Archive for March, 2011
Saudi Police Open Fire At Protest – What Next?
Source: Norman Einstein (CC)
Did shit just hit the fan? Those keeping up with the Middle East protests and oil prices are well aware of the powder keg that is Saudi Arabia.
Yahoo News reports:
CAIRO – Saudi police opened fire Thursday to disperse a protest in the mainly Shiite east, leaving at least one man injured, as the government struggled to prevent a wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world from reaching the kingdom.
For full article, see Yahoo News.
“Oil will go up ‘ballistically’ if unrest shifts to Saudi Arabia, says Marc Faber”. Business Intelligence Middle East reports:
Brent crude futures could hit US$200 a barrel if political unrest spreads into Saudi Arabia, Societe Generale said on Monday.
Under what the bank called Geopolitical Scenario 3, “unrest spreads to Saudi Arabia and threatens Saudi crude exports and any remaining spare capacity. Brent price range of US$150-US$200 a barrel,” it said in a research note.
“In this most…
Fox News To Fire Glenn Beck?
Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC)
The Week dissects a David Carr piece in the New York Times and comes to the conclusion that “the cable news giant may part ways with the conservative firebrand at the end of the year”:
Glenn Beck is obsessed with the coming apocalypse, but the real end times on the horizon may be for his nightly show on Fox News, reports David Carr at The New York Times. Senior Fox News executives tell Carr that the network is “looking at the end of [Beck's] contract in December and contemplating life without [him].”
Why? The conspiracy theorist has lost a third of his audience since last year, particularly in the younger demographic; he has drawn the ire of conservatives like William Kristol, and, says Carr, his show has “turned into a serial doomsday machine that’s a bummer to watch.” Could Fox News really be preparing to part ways with Beck?
It would be no…
Monster Tsunami Scares Residents Across Pacific
The massive 8.9 earthquake off the coast of Japan has created a monster tsunami that has people all across the Pacific Ocean running to high ground. The U.S. Government’s NOAA has lots of interactive and historical information on tsunami travel times and is well worth looking at if you’re anywhere in the vicinity. A static map is reproduced below.
FDA Approves First New Lupus Drug In 56 Years
Lupus Varrucosus
Via Modern Medicine:
Benlysta (belimumab) has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat lupus, the first medication sanctioned for the condition in the United States since 1955.
The injected drug targets B-lymphocyte stimulator (BLyS) protein, which is believed to play a role in abnormal B cells thought to characterize lupus, the agency said in a news release. Lupus disproportionally affects women, usually aged 15 to 44.
As many as 1.5 million people in the United States have the disease, although estimates vary widely, the FDA said. Black women have a three times higher incidence of the disease than Caucasian women.
The safety and effectiveness of Benlysta were established in a pair of clinical studies involving 1,684 people. Those treated with Benlysta had fewer symptoms than those who took a placebo, and the results suggested that those who took the drug also were less likely to have severe lupus flares,…
Dalai Lama Announces His Resignation As Political Leader
14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatzo
After years of heading the exiled Tibetan movement, the Dalai Lama will resign his political role. After years of leading his people both spiritually and politically he believes it is time for an elected official, but will remain involved with the movement. The Bangkok Post reports:
The Dalai Lama announced Thursday his plan to retire as political head of the exiled Tibetan movement, saying the time had come for his replacement by a “freely elected” leader.
The Dalai Lama, whose more significant role is as the movement’s spiritual leader, said he would seek an amendment allowing him to resign his political office when the exiled Tibetan parliament meets next week.
“My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility,” he said in an address in Dharamshala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India.
“It is to benefit Tibetans in the long run. It…
Rise Of The Precariat: The New Working Class
British economist Guy Standing has coined the term “precariat” to refer to the fast-growing working-class caste of the 21st century. With labor markets now globalized and “flexiblized,” the risks and uncertainties of capitalism have been transferred almost completely away from capitalists and onto workers. Below, citizens discuss living and working in post-industrial England, where large numbers scrounge to obtain low-wage, unstable jobs.
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What If They Held A Civil War And The Military Didn’t Show Up?
I’m sure you’ve already heard the news: Between roughtly 4:00pm and 6:30pm last night, Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald stripped the union-busting provisions of Wisconsin’s notorious “Budget Repair Bill” into a stand-alone bill, which as an allegedly non-fiscal bill required a much smaller quorum to floor, and forcibly destroyed trade unionism in the state.
A vote in the assembly is scheduled for 11:00am local time today 10th March, but nobody seriously expects any significant defection within the heavy Republican majority.
Upon learning of the coup d’état, crowds rushed and occupied the capitol building in violation of Walker’s Department of Administration restrictions. See video here.
Although exempted from the draconian provisions of the bill, it’s been clear for weeks that the police and their unions know that it is only a matter of time and opportunity until Walker attempts to destroy their political voice as well.
Clearly the next round of conflict will surround injunctions…
Robert Greenwald Vs. The Koch Brothers
Robert Greenwald, the leading activist documentary director, has his sights firmly lined up on the increasingly controversial brothers Koch. The first of a series of short films from Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation appears below, and he explains why this is top priority in a blog at Huffington Post:
Today Brave New Foundation announces our latest campaign. A campaign where we will take on one of the single greatest threats to our democracy: The Koch Brothers.…
An American Muslim’s View – Why Our Community Needs the King Hearings On Radical Islam
M. Zuhdi Jasser
Yes, yes I know it’s Fox News, but let’s at least hear what he has to say [Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a medical doctor and a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Arizona]:
Representative Peter King’s (R-N.Y.) decision to hold hearings on American Muslim radicalization has presented an incredible opportunity to American Muslims.
The course of radicalization over the past two years makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone to assert with a straight face that America is immune to the global Muslim radicalization problem. American Muslims must take the lead in creating solutions to the radicalization of our own.
These hearings will provide the long overdue platform for us to step away from the standard denials and apologetics in order to reclaim our Muslim identity from the terrorists and redefine ourselves within the framework of the American pantheon.
The attacks…
How The Human Penis Lost Its Spines
Photo: Snowyowls (CC)
When I read that headline I thought I must have clicked on National Enquirer or something, but no, it’s Elizabeth Landau cranking out an SEO-friendly story for CNN:
You’ve read the headline, and it probably made you giggle. Go ahead. Get it out of your system. Then take a deep breath and consider how evolution affected a few specific body parts, and why.
Humans and chimpanzees share more than 97% of DNA, but there are some fairly obvious differences in appearance, behavior and intellect. Now, scientists are learning more than ever about what makes us uniquely human.
We know that humans have larger brains and, within the brain, a larger angular gyrus, a region associated with abstract concepts. Also, male chimpanzees have smaller penises than humans, and their penises have spines. Not like porcupine needles or anything, but small pointy projections on the surface that basically make the organ bumpy.
Gill Bejerano,…
After 20 Years, Nearly Everyone Still Wants GM Food To Be Labeled
By Rady Ananda at the Food Freedom blog:
At this MSNBC poll, over 40,000 people have voted strongly in favor of labeling genetically modified foods: 96% of all respondents.
But, a review of several polls going back to 1994 reveals that the numbers have always been high — the vast majority of people have always wanted GM labels. That biotech foods have remained unlabeled for nearly 20 years in the US reveals a deliberate and willful refusal by regulatory agencies to serve the will of the people, instead opting to abet industry profits through public deception.
The 96% rating from MSNBC’s casual survey does represent a jump from a scientific poll conducted in 2003 by University of Maine and The Ohio State University (and partly funded by the US Dept. of Agriculture), where 85% of respondents said they wanted GM foods labeled. Researchers also noted:
“Polls have emphasized that a majority of consumers in the United States…
United Nations Sounds Alarm Over Vanishing Bees
disinformation readers have been aware of the frighteningly rapid onset of Colony Collapse Disorder for some time, and indeed here at disinfo we’ve allied with filmmakers George Langworthy and Maryam Henein to help distribute their superb film Vanishing of the Bees. The United Nations will be supporting the release of the film including screenings around World Environment Day (June 5), and are putting the word out on what is a very, very serious issue (as a reminder, commercial honeybee operations pollinate crops that make up one out of every three bites of food on our tables). From AFP via Yahoo News:
GENEVA (AFP) – The UN on Thursday expressed alarm at a huge decline in bee colonies under a multiple onslaught of pests and pollution, urging an international effort to save the pollinators that are vital for food crops.
Much of the decline, ranging up to 85 percent in some areas, is taking place…
Senior HSBC Economist Warns Soaring Food Prices Could Trigger Unrest In UK
Sky News reports:
A senior economist at the worldwide bank HSBC has warned of civil unrest in Britain if food prices continue to soar.
Speaking on Jeff Randall Live, senior global economist Karen Ward cautioned that the UK could experience the kind of food riots seen in other countries.
“Even in the developed world I think we have very, very low wage growth, so people aren’t getting more in their pay packet to compensate them for food and energy, and I think we could see social unrest certainly in parts of the developed world and the UK as well.”…
Heavy Metal Solutions For The Middle East?
Writing for Al Jazeera, Mark LeVine explores the uncanny popularity of dinosaur metal band Iron Maiden amongst a young, Middle Eastern fan base and “asks if heavy metal music offers a blueprint for modernization in the Middle East.” I certainly hope LeVine’s geopolitical thesis is correct — reconfiguring staid Mideast nations using the tenets of Maiden as a basis sounds brilliant, for the resultant national flags alone.
I first saw Iron Maiden in Dubai in 2007, at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival, which although only three years old was becoming known as the “Mecca for Middle Eastern metal”.
This was pre-crash Dubai, in all its excessive splendor, and the festival was filled to capacity with 20,000 metalheads, mostly Arabs, Iranians and South Asians, cheering, screaming and even crying during Maiden’s headlining show.
The members of Iron Maiden still recall that first Dubai show fondly, but in reality Dubai represented the very antithesis of…
Dog Eats Sleeping Owner’s Right Foot, Saving Him
An inspiring case of everyday-life heroism, as an Oregon man awoke to find that his likely-gangrenous foot had been gnawed off and consumed by his pet dog — there have been reported similar cases in the past. Via the Huffington Post:
A diabetic Oregon man with no feeling in his feet woke up to find his dog had eaten part of his right foot, including three toes.
The man told emergency responders that he fell asleep on his couch and woke up to find pieces of his foot missing.
Roseburg veterinarian Alan Ross says that the dog may have been trying to rid his owner of dead tissue, and says he may have been attracted to the foot if it were infected or gangrenous.
U.S. Government Proposes Elimination Of $1 Bills
Yahoo Finance reports:
Washington has come down with a case of fiscal fever as the Obama administration proposes everything from spending freezes on domestic programs to selling off unused government property to bring the budget back in line. Now, one study argues that the government can save billions of dollars simply by making a change to the currency itself.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a formal proposal to the Treasury and Federal Reserve noting that if it eliminated the $1 bill and replaced it with the $1 coin, the country could save roughly $5.5 billion during the next 30 years. The reason, according to the agency’s report, is that dollar bills have a shorter lifespan than dollar coins because they wear much faster, which in turn requires the government to spend more to print new bills.
The GAO estimates that phasing out dollar bills in favor of coins would require…
Treasure Islands: The Murky World Of Offshore Tax Shelters
New Left Project sits down with author Nicholas Shaxson to talk tax havens — a mammoth system of quasi-legal money-laundering which has a far wider impact than we realize, with a large role in the global drug trade and financial crisis. As it turns out, the biggest “treasure islands” are not the Caymans or Monaco, but places such as the City of London and the U.S. state of Delaware:
There is no common definition of what a tax haven is. Everybody has a slightly different definition. Ultimately what a tax haven provides is escape from the rules and the laws of jurisdictions. Tax havens are also about ‘elsewhere’ – the laws of the Cayman Islands are not designed for the benefit of the 50,000-odd population of the Cayman Islands.
The traditional view is…palm-fringed tropical islands in the Caribbean, Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein. Small states. But if you do the analysis of what a tax…
Is Competitive Laughter Becoming A New Craze?
The documentary Laughology is helping set off a new fad with the discovery that competitive laughter can be entertaining.
The film makes the case that laughter itself is the primary motivator of laughter, so jokes aren’t necessary for people to have a good time. After a laughing contest in Montreal where the audience was in stitches, a competition made headlines in Tokyo. This Saturday a laughter contest hits America in the form of the California Ultimate Laughing Championship. Linda Massarella reports for the Toronto Sun:
So there was this American state called California with one of the highest unemployment rates on the continent and citizens fretting about losing their homes to foreclosure … when in walks this Canadian guy.
Yes, it’s Toronto documentary filmmaker Albert Nerenberg to the rescue of the depressed and anxious around here [San Luis Obispo, CA] next Saturday when he brings his movie, Laughology, to a film festival just north…
Bigfoot Sues State
From the “You can’t make this stuff up” department, via AP/Seacoastonline:
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — First there was a Bigfoot sighting. Now, there’s a Bigfoot suing.
A performance artist and amateur filmmaker who dressed as the mythical beast says New Hampshire park rangers didn’t have the right to kick him off a mountain where he had been scaring, or at least amusing, hikers while friends videotaped his antics.
Backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Jonathan Doyle is suing the state…
