates.
Via: Washington Post:
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was arrested Wednesday morning in east Texas while attempting to bring food and Halloween candy to protesters camping out in trees to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, according to anti-pipeline activists.
Stein was taken to the Wood County jail and charged with criminal trespassing, a class B misdemeanor, said Kim Huynh, a spokesman for the Tar Sands Blockade.
Opponents of the pipeline have climbed some trees in the path of the pipeline in Winnsboro, Tex., and have been there for 38 days.
Stein’s Web site said she and three other women were attempting to deliver “fresh fruits and vegetables, canned proteins, trail mix, and Halloween candy.” The site said Stein was handcuffed by officers who did not identify themselves as police. It was the first arrest for the Green Party candidate, a 62-year-old physician.
The Servile Media and the President
October 31st, 2012Via: Guardian:
Last month, Vanity Fair featured a major profile of President Obama by Michael Lewis, who was given what the New York Times called “rare” and “extraordinary access”. Lewis “conducted multiple interviews with the president”; “rode in the official presidential limousine”; “was given a special lapel pin that identified him to the Secret Service as someone who was allowed to be in close proximity to the president”; and “flew with the president on several foreign and domestic trips” — “not with the rest of the press corps in the back of Air Force One, but near the front.” And, noted the Times, “the president even allowed Mr. Lewis to play on his basketball team.”
But in exchange for such access, Lewis, unbeknownst to readers of his profile, had agreed to a journalistically corrupt practice – now banned by many large media outlets – whereby the only quotes he was permitted to use were ones the White House approved in advance. Unsurprisingly, the profile was pure hagiography that left Obama’s most devoted media fans gushing with ecstacy.
Though I would have thought it impossible, Rolling Stone somehow just managed to top that profile when it comes to sycophantic, power-worshiping “journalism”. This week, it features a cover story on Obama by its contributing editor, the historian Douglas Brinkley, largely based on a 45-minute interview in the Oval Office. The questions Brinkley posed are so vapid and reverent that it is hard to believe it’s not satire.
NY National Guard Mobilizing for Disaster Drill Gets the Real Thing Instead
October 31st, 2012Fascinating.
Via: Wired:
The troops were previously declared unavailable to help New York recover from the state’s biggest hurricane in centuries. Instead, they were assigned to fight a fake disaster.
But hours before they were set to deploy, the troops’ participation in a week-long exercise in Missouri known as “Vigilant Guard” was cancelled. The exercise is designed to test the response to a mock earthquake in the Midwest. Until Tuesday, that previously scheduled drill took precedence over the real-world catastrophe that struck the East Coast. It was declared a bureaucratic near-impossibility to redeploy hundreds of guardsmen at a moment’s notice, even at a moment when so many are in need.
Troops from the New York Army National Guard’s 104th Military Police Battalion, the 1156th Engineer Company – 450 soldiers in all — were poised to head to the middle of the country. Dozens more from the 42nd Combat Aviation Brigade were supposed to train in Pennsylvania this weekend. ”At this point in time, we’re still sending our soldiers to Vigilant Guard,” Eric Durr, a spokesman for the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, told Danger Room late Tuesday afternoon.
Hours later, that changed. “Last night the decision was made to cancel New York National Guard participation in Vigilant Guard,” Durr emailed on Wednesday morning. “The adjutant general [the Guard’s commanding officer] decided to keep troops in state in case they are needed.”
Temporal Analytics: Turning Protest Noise Into Intelligence
October 31st, 2012Sign wavers should read this.
Via: AOL:
While it’s true, it’s hard to predict what people will do, it’s also increasingly true that people worldwide do emit and discuss their behavior through online social media and that can be monitored and analyzed in nearly real-time.
Companies such as intelligence analysis contractor Recorded Future, which is backed by Google, the CIA, and others for this very reason, offer examples of that on a routine basis. Recorded Future, for instance, tracks protests occurring around the world by extracting references to those events and their locations from online media.
Big Picture Gallery: Hurricane Sandy
October 31st, 2012Via: Boston Globe:
After cutting a destructive path through the Caribbean, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive damage along the East Coast this week. Sandy made landfall in southern New Jersey and brought with it major flooding, travel disruption, structural damage, and power outages. New York City was especially hard hit. The storm system was so large – nearly 1,000 miles wide at times — it brought blizzard conditions to West Virginia and 20 foot waves to Lake Michigan. It is projected Sandy will have caused about $30 billion in damages in the United States. To date, the storm claimed more than 100 lives.
Cop Tasered 10-Year-Old Child on a Playground Because the Boy Refused to Clean His Patrol Car
October 31st, 2012Via: Courthouse News Service:
A New Mexico policeman Tasered a 10-year-old child on a playground because the boy refused to clean his patrol car, the boy claims in court.
Guardian ad litem Rachel Higgins sued the New Mexico Department of Public Safety and Motor Transportation Police Officer Chris Webb on behalf of the child, in Santa Fe County Court.
Higgins claims Webb used his Taser on the boy, R.D., during a May 4 “career day” visit to Tularosa New Mexico Intermediate School.
“Defendant Webb asked the boy, R.D., in a group of boys, who would like to clean his patrol unit,” the complaint states. “A number of boys said that they would. R.D., joking, said that he did not want to clean the patrol unit.
“Defendant Webb responded by pointing his Taser at R.D. and saying, ‘Let me show you what happens to people who do not listen to the police.'”
Webb then shot “two barbs into R.D.’s chest,” the complaint states.
“Both barbs penetrated the boy’s shirt, causing the device to deliver 50,000 volts into the boy’s body.
“Defendant Webb pulled the barbs out [of] the boy’s chest, causing scarring where the barbs had entered the boy’s skin that look like cigarette burns on the boy’s chest.
“The boy, who weighed less than 100 lbs., blacked out.
“Instead of calling emergency medical personnel, Officer Webb pulled out the barbs and took the boy to the school principal’s office,” the complaint states.
Hurricane Sandy Takes Data Centers Offline with Flooding, Power Outages
October 31st, 2012Via: Ars Technica:
Flooding and power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy have forced several New York data centers to switch to generator power. But those generators are quickly running out of fuel, so data center companies are telling their customers to shut down their servers and move workloads elsewhere.
One of the worst situations is at 75 Broad Street in Manhattan, where both Internap and Peer1 Hosting are shutting down operations “after basement-level flooding disabled critical diesel fuel pumps,” Data Center Knowledge reports. 75 Broad Street is part of the “Zone A” portion of the city that is under emergency evacuation orders, as is another data center operated by Datagram at 33 Whitehall Street. The Datagram outage led to downtime for popular websites Gawker, Huffington Post, and BuzzFeed.
