Archive for January, 2011
Liz Cheney’s Pro-Torture PAC Linked to Child Abusing “Boot Camp”
Joe Conason reported for Salon in February of last year:
The arrest of an Army sergeant (and Iraq veteran) who allegedly waterboarded his 4-year-old daughter for failing to recite the alphabet is sickening. Yet it may be the kind of news we must come to expect if, as a society, the United States determines that torture is an acceptable method of securing information and inducing obedience. Physical abuse of children is nothing new, of course, in certain right-wing quarters, as Max Blumenthal reminded us by exposing the pedagogical sadism of Focus on the Family in Republican Gomorrah.
For a sergeant who tortures his child, however, the relevant model probably comes from somewhere high in the chain of command. At the center of today’s propaganda promoting the torture state are former Vice President Dick Cheney, his family and many of his friends, working through an organization called Keeping America Safe that is run by his…
The Human Skull In Martha Stewart’s Kitchen
Has the famed hostess been dabbling in the occult? On the Hallmark Channel, a bizarre detail pops out from the background in Martha Stewart’s kitchen.
As Fish Die Off, Jellyfish To Dominate Earth’s Oceans
Around the globe, fish populations are declining while the number of jellyfish is exploding. Climate change may be “turning back the clock to the Precambrian world, more than 550 million years ago, when the ancestors of jellyfish ruled the seas,” writes Yale Environment 360. Bow down to our future gelatinous overlords:
The world’s oceans have been experiencing enormous blooms of jellyfish, apparently caused by overfishing, declining water quality, and rising sea temperatures. Now, scientists are trying to determine if these outbreaks could represent a “new normal” in which jellyfish increasingly supplant fish.
The Nomura’s jellyfish is a monster to be reckoned with. It’s the size of a refrigerator and can exceed 450 pounds. For decades the hulking medusa was rarely encountered in its stomping grounds, the Sea of Japan.
Then something changed. Since 2002, the population has exploded six times. In 2005, a particularly bad year, the Sea of Japan brimmed with as…
Over One Million People Lost Homes To Foreclosure In 2010
Photo: Brendel (CC)
Not only is the housing crisis not over, it looks like it’s accelerating, despite claims in Washington and on Wall Street that a recovery is underway. The only reason the number of foreclosure notices stayed just under 3 million in 2010 was that some banks backed off at the end of the year to avoid bad press. Les Christie reports for CNN Money via Yahoo Finance:
Foreclosures were at a record high in 2010, and more than 1 million people lost their homes, even as notices started leveling off during the end year.
In total, there were nearly 2.9 million foreclosure notices filed during the year, according to report released Thursday by RealtyTrac. That was a record high, but just 1.7% above 2009.
It most certainly would have been higher had notices not plunged in November and December as banks halted tens of thousands of foreclosures in the face of the…
Does Fascism Lurk Around The Corner In The USA?
Benito Mussolini
Fascism is one of those words that sounds like it belongs in the past, conjuring up, as it does, marching jack boots in the streets, charismatic demagogues like Italy’s Mussolini or Spain’s Franco and armed crackdowns on dissent and freedom of expression.
It is a term we are used to reading in histories about World War 2 — not in news stories from present day America.
And yet the word, and the dark reality behind it, is creeping into popular contemporary usage.
Radical activists on the left have never been hesitant to label their opponents with this “F word” whenever governments support laws that limit opposition or overdo national security or abuse human rights. Government paranoia turns critics paranoid.
One example: writer Naomi Wolf forecast fascism creeping into America during the Bush years accelerated by the erosion of democracy, writing:
“It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration…
Earth’s Precession Changes Zodiac Signs: Are You Now An Ophiuchus?
The interwebs have been going crazy with a supposed change to the zodiac that has added a new sign called Ophiuchus and changed all the other signs’ dates.
It’s world-changing (well if you believe in this sort of thing : ) If you’d like to read what’s really going on here behind the hubbub and learn a bit about astronomy not astrology, Charlie Jane Anders over at io9.com has an excellent post:
What on Earth is going on? And why does everybody suddenly have to work with a new version of the completely meaningless zodiac?
It seems to have started with this article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last weekend, in which one astronomer made some statements about the zodiac. Parke Kunkle is on the board of directors of the Minnesota Planetarium Society and teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Kunkle told the Star-Tribune the Earth’s relation to the sun had changed since the Babylonians first created…
Freedom? Fuhgeddaboutit!
Oh dear, the concept of “freedom” just doesn’t seem to be catching on around the world. Perhaps it’s because the “land of the free” isn’t setting a very good example?
The self-styled independent watchdog organization Freedom House has just released a report entitled “Freedom in the World 2011: The Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy,” warning that “A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains.” Some of the key findings include:
Free: The number of countries designated by Freedom in the World as Free in 2010 stands at 87, two fewer than the previous year, and representing 45 percent of the world’s 194 countries and 43 percent of the world’s population.
Partly Free: The number of Partly Free countries increased to 60, or 31 percent of all countries assessed by the survey, comprising 22 percent of the world’s total population.
Not Free: The number of countries…
The Anti-Palin Posters
Why only in San Francisco? Hopefully these posters by Eddie Colla will be arriving in your city soon!
Thanks to Brock Keeling for bring the posters to our attention at SFist. He writes:
We feel for Sarah Palin. We do…
The 10 Unexpiated Sins That Are Dragging America to Hell
Oedipus Rex, mad with grief
While there were a lot of political oberservations that needed to be made in relation to the recent tragic shooting in Arizona, I kinda feel like we’re beginning to find that comfort groove again. Some boringly consistent themes are being repeated ad nauseam and it’s starting to bug me.
After Obama’s low-content ”why can’t we just all play nice” speech the gears started to turn. Something more productive than threadbare conventional plattitudes has to come of this.
Must be my own perverse nature. You see, some of my biggest heroes have been the guys who f*cked up, but then went on to perform monumental acts of contrition, and in the process redeeming not only themselves but the whole world. From the (now lapsed) Roman Catholicism of childhood I still can remember St. Colmcille, whose penance for instigating a bloody war was exile and a mission to non-violently preach the love of Jesus Christ to the people…
Mexican Activist Chavez Murdered
Susana Chavez Photo: EPA
Susana Chavez, a human rights activist, was best known for her poetry and actions to help raise awareness of the violence towards women, especially in the border-city of Juarez. After years of activism, Chavez has fallen to the same violence she has fought against. Via Fox News Latino:
A poet and women’s rights activist was murdered in Ciudad Juarez, a gritty border metropolis that has become Mexico’s most violent city, officials and associates of the victim said.
Susana Chavez’s body was found last week, but it was not identified until Tuesday, prosecutors said.
Chavez’s left hand was chopped off and her body was dumped in a poor neighborhood in downtown Juarez, the Chihuahua state Attorney General’s Office said.
Chavez organized protests to draw attention to crimes against women in the border city and participated in poetry readings that she dedicated to murdered women.
[Continues at Fox News Latino]
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Outcome of Minors Being Interrogated Without Parental Knowledge
Photo: Depiction of "good cop, bad cop" interrogation style often displayed in films and television
Officers of the law go through training on how to interrogate a suspect or witness. The tactics that are used can determine the outcome of a testimony and, in this case, the mentality of a 13 year-old boy. The boy, previously diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, was questioned about the allegations against the father for sexual abuse against his autistic daughter. The officer seems to have forgotten that a man is innocent until proven guilty, and has decided that he’s guilty until the “evidence” can be proven true. The look at his interrogation tapes (linked below) proves that instead of finding truth in the case, a family is torn apart and a son loses trust in his father. Free Press reporter Brian Dicerkson discusses the case:
On Dec. 4, 2007, without notice to a legal guardian appointed to represent…
Blue M&M’s Turn Rats Blue and Help Heal Spinal Injuries: WTF?
Here’s a really crazy “health” story in 2009 from CNN I recently found. If you want some technical info on this dye check out its Wikipedia page. Reports CNN Health:
The same blue food dye found in M&Ms and Gatorade could be used to reduce damage caused by spine injuries, offering a better chance of recovery, according to new research.
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp.
The only side effect was that the treated mice temporarily turned blue. The results of the study, published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” build on research conducted by the same center five years ago.
In August 2004, scientists revealed how Adenosine triphosphate, which is known as ATP and described as the “energy currency of life,”…
Study Finds Fast-Increasing ‘Empathy Deficit’ Among Young Adults
As the human species progresses faster and faster in terms of technological achievements, one of our most defining abilities seems to be quickly crumbling: the capacity to understand and care about other people. Scientific American delves into the gaping emotional void:
Humans are unlikely to win the animal kingdom’s prize for fastest, strongest or largest, but we are world champions at understanding one another. This interpersonal prowess is fueled, at least in part, by empathy: our tendency to care about and share other people’s emotional experiences. Empathy is a cornerstone of human behavior and has long been considered innate. A forthcoming study, however, challenges this assumption by demonstrating that empathy levels have been declining over the past 30 years.
The research, led by Sara H. Konrath of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and published online in August in Personality and Social Psychology Review, found that college students’ self-reported empathy has declined since 1980,…
David Brock on Hardball: “Glenn Beck Himself Has Been Responsible For Three Thwarted Assassination Attempts This Year.”
In a segment on Sarah Palin’s continuing profitable martyrdom, Media Matters’ David Brock told Chris Matthews that Glenn Beck has inspired assassination attempts. Here’s the clip:
And here’s the transcript of the exchange:
MATTHEWS: I think we used to say, maybe back in the Churchillian age, your voice was your power, your ability to speak up. That’s certainly Norman Rockwell’s notion, the man, you know — the standing up at a meeting, at a public meeting and saying, “Here’s what I believe.” But, now, it’s standing up with your arms, standing up with your ammo, your gun sites, your bull’s eye…
South Korean Schools Introduce Egg-Shaped Robot Teachers
Each android teacher is equipped with a screen displaying the face of a human avatar, and is controlled remotely by an actual instructor in the Philippines. It’s a way of outsourcing a job (educating children) that one would have thought had to be done in person. The Daily Mail reports:
Pupils often assume their teachers don’t really exist outside the school gates, now robot classroom assistants could make this a reality. Almost 30 egg-shaped robots have started teaching English at primary schools in South Korea.
The 3.3ft high machines have a TV panel that displays a female Caucasian face and can wheel around the classroom while speaking to the students. The robots are also able to read books and dance to music moving their head and arms.
But despite appearances the robots, developed the Korea Institute of Science of Technology, are not autonomous beings. They are actually controlled remotely by English teachers living in…
Drug Sniffing Dogs Usually Wrong
Photo: Andromeda321 (CC)
I’m not a criminal defense lawyer, but if I was I think I’d be all over this story, especially if I had Hispanic clients. If the dogs are usually wrong, how can there be probable cause for a search? Dan Hinkel and Joe Mahr report for the Chicago Tribune:
Drug-sniffing dogs can give police probable cause to root through cars by the roadside, but state data show the dogs have been wrong more often than they have been right about whether vehicles contain drugs or paraphernalia.
The dogs are trained to dig or sit when they smell drugs, which triggers automobile searches. But a Tribune analysis of three years of data for suburban departments found that only 44 percent of those alerts by the dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia.
For Hispanic drivers, the success rate was just 27 percent.
Dog-handling officers and trainers argue the canine teams’ accuracy…
John Pilger Interview With Julian Assange: ‘I Have Murdoch Insurance’
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Perhaps as a return favor for posting bail for him, Julian Assange has given veteran British journalist John Pilger an exclusive interview. It will appear in the print edition of New Statesman, but some choice excerpts are on the New Statesman site:
… On Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, Assange says: “I’d never heard his name before it was published in the press.” He argues that the US is trying to use Manning – currently stuck in solitary confinement in the US – to build a case against the WikiLeaks founder:
“Cracking Bradley Manning is the first step,” says the Australian hacker. “The aim clearly is to break him and force a confession that he somehow conspired with me to harm the national security of the United States.”…
Yesterday, Assange’s lawyers warned that if he is extradited to America he could face the death penalty – for embarrassing…
Resorting To God To Solve The Housing Crisis
As millions of Americans know all too well, no matter what Wall Street says, the housing crisis is far from over. Rather than blame the banks though, the Street’s paper of record, the Wall Street Journal, features a series of photographs of religious and spiritual types trying to “cleanse” foreclosed housing stock of bad vibes. Yeah, that’ll do it guys. I’m not sure if I’m more amused or disgusted. Sample photo below, the rest here.
Lori Bruno, modern day Salem witch. Photo: Christopher Capoziello for the Wall Street Journal.
Mark Wahlberg Smells Of Skunk
According to his kids, anyway, Marky Mark smells of skunk. US Magazine reports that he’s given up smoking weed to save his kids from his skunky odor. The cynic in me says it might have more to do with his becoming a big shot in Hollywood, not only as an actor but also as executive producer of HBO shows like Entourage and Boardwalk Empire (note the part of his quote below where he says he goes to church instead of partying – yeah right, Mark!):
“I stopped smoking weed for my kids,” explained the star, who added that he’s replaced weekend partying with church-going.
“One day, we were driving and you could smell it from somewhere. My daughter asked what the smell was so I told her it was a skunk. Then she said, ‘Sometimes Daddy smells like that!’ to me and my wife. So I knew I had to quit.”
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