Archive for September, 2009
US-China trade tensions sharply escalate
In a move that threatens to trigger a major trade conflict, US President Barack Obama last Friday signed an order to impose a 35 percent tariff on Chinese-made tyre imports over the next three years. The drastic US action and China’s rapid response, with antidumping investigations into US auto and poultry imports, has shocked economic commentators, provoking fears of a wider trade war. On Monday, China formally took the US to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over its auto parts and poultry imports.
Obama turns to AFL-CIO to defend health care cuts
With popular discontent growing toward his health care overhaul, President Obama turned to the United Auto Workers and AFL-CIO to bolster his efforts to put a progressive cloak on his medical rationing and cost-cutting plan. On Tuesday morning, he spoke at a General Motors plant in Ohio, and in the afternoon he was the keynote speaker at the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh.
The events underscored the symbiotic relationship between the Democratic Party administration and the right-wing trade union apparatus. Obama received a hero’s welcome at the convention, where his health care plan was presented as the culmination of a decades-long struggle to extend coverage to all Americans. In return for perpetuating this lie, Obama presented the AFL-CIO as a beacon of working class struggle.
Washington’s “good war”: Death squads, disappearances and torture in Pakistan
As the Obama administration prepares a major escalation of the so-called AfPak war, reports from Pakistan’s Swat Valley, near Afghanistan’s eastern border, provide a gruesome indication of the kind of war that the Pentagon and its local allies are waging.
While touted by Obama and his supporters as the “good war,” there is mounting evidence that the Pentagon and the CIA are engaged in a war against the population of the region involving death squads, disappearances and torture.
Banks Make Hay During Depression
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”
– Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
How’s the current economic downturn treating you? Not so good? Making less than you were last year? Working a worse job, for fewer hours at less pay and no benefits? Got a job at all?
U.S. Marijuana Arrests Drop For First Time Since 2002
Steve Elliott, SF Weekly: Marijuana arrests in the United States declined in 2008 — the first such drop since 2002 — according to figures released by the FBI today.
According to the just-released Uniform Crime Reports, U.S. law enforcement made 847,863 arrests on marijuana charges, 89 percent of which were for simple possession, not sale or manufacture. More Americans were arrested for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined. During 2008, one American was arrested for marijuana every 37 seconds.
Marijuana arrests reached an all-time high at more than 872,000 in 2007. More than 12 million American citizens have been arrested on marijuana charges since 1965.
The new report comes on the heels of the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released Sept. 10, which showed increases in both the number and the percentage of Americans who admit having used marijuana.
Obama, Kanye West and the Trouble With Twitter
The president was off the record with CNBC when he called the singer a ‘jackass’ for interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV video awards. But ABC News employees overheard the exchange and ran with it.
Matea Gold, LA Times: Call it another case of being too fast on the Twitter.
The perils of dashing off observations on the micro-blogging site were brought into sharp relief Monday when several overeager ABC News employees — including “Nightline” co-anchor Terry Moran — rushed to tweet that President Obama had called Kanye West a “jackass” for interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards.
The problem: Obama made the comment during off-the-record chatter as he prepared to do an interview with John Harwood, CNBC’s chief Washington correspondent.
ABC News’ Washington bureau shares a network fiber line with CNBC, and producers there monitoring CNBC’s feed heard the exchange. What they didn’t hear, apparently, was the explicit…
Bush ‘Shoe Thrower’ Released From Prison, Says He Was Tortured
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The Iraqi man who was jailed after throwing his shoes at then-President George W. Bush last year arrived in Syria on Tuesday night, hours after being released from prison, his employer said.
Al-Zaidi’s brother, Dhirgham al-Zaidi, told CNN that the 30-year-old journalist was to travel in a private plane to Greece for medical treatment.
Shortly after he left prison, the 30-year-old journalist visited the studios of his employer, Al-Baghdadia TV, where he spoke to other reporters about his experience. He wore a sash in the colors of the Iraqi national flag draped around his shoulders.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi said he was beaten with cables and pipes and tortured with electricity immediately after guards removed him from a news conference for hurling both shoes at Bush. He said he was taken into another room and beaten even as the news conference continued.
However, he remained defiant about the incident that landed him…
New German Sex Dolls Go Sci-Fi: ‘She’ Breathes and Has A Pulse
Kate Harding, Jezebel: A German company called First Androids has created a sex doll that breathes and has a pulse. It’s just like a real woman, only with no brain or corresponding ability to reject douchebags.
Back when Real Dolls were the freakishly realistic sex toy of the moment, I heard a lot of people make the argument that there’s no harm in helping lonely, awkward men have someone — something — to curl up with at night. (And…
Astronaut Urine Illuminates the Night Sky
SpaceWeather.com: Sky watchers across North America witnessed a strange event on Wednesday night. As space shuttle Discovery glided silently overhead, the orbiter sprouted a flamboyant comet-like tail. Clair Perry sends this picture from Prince Edward Island, Canada:
“The shuttle put on a major light show,” says Perry. In Madison, Wisconsin, photographer Abe Megahed witnessed a similar display: “The shuttle was sporting a massive curved plume. What could it be? Something venting? Reaction Control System thrusters? A massive, record-breaking urine dump?”
Stop laughing. Shuttle pilot Kevin Ford was indeed scheduled to carry out a number of “waste water” dumps over a several hour period around the time of these observations. Pristine water supplies and condensates were also dumped overboard in preparation for landing on Thursday, Sept. 10th.
Thursday’s landing opportunities at the Kennedy Space Center begin with a planned deorbit burn at 5:59 p.m. EDT and a daylight landing at 7:05 p.m. The next…
‘The Big Lebowski’ Spawns Its Own Subculture
Joan Anderman, Boston Globe: So there’s this guy named the Dude, and some dudes break into his apartment and pee on his rug, so the Dude, an LA burnout whose real name is Jeffrey Lebowski, goes to find the other Jeffrey Lebowski, a rich guy the intruder dudes were actually looking for, so he can get him to replace the soiled rug, which totally tied the room together.
To the uninitiated, The Big Lebowski probably doesn’t sound like the sort of cinematic watershed that would translate to an enduring cultural phenomenon. But the movie has become just that. And we’re not talking about action figures and keychains, although they’re yours for the ordering.
The film — which was released to mixed reviews and spent all of six weeks in theaters, barely recouping its $15 million budget — has spawned a vibrant subculture that draws both scholars and slackers to the fold. The Dude…
What Do Dinosaurs And The Maya Have In Common?
ScienceDaily: One of the world’s most famous asteroid craters, the Chicxulub crater, has been the subject of research for about twenty years.
The asteroid impact that formed it probably put an end to the dinosaurs and helped mammals to flourish. Together with an Anglo-American team, an ETH Zurich researcher has studied the most recent deposits that filled the crater. The results provide accurate dating of the limestones and a valuable basis for archaeologists to research the Maya.
The discovery of the Chicxulub asteroid crater was detective work: in 1980, based on iridium anomalies in clay sediments – which could only be formed extraterrestrially – the American physicist Walter Alvarez postulated a devastating asteroid impact (see box) at the transition from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene around 65 million years ago. Another ten years passed before the associated crater was discovered on the Yucatan peninsula. Research work since then has focused mainly on…
Twitter users solve Google’s crop circle mystery
Jack Riley, The Independent:
Eagle-eyed users of microblogging site Twitter claim to have unearthed the secret meaning of today’s “Google doodle”, a depiction of crop circles spelling out the Google name which has puzzled many users of the ubiquitous search engine.
In conjunction with today’s alien-themed logo, the official Google Twitter account tweeted a set of coordinates at around 4am, as well as a link to an image of the crop circle logo. As Twitter users noted in reference to the image, those coordinates indicate the position of the town of Woking and speculation began on the significance of the town.
Abby AKA Black Exorcist
Abby AKA The Black Exorcist was a quickly made Exorcist knock-off from American International Pictures that starred deep-voiced actor William Marshall from Blacula and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse fame (he was The King of Cartoons). The role of Abby was played by the adorable Carol Speed, who had memorable roles in The Mack and The Big Bird Cage. A lawsuit from saw Abby pulled from theaters within the first two months of release. Even so, the film made $4 million dollars at the box office and cost just $200,000.
Portland’s Weirdest Event Just Got Weirder
This year EsoZone — the third annual Portland conference dedicated to the occult, fringe science, and other offbeat topics — is forgoing a pre-planned schedule in favor of letting attendees create their own agenda.
On October 9th, participants will arrive at Watershed PDX and collaboratively create the schedule. The event will be free and open to the public, and anyone will be able to propose a session, lead a workshop, or suggest a group activity. The approach is called “unconferencing,” a technique pioneered by tech-industry events.
Cannabis Planet: A Popular Plant Is Quietly Spreading Across TV Screens
NYT reports
Tips for cultivating marijuana. Testimonials by patients about its medical benefits. Cannabis cooking lessons. Even citations for award-winning strains of pot. Viewers here can now watch, every week, what amounts to a pro-weed news program.
Booted off one skittish TV station but quickly picked up by another, the low-budget “Cannabis Planet” show is televised evidence of how entrenched marijuana has become in California’s cultural firmament and a potent example of the way the pot subculture has been edging into the national mainstream.
“We’re trying to show the legitimacy of this plant,” said Brad Lane, the executive producer of the half-hour program.
Mr. Lane pays for the twice-weekly air time on the independent station KJLA — Thursday and Saturday nights at 11:30, sandwiched between “Bikini Beach” and “Jewelry Central” — and says he is now breaking even, almost two months after the show’s premiere.
…
Customer Beaten to Death by Walmart Employees
At Walmart, theft is not tolerated. At least not at the Walmart in Jingdezhen, China, where a customer died at the hands of Walmart employees who suspected her of stealing.
It started out when one of the Walmart employees suspected a female customer of theft. The customer was then under surveillance for a few minutes before being approached by the staff.
The Walmart employee requested to search the customer’s bag and the female customer refused to hand it over, stating that it was a violation of her privacy.
Next thing she knew, more Walmart employees gathered around her and started beating her up.
The customer managed to send an alert to her family through her cellphone and when her mother and sister showed up at the store, the staff members were still pummeling her. They begged and pleaded for them to stop but to no avail.
Finally, the police showed up and put a stop…
Bin Laden’s Reading List for Americans
From the NYT Blog ‘The Lede’:
While Oprah’s seal of approval on a book cover is sought after in America, Osama Bin Laden’s is, to put it mildly, not. On Monday, the authors of three books apparently recommended to American readers by the leader of Al Qaeda in his latest communique might be wondering how one goes about returning an unsolicited endorsement to a shadowy militant who has been in hiding for eight years…
Here is the blurb from hell the books’ authors will not want to see printed on their jackets above Mr. Bin Laden’s name: “After you read the suggested books, you will know the truth, and you will be greatly shocked by the scale of concealment that has been exercised on you.”
On the list:
1. “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” by Stephen M. Walt…
2. “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” [by] former President Jimmy Carter…
3. The third book referred to…
The World Watches as Scientology Goes to Trial
A battery of legal cases has the potential to threaten Scientology’s survival in France and undermine it elsewhere, writes Angelique Chrisafis.
Gwen Le Berre doesn’t understand the “electrometer” machine he keeps in his Normandy bedroom. He just knows it’s a piece of kit from the Church of Scientology, which he blames for his mother’s death.
Four days before Christmas 2006, Gwen’s mother Gloria Lopez, a 47-year-old secretary, tidied her kitchen, hung out her washing, left her dull, suburban apartment overlooking the railway in Colombes, west of Paris, and walked the 30 metres on to the tracks. She stood with her arms outstretched, smiling at the driver of the oncoming commuter train. He couldn’t stop in time.
After divorcing Pascal Le Berre, a French teacher, Lopez met Scientologists and signed up. The church was to become her life. Eventually, she moved to Paris, leaving her two children behind, to be nearer the Scientology Centre.
The…
9/12 March ‘Tea Party’ Photo Fakery
Tea Party protesters trying to tout the size of their march on Washington last weekend have been passing around a photo of a packed National Mall. But the picture is years old.
Politifact asked Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, if the rally was big enough to fill that space. Piringer said no — and moreover, the picture can’t be from 2009.
“It was an impressive crowd,” he said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd “only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street,” he said.
Yet the photo showed the crowd sprawling far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.
There’s another big problem with the photograph: it doesn’t include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept.…
