Category: News

Arnieville pops up in Berkeley
Activissts in Berkeley have set up a tent city, called “Arnieville,” to protest recent budget cuts in California. Photos were taken on Saturday morning, May 22, 2010.

All of Us Use Drugs, But Only Some of Us Go to Jail!
Despite a $40 billion a year "war on drugs," our country is swimming in them. They aren’t going anywhere.

Despite a $40 billion a year "war on drugs," our country is swimming in them. They aren't going anywhere.

Think Twice on Iran
The conventional wisdom in Washington seems to be that the Iran-Brazil-Turkey deal to take about half of Tehran’s enriched uranium out of the country in exchange for access to fuel for a medical isotope reactor was merely a ploy to…

Class in America
John Williams runs a site called Shadow Government Statistics, based on the premise that the Federal government has been lying to you since the mid 1990’s about some crucial statistics. His most critical calculation is on unemployment. I have regularly…

Harvard Needs To Fire Dershowitz & Ha’aretz’ Gideon Levy On The Israel Of Israelis’ Dreams
The media went into a frenzy this week over some kid who lied his way into Harvard. Big deal. Some 22 year old is incapable of doing the damage to Harvard done by a major law professor who uses his…


Middle East – Alan Dershowitz – Warfare and Conflict – United States – Israel

Texas Board Of Education Members Largely Stay Silent When Man Says ?Islam Brings Death?
One of the most contentious issues in the debate over what to include in Texas’ social studies textbooks surrounds the separation of church and state. The far-right members of the State Board of Education (SBOE) argue that America is a Christian nation and separation of church and state is a myth. In March, a majority […]

One of the most contentious issues in the debate over what to include in Texas’ social studies textbooks surrounds the separation of church and state. The far-right members of the State Board of Education (SBOE) argue that America is a Christian nation and separation of church and state is a myth. In March, a majority of SBOE members voted “against requiring high school American government students to learn that the nation’s Founders barred government from favoring or disfavoring one religion over all others.”

At the opening of yesterday’s session — where the board gave final approval to the social studies standards — far-right member Cynthia Dunbar gave the invocation, in which she used the prayer to pusher her anti-church-state separation agenda:

Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England or the Charter of Massachusetts Bay, or the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the same objective is present: a Christian land governed by Christian principles. I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it. … I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion.

Watch it:

Additionally, during a session this past week that included debate and comment from members of the public, a man stood up and said, “I have to tell you: Islam is coming, and Islam brings death. So I say, ‘Repent America, repent.’” CNN said that Lawrence Allen, the one Muslim member of the board, called the man out for his “insulting” comments, but not one of the other 14 members complained. Watch it:

A May 4-12 poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the TFN Education Fund found that “68 percent of likely Texas voters agree that church-state separation is a key principle of the Constitution.” That number included “59 percent of Republicans, 76 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of political independents believing it is a key principle.”

Rove Ludicrously Claims Bush White House Never Questioned Opponents? ?Motives? Or Called Them Names
Former White House advisor Karl Rove made a name for himself as President Bush’s “architect” by employing underhanded tactics to win elections and smear opponents. So it was startling that during a book signing in Oklahoma this week Rove declared that Bush “never allowed” staffers to call their opposition “disparaging labels,” or “question their […]

Former White House advisor Karl Rove made a name for himself as President Bush’s “architect” by employing underhanded tactics to win elections and smear opponents. So it was startling that during a book signing in Oklahoma this week Rove declared that Bush “never allowed” staffers to call their opposition “disparaging labels,” or “question their motives“:

“President Bush, for example, never allowed a White House staffer or administration spokesman to go out and do what this administration and our predecessor routinely did — that is to engage in calling the leaders of the opposition party disparaging labels and question their motives,” he said.

As The Oklahoman’s Ryan Dean noted, “In fact, Rove and other members of the Bush administration were routinely critical of opponents to the Iraq war and questioned their patriotism.” In a 2007 speech, Rove directly challenged the “motives” of his political opponents when he implied that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) intentionally used rhetoric that would endanger American soldiers:

”Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

During the 2008 campaign, Rove cast doubt on now-President Obama’s patriotism by attacking him for not wearing a flag pin — even though Rove wasn’t wearing one at the time — and criticized Michelle Obama for not showing “adequate enough” patriotism after she had given a lengthy speech professing her love of country.

And in the very same speech where Rove touted the honesty of the Bush White House, Rove falsely attributed a statement to President Obama that was actually made by Michelle.

Hawaii holds special election for House seat; Democrats expect loss in Obama’s birthplace
Democrats are bracing for the loss of a House seat Saturday in President Obama’s birthplace of Hawaii, where a special election in a heavily Democratic district has inflamed tensions within the party .


Democratic – United States – Barack Obama – Hawaii – President

Primaries school: What GOP can learn before midterm elections
Democrats got an election-year wake-up call in January when they lost the Massachusetts Senate seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy. Did Republicans get their wake-up call last week?


Republican – United States – Elections – Politics – Democratic

Months of intense negotiations led to passage of financial overhaul bill
When Christopher J. Dodd arrived at the White House that Wednesday morning in March, he was wrestling with a fateful choice.


Business – Financial services – Barack Obama – United States – Democratic

TALK SHOWS
Guests to be interviewed Sunday on major television talk shows:



Television – Talk show – Conan O’Brien – Tonight Show – Talk radio

Results of Kandahar offensive may affect future U.S. moves
The Obama administration’s campaign to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan’s second-largest city is a go-for-broke move that even its authors are unsure will succeed.


Kandahar – United States – Taliban – Afghanistan – War in Afghanistan

Who has not ever played the popular ‘Pacman‘? Pac-Man video game that has made thousands of versions and adaptations, now 30 years old. Indeed, it was the May 22, 1980 when the program created by game designer Toru Iwatani Namco for the company began to be distributed by Midway Games in the United States, becoming one of the best known and played video games throughout the world. This is the story of the good old Pac-Man.

In the late 1970s, the supply of games for gaming machines  was pretty stagnant. Despite still be a very profitable business, much of the available games seemed to be mere “clones” of “Space Invaders” or some sort of space combat. The players began to get bored of shooting pixelated Martians, and demanded something new. In this context appeared with new game mechanics, Pac-Man, and it was completely different to anything known.

Pac-Man is a product of the Japanese company Namco. The idea of the game was born in 1979, when Toru Iwanati, a young game designer who worked 25 years at that company, was eating. According to legend, Iwanati had just cut a pizza when, to take the first portion, looked what was left of it: a circle with a sort of mouth. At the time he got the idea for a new video game. In early 1980, with the help of programmer Shigeo Funaki and three other company employees, Toru finished programming the videogame, which was dubbed “Puck-Man”, the same name which was its main character. In Japanese, “Puck” comes from the onomatopoeia paku, which corresponds to the sound that occurs when opening and closing the mouth, which is very appropriate for a character who spent all his time eating “pills” white in a maze. On 10 May of that year began to be distributed in the Japanese market, becoming an instant success. Quick reflexes, game maker Midway bought the rights to commercialize in the United States, but decided to rename it. Midway makers feared that some users too “creative” scrape some of the “P” for “Puck” to convert the name recorded in the cabinets of the arcade machines in “*uck-Man.” Thus was born finally “Pac-Man.”

The reaction of users Iwanati before the game was overwhelming, surprising even its creators.Even the President and founder of Namco Masaya Nakamura, at the time said “I never imagined that Pac-Man were to become an international success of these proportions. Even people who do not know anything about games, know what is Pac-Man. Definitely not imagine that it would become the success it has become. ”

As mentioned, the underlying premise of the game was unlike anything he had seen so far. A yellow disc with an enormous mouth ran a maze eating white dots. Labyrinth also dwelt called Shadow four ghosts (Blinky), Speedy (Pinky), Bashful (Inky) and Pokey (Clyde), who roamed the halls trying to eat a Pac-Man. These ghosts were, respectively, red, pink, blue and orange. Each had a slightly different behavior. While Blinky was very fast and effectively chasing Pac-Man, Inky was quite slow and often avoided meeting with the main character. Labyrinth also had four “legs” which provided larger Pac-Man “for a few seconds, the ability to” eat “the ghosts.When it ran out of white dots, Pac-Man went to the next level. Despite its simplicity (or thanks to) the game became extremely popular.

Related posts:

1. Pacman Game Day – Play Pacman Free Online Or Download and Play Pacman Offline
2. Celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man
3. Pac-Man Celebrating its 30th Anniversary

Unified Action Needed Against North Korea

A Progressive Agenda to Remake Washington
David Leonhardt, NYT
With the Senate’s passage of financial regulation, Congress and the White House have completed 16 months of activity that rival any other since the New Deal in scope or ambition. Like the Reagan Revolution or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the new progressive period has the makings of a generational shift in how Washington operates.First came a stimulus bill that, while aimed mainly at ending a deep recession, also set out to remake the nation’s educational system and vastly expand scientific research. Then President Obama signed a health care bill that…

Jimmy Carter’s Lesson for Tea Parties
Sen. Bob Bennett, Washington Post
Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976 by riding the wave of anger and disillusionment that followed Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. Carter tapped into that anger with the slogan “I will never lie to you.” An angry electorate, disgusted with Nixon, decided that was reason enough to give Carter the presidency. He won, in large part, because he made it clear that he wasn't Richard Nixon.Pundits called Carter a political genius. 

Iran: Can Sanctions and Diplomacy Be Combined?
Tony Karon, Time
“The purpose of sanctions is to bring the Iranian side to the negotiating table,” said Li Baodong, China's U.N. ambassador, this week, explaining how Beijing could simultaneously support a new uranium-swap deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey and endorse new U.N. sanctions. The Obama Administration appears to have convinced China of its view that sanctions pressure is integral to achieving a diplomatic compromise. That two-track concept of combining punitive pressures with diplomatic engagement may also partly explain the U.S. slap-down of the deal brokered by Turkey and…

Summer is right around the corner. This means that the time to make good on that New Year’s resolution to get in shape for the summer is upon us. But while planning your routine to achieve those killer glutes and abs, don’t forget about the effect your workout has on the environment. This CAP repost has some simple tips to keep getting fit earth friendly,  including how you can generate clean electricity during your workout.

First of all, the great outdoors has some of the most energy efficient—and simple—workouts nature has to offer. Walking or jogging outside requires little waste-producing equipment other than running shoes, and saves precious CO2 compared to a treadmill workout, which uses two pounds of the stuff for a 30-minute run. And if hitting the pavement for half an hour sounds like a drag, combine a brisk jog to the supermarket with a stroll back home while toting your purchases for a workout that gets your heart rate up and helps tone your arms. Gardening, biking, and hiking also offer excellent opportunities for a zero-emission outdoors workout, and plenty of traditional exercises—jumping rope, squats, and pushups, to name a few—are easy to take outside as well.

If you need a little more structure for your exercise plan, consider joining a gym over buying a home cardio machine, which produces extra waste and gets used less over its lifetime compared to gym machines that are constantly in use. Gyms use lots of electricity to power their machines, air conditioning, and lights, but eco-friendly ones are becoming more and more common. Look for a gym that uses energy efficient equipment, such as treadmills that use about one-third less energy than traditional ones, and lights and televisions that are turned on only when needed. Using refillable water bottles and your own towel to wipe down equipment, rather than single-use disposable ones, can also help keep waste down.

Some gyms take energy efficiency a step further. The Green Microgym in Portland, Oregon, generates as much as 36 percent of its energy from solar panels and human-powered generators attached to stationary bikes and ellipticals. The Portland gym saved 37,000 kilowatt-hours in 2009 through its use of human and solar power and other energy-saving measures. If you prefer to keep your workout at home, and you’re feeling extra crafty, you can even build your own human-powered generator.

A vigorous workout will produce  on average of 50 Watts of  clean electricity.   You can also build your own:

Whether you decide to workout at home or at the gym, choosing eco-friendly gear is a must. Hit up Craigslist or a garage sale for gently used bikes, free weights, or other equipment. Shop around for yoga or exercise mats made of non-PVC material, and look for breathable workout clothes made from organic soy or cotton blends, and recycled rubber-soled shoes.

This is reposted from CAP.

Thanks to my Aunt Mary (Treacy) with the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information for sending me a great bibliography written by a colleague and friend, Mary Ann Van Cura ( a friend to me and broadband!). It is entitled Towards Digital Inclusion: The Role of Libraries and Other Community Technology Centers and it is available online (as are all of the resources). It’s a good general resource – but really focuses on Minnesota.

Mary Ann has included research and statistics but I think many readers will be most interested in the guides, toolkits and curriculum she has gathered from libraries and computer centers that have implemented digital literacy programs. It’s a great shortcut for anyone looking to do the same.

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

Youtube
May 23, 2010

Satan is going on vacation and needs a replacement. Candidates for the job include Scott Silverman from Positive ID, Verichip , Raytheon , Monsanto and Goldman Sachs.

Article Tags: 2010 Forecast, John Christy, Met Office

CLIMATE scientists have warned that 2010 could turn out to be the warmest year in recorded history.

They have collated global surface temperature measurements showing that the world has experienced near-record highs between January and April.

Researchers working independently at the Met Office and Nasa are soon to publish data that reveal the trend is likely to continue for the rest of the year.

James Hansen, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss), a world centre for climate monitoring, said: “Global temperatures, averaged over the past 12 months, were the warmest for 130 years.

“December to February was also the second-warmest of any such period.”

Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “It was a cold winter in Europe but, globally, January to March was one of the seven warmest starts to the year on record.

“This year has more than a 50% chance of being the warmest on record.”

Source: timesonline.co.uk

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Confirmed the Pac-Man 30th Anniversary! celebration at Google is ending today, so try to enjoy the logo based browser game from the search engine giant while it lasts. It’s nothing special but the old sweet pacman game with original sound and pacman have to eat the dots near the word google. Google made happy tons of users with this celebration anniversary party, this ended up with tons of playing office workers and other millions of worldwide google users.

Play Pacman free instead of searching google, it’s fun and takes you back to your childhood when you played pacman with family’s first commondor 64, and this was the most awesome thing then to do. Try out the two player mode where you can control Pac-Man with W A S D.

Google is improving, we see better and better Doodles but this one was the best till now. Have a great time and enjoy every minute of Pac-Man 30th Anniversary! and have fun with Google Logo based game today, and if you loved this then simply download a free pacman game and get it when you feel hungry for dots.

Related posts:

1. Pac-Man 30th Anniversary! Third Day With Playable Google Logo
2. Pac-Man 30th Anniversary! Google Pacman Playable Logo… a Viral Game!
3. Pac-Man 30th Anniversary: Play Pacman Free Online in “Google Pacman”

Article Tags: Comment, You could not make it up

This very silly report in the Times gives an insight how “cause and effect” have been mixed up so that CO2 drives the climate. I have extracted the following to show the struggle in making the analysis fit the facts i.e. the “effect is the cause”: These people call themselves scientists! Oh boy, oh boy, have they got it wrong!

…..The British Isles are among the regions most strongly affected by ice ages. Over the past 700,000 years they have been deserted and resettled by humans about a dozen times, according to researchers at London’s Natural History Museum. Humans last returned only 11,500 years ago.

There were still questions to be asked about the effects that changing levels of sunshine have on ice sheets, he said, but “we have made great strides in understanding this problem”. He added: “I think we can be very sure that, with CO2 levels already 30% higher than at any time in the previous 800,000 years, there is no chance of a new ice age any time soon.

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Thanks to Conflipper on Twitter, we know have some more information on two upcoming Windows Mobile based devices, the Huashan and Hengshan, that were previously leaked in the above image.

What identifies both of these as windows mobile devices is:

<prf:BrowserName>Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile 6</prf:BrowserName>

The Hengshan is a keyboard less HVGA Windows Phone.

The Huashan is a WVGA keyboard less Windows Phone.

There’s not a lot of info on the exact hardware, but we’ll be sure to post anything as and when it comes up.

Huashan, Hengshan

Via Prison Planet.com » World News

Press TV
May 23, 2010

Most of the Regional Command in the South of Afghanistan will be shifted from the UK to the US, as British forces are accused of having links with the Taliban.

Based on new arrangements, British forces in the south that includes Kandahar province will be placed under American control as part of a radical restructuring plan being drawn amid a new phase of war against the Taliban.

US forces who are preparing themselves for a major strike on the Taliban in the volatile province of Kandahar are reluctant to see the British control the province.

British newspaper, The Independent, said that command in southern Afghanistan will be split in half, with UK troops answering to a US general from June 1.

According to some reports, the changes are made as the British have reportedly cooperated with the Taliban in recent years and allowed Afghan farmers to cultivate opium freely.

The reports say that the British forces were even involved in the process of drug trafficking itself.

Mullah Abdul Salam, a former Taliban official who has joined the Afghan government, publicly accused the British of assisting the Taliban.

He said the British command in the region at one point did not block a Taliban assault when they attacked Afghan forces under Abdul Salam’s command.

The former Taliban member said that in 2008, Afghan President Hamid Karzai expelled two European diplomats from the country because of their links with the Taliban.

The expulsion order was made after the pair — Michael Semple, an Irish EU official with extensive Taliban contacts, and Mervyn Patterson, a UN official from Northern Ireland — travelled to the town of Musa Qala in northern Helmand to meet Afghan powerbrokers, days after the Taliban fighters were driven out by British troops.

A source in Kabul said that the accusation against the men was made after President Karzai of Afghanistan was told that the pair were attempting to broker a deal with the Taliban behind his back.

Unnamed Afghan officials initially claimed that the pair had visited Taliban leaders, paid them, and may even have supported the militancy.

Via Prison Planet.com » World News

Press TV
May 23, 2010

An international anti-war organization, the War and Peace Foundation, says continued fatalities of US troops in Iraq is a sign of their involvement in secret operations.

Speaking to Press TV on Saturday, Director of the War and Peace Foundation Kevin Sanders said the fact that the US soldiers are killed off-base in Iraq shows that the US is violating certain restrictions.

Under an agreement signed between Washington and Baghdad in 2008, the movement of US troops is limited to their bases and all unilateral operations should have technically come to a halt in 2009.

The remarks by Sanders were made about a recent US military statement, announcing that two of its soldiers were killed near Iraq’s northern city of Mosul on Thursday and Friday.

“These are deaths occurred quite literally off-base and that is interesting. One assumes at any given time that the military is up to something that is not revealed… dark or secret operations,” he said.

“Such operations are obviously continued in Iraq. This is my guess, because there is a complete lack of other information. But I think an informed and educated guess would suggest that it [the deaths] has something to do with oil,” Sanders added.

“That is to say that at any given time, the US government wants to have its military or people active as close as possible to the centers of oil,” the director of the War and Peace Foundation concluded.

Via Prison Planet.com » World News

DAVID E. SANGER
NY Times
May 23, 2010

WASHINGTON — A new American intelligence analysis of a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship concludes that Kim Jong-il, the ailing leader of North Korea, must have authorized the torpedo assault, according to senior American officials who cautioned that the assessment was based on their sense of the political dynamics there rather than hard evidence.

The officials said they were increasingly convinced that Mr. Kim ordered the sinking of the ship, the Cheonan, to help secure the succession of his youngest son.

“We can’t say it is established fact,” said one senior American official who was involved in the highly classified assessment, based on information collected by many of the country’s 16 intelligence agencies. “But there is very little doubt, based on what we know about the current state of the North Korean leadership and the military.”

Nonetheless, both the conclusion and the timing of the assessment could be useful to the United States as it seeks to rally support against North Korea.

Full article here

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

Zero Hedge
May 23, 2010

Max Keiser at his best, deconstructing the global ponzi with Gerald Celente, another very much outspoken critic of the broken financial system. Most ZH regulars will be quite familiar with the overriding themes exposing the mass corruption perpetrated by the kleptocratic oligarchy, yet Max as always delivers the message with his patented iconoclastic panache that just draws you in.

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

Glenn Greenwald
Salon
May 23, 2010

Few issues highlight Barack Obama’s extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world — far away from any battlefield — and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court.

 Back in the day, this was called “Bush’s legal black hole.”  In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo.  Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.

Immediately following Boumediene, the Bush administration argued that the decision was inapplicable to detainees at Bagram — including even those detained outside of Afghanistan but then flown to Afghanistan to be imprisoned.  Amazingly, the Bush DOJ — in a lawsuit brought by Bagram detainees seeking habeas review of their detention — contended that if they abduct someone and ship them to Guantanamo, then that person (under Boumediene) has the right to a habeas hearing, but if they instead ship them to Bagram, then the detainee has no rights of any kind.

In other words, the detainee’s Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged.  One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when, last February, as The New York Times put it, Obama lawyers “told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.”

But last April, John Bates, the Bush-43-appointed, right-wing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram.  I reviewed that ruling here, in which Judge Bates explained that the Bagram detainees are “virtually identical to the detainees in Boumediene,” and that the Constitutional issue was exactly the same:  namely, “the concern that the President could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely.”  

Full article here

Via Prison Planet.com » Prison Planet

Jason Lewis
UK Daily Mail
May 23, 2010

The police are keeping secret intelligence files and photographs of nearly 1,900 so-called domestic extremists, it can be revealed.

Details of the intelligence and pictures gathered at marches and other demonstrations comes as the new Government questions whether civil liberties and the right to peaceful protest have been eroded by New Labour’s extension of police and anti-terrorist legislation.

The information has been built up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), Britain’s most powerful national policing body, whose future is in doubt after it was revealed that it was being run as a private company.

After taking over MI5’s covert role watching groups such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, trade union activists and Left-wing journalists six years ago, ACPO’s National Coordinator for Domestic Extremism (NCDE) has now given a detailed description of its work for the first time.

It says it is targeting domestic extremism ‘most commonly associated with “single-issue” protests, such as animal rights, environmentalism, anti-globalisation or anti-GM crops’.

Full article here