February 2012
104 posts
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70% of Americans Believe Iran Has Nukes, Even... →
Manufacturing consent at it’s finest. Amazing how easily people are duped.
In 2002 and early 2003, the Bush administration made its case for war with Iraq. There were assertions given about Saddam’s maintenance of weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. What was never said explicitly, however, was that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Yet by late 2003, seventy percent of polled...
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Can the EU achieve “Zero Waste” by 2020? →
Wow, how amazing would this be? The EU and it’s memeber states wow me on stuff like this on a regular basis. I’m glad someone is out there trying to be a model for the world.
To achieve a zero waste economy the EU Commission has published a series of documents that highlight the importance of resource efficiency and the sustainable use of natural resources throughout the EU....
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The Rock Timeline
Sad but mostly true
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Attacks paid for by big business are 'driving... →
Oreskes is co-author, with Erik Conway, of Merchants of Doubt, an investigation into the links between corporate business interests and campaigns in the US aimed at blocking the introduction of environmental and medical measures such as bans on smoking and the use of DDT, laws to limit acid rain, legislation to end the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere and attempts to curb carbon dioxide...
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Robots will steal your job, but that's okay: How... →
I’m not sure I believe the premise (at least not until the singularity), but the article raises some ideas that we should think about. There’s also a response to the article with the opposite premise here. I believe the truth is somewhere in between for now.
You are about to become obsolete. You think that you are special, unique, and that whatever it is that you are doing is...
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House Passes Section of Transportation Bill... →
This week, the House of Representatives passed part of the behemoth transportation bill it is considering over the next month on a 237-187 vote.
This section consisted solely of earmarks to Big Oil including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, opening Florida coasts to offshore drilling, a plan to develop oil shale (which isn’t even commercially viable), and building the...
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EXPOSED: 19 Corporations Funding Climate Change... →
Name and Shame. These are the companies who want to destroy our earth:
Altria Client Services Inc. MO $90,000 BTN
Amgen, USA AMGN $25,000 HCN
Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. BUD $5,000 ITTN
AT&T T $100,000 ITTN
BB&T BBT $16,105 ECN
Comcast Corporation CMCSA $35,000 ITTN
Diageo DEO $10,000 GO
Eli Lilly & Company LLY $25,000 HCN
General Motors Foundation GM $30,000 SRN
GlaxoSmithKline...
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Obama Hikes Royalties on Oil Industry by 50% →
Obama, I’m starting to warm up to you lately. Do something about the wars on drugs and terror and I’ll come around.
For the first time since the 1920s, fees for oil drilling on public land are going up, in an Obama administration Interior Department rule that does not require congressional approval. The election-year timing almost seems designed to wave a red flag in front of...
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"The Welfare State didn't destroy our innercities,... →
In 1971 President Nixon officially began the War on Drugs, which fully hit its stride in ’73 with the passage of the draconian Rockefeller Drugs Laws, and very quickly a distinct trend in the American prison population emerged:
If the War on Drugs didn’t directly precipitate the Welfare State and the destruction of the American black family, why did welfare aid to families spike in...
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Obama's War on Pot →
One thing that both the Democrats and Republicans agree on , you’ve got to keep feeding people in to the prison for profit machine.
Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this...
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If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains... →
John Hawks is in the middle of explaining his research on human evolution when he drops a bombshell. Running down a list of changes that have occurred in our skeleton and skull since the Stone Age, the University of Wisconsin anthropologist nonchalantly adds, “And it’s also clear the brain has been shrinking.”
“Shrinking?” I ask. “I thought it was getting larger.” The whole ascent-of-man...
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The Pirate Bay Founder Describes How a Corrupt... →
The Swedish prosecutor sent out a memo in 2006 saying that TPB wasn’t guilty of “main” crimes — at best it aids and abets (he also mentioned that the people running TPB were very clever).
But Hollywood was not happy with this and forced the Swedish Minister of Justice to visit the White House and talk about it. The United States told Sweden that if they...
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The Myth of Class Mobility in the USA →
When Americans express indifference about the problem of unequal incomes, it’s usually because they see the United States as a land of boundless opportunity. Sure, you’ll hear it said, our country has pretty big income disparities compared with Western Europe. And sure, those disparities have been widening in recent decades. But stark economic inequality is the price we pay for living in a...
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Mean.
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Australia's Scientologist Child Labor Camp →
Right in the middle of a quiet suburb is a place where children are separated from their parents, and forced to work full time for no pay, and live in squalid conditions. Those who’ve survived this place say they were brainwashed into believing they could not leave, and that they deserved the shocking treatment dished out.
A young man who escaped the place with the help of his...
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Since 1997, A Man Has Been Digging Out His... →
Wow, I wish I had this kind of time on my hands. But I wouldn’t spend it doing this.
A Canadian guy named Joe has been digging out the basement of his house using nothing but radio-controlled scale model construction equipment… since 1997. Yes, you read that right — he’s been digging out his basement for 15 years — with nothing but little R/C tractors, diggers and even a...
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Man faces 23 years of prison in the USA for 5... →
Well, we weren’t so deluded as to think everyone in the USA had freedom of speech, were we?
Over the past several years, the Justice Department has increasingly attempted to criminalize what is clearly protected political speech by prosecuting numerous individuals (Muslims, needless to say) for disseminating political views the government dislikes or considers threatening. The latest...
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Five Questions for Jill Stein of the Green Party -... →
Q. Why are you running for president?
A. We are in crisis and people are losing their jobs and their homes and their health care and affordable higher education and civil liberties. You name it, they are losing it. We have got a 1 percent that’s rolling in dough as much as ever and the political establishment is not fixing it. The establishment got us into this mess, in both parties. And...
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God I'm Thirst-WAARGBLBLBLLLBL
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Great, now I can never go in a revolving glass...
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How's the GM bailout looking today? →
GM’s stock price has sunk by a third since its IPO. Why is corporate turnaround so difficult and rare? The answer is often culture—the hardest thing of all to change.
GM sold 478 million common shares at $33 each, as well as a sizable chunk of preferred stock, raising $20.1 billion. While the IPO itself didn’t fully recover the federal government’s post-crash investment in GM (some $50...
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Bradley Manning: 2012 Nobel Peace Prize Nomination →
Go Icelandic Parliament! If Obama deserves one, Manning deserves 100.
February 1 2012 the entire parliamentary group of The Movement of the Icelandic Parliament nominated Private Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. Following is the reasoning we sent to the committee explaining why we felt compelled to nominate Private Bradley Manning for this important recognition of an...
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Want to Power Your iPhone by Burning Wood After... →
Is it a portable stove or a gadget charger? How about both. The BioLite ($130) is a compact, portable stove that burns sticks, twigs, pine cones, and other renewable resources instead of petroleum gas, lighting quickly and bringing water to a boil in no time. In addition, it packs a USB port on the front that draws its power from the heat of the fire, letting you charge your phone, GPS, or...
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WatchKristen Bell’s body is actually covered in Tattoos!