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The CIA is actively engaged in ongoing operations in Somalia - with collusion by "legitimate" government (CIA-backed thugs), to ensure a plan that extends US power dominance over the Horn of Africa and the strategic passage of the Arabian Sea. With several live conflicts at once, the US profits through maintaining and exploiting chaos and disorder, as an effective way to achieve goals without full-blown miltary dominance.

Jeremy Scahill exposed many details of the latest specific CIA activities - including secret prisons and torture - in The Nation, last week.

In Salon.com, Glen Greenwald deconstructs much of the US noise about Somali "terrorism" in light of Scahill. He continues exposing the "coverage" of Somalia's political turmoil by NYT and LAT as CIA and State Dept stenography.:

Independently, note this amazing passage from that LA Times article, regarding how these anonymous officials learned of what they are claiming concerning an AQAP/Shabab grand alliance:

The CIA gained other information when Somali authorities allowed them to interview Shabab militants imprisoned in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, U.S. officials said. The CIA asked about the militants' ability to launch attacks outside Somalia as well as the group's command structure.

That claim presumably refers to the secret Mogadishu prison Scahill revealed, the one the CIA pays Somali agents to guard and at which they're constantly present. The notion that Somali authorities generously "allowed" the CIA to "interview" prisoners there mindlessly disseminates CIA propaganda and ignores the facts Scahill revealed: that this is effectively a U.S.-maintained-and-engineered prison. And, of course, there is no discussion of the legal and human rights repercussions of interrogating prisoners in secret facilities beyond the reach of human rights monitoring agencies, nor any discussion of the role such practices play in further spawning anti-American sentiment.

Ultimately, the exacerbating cause of conflict and turmoil throughout the region which includes Somalia and Yemen is the same as that in Central Asia - the imperial subversion and aggression by the United States, inheritor of the mantle "Evil Empire".

The Nation's article on CIA black sites? I may have been in a bubble, but I don't recall many articles mentioning Somalia until The Nation ran their article about the US Torture camps in Somalia.

Now I see article, after article, about how there is a humanitarian crisis in that country is caused by people the US want to torture/murder and now an article about how climate change research is being hampered by evil people in the area. It all seems a little much.

I really want to stay away from tinfoil hat material but, when a story about torture camps run by the US gov seems to be ignored and then humanization problems seems to appear at the same time, I can't help but wonder if a counter information campaign, like what the hack on HBGary help to expose may be responsible.

See this very recent coverage of the effective US cable and satellite carriers blackout of Al Jazeera, apart from "a handful of homes in the United States". (Your obviously one of the lucky few - care to name who your provider is?)

Historically this blackout has been due to pressure from the US Government on cable providers. From Washington Embraces Al Jazeera linked earlier:

"On April 11 senior [US] military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, “The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies.” On April 15 Donald Rumsfeld echoed those remarks in distinctly undiplomatic terms, calling Al Jazeera’s reporting “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable. It’s disgraceful what that station is doing.” It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan. “He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere,” a source told the Mirror. “There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do"

I don't believe it's actually censored in the U.S. Wikileaks is just not allowed to use Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, Amazon or Bank Of America. As the GP pointed out: If that's not politically motivated censorship, then I guess this isn't either.

Anyone else having trouble reaching english.aljazeera.net in the U.S.? It stopped coming up for me yesterday, and is going on 24 hours since I've been able to access it. I don't see anything in the news about why it might be down. Just wondering if anyone else is having problems.

Yes, it is "unofficially" censored in the US - that is, censored due to political pressure in the same way that Paypal/Amazon/Visa/Mastercard/BOA were "encouraged" by the administration to censor Wikileaks. At least they have not bombed their offices (yet) as Bush Jr wanted.

Anyone else having trouble reaching english.aljazeera.net in the U.S.? It stopped coming up for me yesterday, and is going on 24 hours since I've been able to access it. I don't see anything in the news about why it might be down. Just wondering if anyone else is having problems.

Yes, it is "unofficially" censored in the US - that is, censored due to political pressure in the same way that Paypal/Amazon/Visa/Mastercard/BOA were "encouraged" by the administration to censor Wikileaks. At least they have not bombed their offices (yet) as Bush Jr wanted.

Not looking good on the live stream: Plain clothes government paid thugs are attacking the demonstrating Egyptian public, trying to make them all go home.

Al Jazeera media network is by far the best coverage, but unfortunately it is more or less censored in the US apart from the above live stream (Censored in the same way that Paypal/Visa/MCard "censored" wikileaks, that is).

Ah, the paid thugs must be government and not Muslim Brotherhood. I see where you are coming from. You saw the receipts, right?

Not looking good on the live stream: Plain clothes government paid thugs are attacking the demonstrating Egyptian public, trying to make them all go home.

Al Jazeera media network is by far the best coverage, but unfortunately it is more or less censored in the US apart from the above live stream (Censored in the same way that Paypal/Visa/MCard "censored" wikileaks, that is).

Does anyone know why U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in the business of seizing domains? They should just stick to making suspected immigrants disappear in undocumented detention centers.

Anyway, here are some links for you: one, two, three.

I can see why you are against Wikileaks. You don't even follow normal news, so why would anybody need more?

Besides the many other good suggestions, I'd highly recommend Salon, and Glenn Greenwald in particular. You might also try The Nation, although it can stray into bleeding-heart territory at times.

You can also learn a heck of a lot by reading foreign news media, such as the BBC or Al Jazeera.

What BS is WikiLeaks exposing?

Illegal espionage against U.N. officials. The U.S. putting pressure on the Spanish government to quash investigations into torture and into the deaths of journalists. War crimes by the U.S. military.

If you don't know what WikiLeak has already exposed, you're disqualified from discussion about the topic. Go read the Guardian's coverage and come back when you're educated.

COUNTLESS they say. countless as in, a few hundred, tops. compared to 66.000+ (official no, unofficial probably higher) dead in iraq, unknown number dead in afghanistan, unknown number lost in the hands of cia, nsa and ice. (even inside usa - http://www.thenation.com/article/americas-secret-ice-castles [thenation.com] )

Sure, but you have to realize that the lives of the patricians are worth more than the lives of the plebs, and the lives of the plebs are worth more than the lives of the subjet peoples.

Dead foreigners don't count because they aren't "real people", and detained Americans don't count because they aren't "Real Americans".

The notion that every single human being is free and equal in rights and dignity is too complex for the average person to grasp, and while it was defended vigorously for a while amongst academics neither the post-structuralist Left nor the post-traditionalist Right have any interest in it. Tribalism is the order of the day, as it always has been except for very brief interludes of quasi-legal peace and prosperity, which tribalists find intolerable because it is impossible to control peaceful, prosperous people through xenophobia and other forms of easily induced fear.

Personally, I believe that peace and prosperity are possible, but there is no doubt they have to be defended--mostly by ridicule--against tribalists of all kinds.

"WikiLeaks is putting at risk the lives and the freedom of countless Americans and non-Americans around the world."

COUNTLESS they say. countless as in, a few hundred, tops. compared to 66.000+ (official no, unofficial probably higher) dead in iraq, unknown number dead in afghanistan, unknown number lost in the hands of cia, nsa and ice. (even inside usa - http://www.thenation.com/article/americas-secret-ice-castles )

and they come up with long-repeated, surefire bullshit 'putting countless lives at risk' -> vague enough too, you can never calculate how many lives lost and compare it to those who got killed while chasing a wild goose under false pretenses in afghan mountains or iraq plains.

but that's all fancy talk. what they are basically saying, bluntly and in streetspeak is :

"Let us continue doing our filth behind the veil of secrecy by biting the bait of 'risk of freedom and lives'"

.....

"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008.

http://www.thenation.com/article/americas-secret-ice-castles

This one was pretty classy. Nothing says "due process" like denying a mental patient access to care, and then deporting him to a country whose language he doesn't even speak, and from which he isn't even descended, despite having evidence that he is a US citizen(and thus not even under ICE jurisdiction)...

This article is rather more general. Cool thing is, immigration violations/deportations are considered to be civil, rather than criminal matters, despite the fact that people involved in them are generally detained in jail-esque conditions. No public defender for you, sucker. And proving your citizenship is a total cakewalk under those conditions...

Googling turns up a variety of similar stories. Perhaps the snappiest is the one that begins with the money quote from one 'James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of State and Local Coordination': "If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear.".

Obviously, if only by sheer statistical probability, ICE does manage to deport a fair number of authentic illegal immigrants every year; but they are about as callous and sloppy about it as you'd expect a bunch of jackboots with broad power and limited oversight to be.

You should at least put a link to the source when you copy and paste a large section of someone else's article. I won't bother to post a point by point refutation of this article because someone else already did.

Several years ago, the federal prison system started offering customer-service calling centers.

and also points to "new recycling centers, printing facilities and industrial laundry rooms." The Nation seems to think BP is paying prisoners to clean up oil damage, and theres always number-plate production. You should note that

in the 1930s, Congress began allowing the bureau of prisons to put prisoners to work making products — part of an effort to rehabilitate them. But there was a catch. Because its labor costs are so cheap — prisoners make less than a dollar an hour — Federal Prison Industries was not allowed to sell products to anyone but government agencies and non-profits.

If you're interested in the topic both Forbes and USAToday ran some pretty good stories on the rise of prison call centers a couple of months back.

http://www.thenation.com/article/how-us-funds-taliban Yes, I know it's "The Nation" but truth lies hidden in many dark, dank and scary places.

false information that concerns serious political matters (grave slander, etc...) will be quickly outed as such.

Not quickly enough. Remember McCain's black baby? If they throw enough dirt at you, some will stick. That's the whole idea. Internet offers infinite supplies of dirt and of dirt-flinging machines.

And here is my own line of bullshit in the form of creative linking.

James Murdoch, chief executive of the European and Asian operations of News Corp., which controls the British pay television company Sky, last year accused the BBC of a "land grab."

"The scale and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling," Mr. Murdoch said in a speech.

But no one cares what he said, because we're talking about News Corp here, one of the world's ten largest media conglomerates, that gets to decide what you will see and hear if you get your "news" from practically fucking anywhere.

I would like to contribute these three links to the discussion.

http://blip.tv/file/3120038

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100222/lessig_video

http://nitn.thenation.com/2010/02/03/sign-the-petition-to-change-congress-now/

I came across them last week. They concern a lecture by Lessing on the problems of governing America, on 'Institutional Corruption' in general and of Congress in particular.

Worth looking at.

A.

I would like to contribute these three links to the discussion.

http://blip.tv/file/3120038

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100222/lessig_video

http://nitn.thenation.com/2010/02/03/sign-the-petition-to-change-congress-now/

I came across them last week. They concern a lecture by Lessing on the problems of governing America, on 'Institutional Corruption' in general and of Congress in particular.

Worth looking at.

A.

well let me inform you, it's the Climate Research Unit..... they pretty much supply ALL the data for global warming enthusiasts world wide.

I guess I'm a bit behind, I know what the Climate Research Unit is but I never heard of it referred to as CRU. Thanks for the heads up.

also changing from global warming to climate change is a cop out.

No, this is the cop-out. Global Warming was first used in 1975. Before that "inadvertent climate modification" was used. Climate change did come later but it is more accurate, while some places would warm up others would cool off. And of course if some places cool off those like you can say "see Global Warming" is not real. But you can't easily deny that climate is changing.

more and more evidence is coming forward that shows a SHIT load of people are blowing smoke out their asses about the human cause of "global warming" and an awful lot more people are profiteering by the spreading of utter FUD about it too.

And a hell of a lot more can profit off of proving it is wrong. Exxon-Mobile as much deeper pockets than Greenpeace. So does the Middle East, China, India, and Russia. I bet any scientist who can deinitively prove climate change is false can get paid a lot from these businesses and nations. So why aren't they stepping up with that proof?

and the global warming hero Al fucking gore.. the rankest of all the hypocrites...spreading FUD AND a major shareholder in Occidental Petrolium

I just posted the same thing, except for "spreading FUD", which I do not believe. Like you I think Gore is being a bit of a hypocrite, not disclosing the shares in Oxy. However he didn't buy the stocks himself. His father Al Gore Sr was a friend of Armand Hammer who was the CEO of Oxy and he worked for the company becoming head of the subsidiary Island Creek Coal Company after he lost his senate seat. Further the wiki article says "Albert Gore Jr., however, did not exercise control over the shares, which were eventually sold when the estate closed".

Actually I found out about Gore's connection to Oxy back in the '90s. Back then Oxy wanted to explore and drill for oil in the U'wa tribe's homeland in Colombia. The tribe had threatened to commit mass suicide if the Colombian government allowed them to drill.

always odd how when the smell of bullshit is often along the same path as the smell of hypocrisy and money

Yeap, and that works both ways.

Falcon

wow.. you are entering into a debate about global warming and you don't even know what the CRU is?

well let me inform you, it's the Climate Research Unit..... they pretty much supply ALL the data for global warming enthusiasts world wide.

due to a hefty data breach a massive amount of emails and even some entries made by the poor coder who was commenting how the numbers didn't add up and things were all balls

also the were many many many emails between "respected" climate researchers" which showed them chatting about how they "played the numbers" and 2used tricks" to make up for the fact the global temperatures haven't been going their way and thus they played the numbers, used selected numbers from selected stations and ignored others then conspired.. YEAH they actually did, to perpetuate the falsehood of their finding... heads rolled and resignations came..

a quick google of CRU would have helped

and BTW i live in Scotland, where we have oil BUT we are also pretty much the European leader in renewables and very very high up there in the world stakes

also changing from global warming to climate change is a cop out.

more and more evidence is coming forward that shows a SHIT load of people are blowing smoke out their asses about the human cause of "global warming" and an awful lot more people are profiteering by the spreading of utter FUD about it too.

and the global warming hero Al fucking gore.. the rankest of all the hypocrites... spreading FUD AND a major shareholder in Occidental Petrolium and also making a fortune from the carbon con. ther are some facts about gore that may surprise you
br. always odd how when the smell of bullshit is often along the same path as the smell of hypocrisy and money

The people that point at Christianity, and say "They've done worse!" are either $cientology shills, or $cientology operatives. Nobody gives a flying fuck what happened hundreds of years ago, this is now, and dragging up past idiocy in an attempt to hand wave current idiocy is disingenuous at best, fraudulent at worst.

You are an idiot.

You mean how like the CIA recently suicided 3 detainees by hanging in Guantanamo bay?

http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

The article seems credible. No way I could verify it obviously but it has enough detail that I think it could be verified easily by the FBI or DOJ. If you could get them to do their job, that is.

Or how Bush biographer, J.H. Hatfield, commits suicide
http://archive.salon.com/politics/red/2001/07/20/blue/

Or how Dr. David Kelly, who published facts inconvenient to Bush's poodle, commits suicide
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/830/blair_s_crisis_bush_s_crisis

Or how Itojun, a lynchpin in IPv6 security which would have eliminated many network exploits not to mention Windows, died 'unexpectedly'?
http://www.wide.ad.jp/news/press/20071031-itojun-e.html

There are more. The list is already very long.

Oh well, I just won't bother reading it then. I will read www.bbc.co.uk

It never ceases to amaze me how people who expect their own work to be valued and remunerated balk at compensating, or even acknowledging the value of, that of others.

The ability of the BBC to provide "free" content is based in part, if not wholly, on a subsidy from the British government. A free press is essential to a strong democracy; and, the British have taken action to ensure that regardless of the vagaries of the economy, or the whims of advertisers, their stream of objective journalism will remain unimpeded. If fact, to add to a long list of our dubious distinctions, America is one of the few Western democracies that don't provide a substantial subsidy to the press -- as detailed in "How to Save Journalism"

For the most part, it's the work of reporters at newspapers that generates the news:

• Study Finds That Papers Lead in Providing New Information
• Study: Newspapers Still a Step Ahead in Local News

And, with the loss of other sources of revenue, advertising alone simply isn't sufficient to sustain that endeavor.

What? You don't think Fox fakes video?

Or it gripes you to admit it?

Late to the party, I know. But in reality, they apparently never needed Interpol to do that anyway. Just read this recent article on the shenanigans that ICE is pulling.

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wants to be able to serve other types of administrative subpoenas.

From FBI Director Muller's testimony before Congress. It didn't work; Congress said no.

You contact the webcam base in the USA and the call the feds with the location.
If they do make it into the USA they face:
America's Secret ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement} Castles
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100104/stevens
"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear."

the nation

Perhaps you weren't paying enough attention. There's a whole bunch of these organizations out there that force pregnant mothers to give up their babies for adoption by making sure they have no other choice, threatening to charge them for their stay unless they do, and various other methods.

While the article does mention aggressive attempts to convince the women to give their children up for adoption, I missed the part in the article where there was a claim that any of the organizations threatened to charge the mother for her stay unless she adopted. Maybe you were thinking of a different article?

Some are quite open in only accepting women who will give their child away. For example, this one: "Any woman is welcome to live at Bethany's House as long as she is considering an adoption plan for her child."

"Considering an adoption plan" does not mean "has chosen adoption". The rep from Bethany claimed that only 25-40% of the women who come to Bethany choose adoption. That's 60-75% that somehow escape being "forced" to give their child up for adoption.

Or this one: "Single-parenting does not fit God's perfect plan for the family".

I have had no experience with this house - which appears to be a small, single location in Ohio.

I'm not exaggerating the amount of money they make on this, either. Private adoptions of this sort have fees in the $15,000-$30,000 range.

Yes, there are private agencies that are successful businesses and make significant profit on each adoption. My experience with the private agencies who are charities is that any amount paid over the costs of setting up the adoption (including expensive, but frequently necessary, attorney fees, as well as medical expenses, etc) is used to help the mothers who choose not to give their child up for adoption, as well as helping less wealthy adoptive parents defray the legal/medical costs.

(The racism is harder to confirm. None of the organizations admit to being racist, but women seeking help have found them suddenly losing all interest when it becomes clear they aren't white. There's not so much demand for black babies, and they aren't nearly as profitable.)

Still no source? Not even some kind of anecdote? If it's "white women with white babies only" for a "fair few" number of these organizations (as you originally claimed) I'd expect at least a couple of anecdotes - from across the thousands of organizations that there are.

Perhaps you weren't paying enough attention. There's a whole bunch of these organizations out there that force pregnant mothers to give up their babies for adoption by making sure they have no other choice, threatening to charge them for their stay unless they do, and various other methods.

Some are quite open in only accepting women who will give their child away. For example, this one: "Any woman is welcome to live at Bethany's House as long as she is considering an adoption plan for her child." Or this one: "Single-parenting does not fit God's perfect plan for the family".

I'm not exaggerating the amount of money they make on this, either. Private adoptions of this sort have fees in the $15,000-$30,000 range.

(The racism is harder to confirm. None of the organizations admit to being racist, but women seeking help have found them suddenly losing all interest when it becomes clear they aren't white. There's not so much demand for black babies, and they aren't nearly as profitable.)

[ Still, at least things have improved a bit over the years, partly because abortion is now legal. Certainly, this couldn't happen nowadays. ]

Pardon me, but when someone says something terribly ignorant, and that ignorance can be remedied with a 3-second google search, I feel somewhat compelled to step in. http://www.womensenews.org/story/rape/030330/sexual-assault-pervasive-military-experts-say http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/07/women_in_military/ http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/31/military.sexabuse/index.html http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/485424/franken_s_anti_rape_amendment http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/04/weekinreview/the-army-s-problems-with-sex-and-power.html Really, you missed all these articles? I guess you really weren't paying attention. You must be either comatose or deliberately blind to certain aspects of reality--you know, those parts that undermine your pithy little points.

Just so ya know Israel breaks more UN resolutions than Iraq did. Yet you give them billions to spend on guns and bombs. Infact they've bombed UN shelters. Try again.

Also the appreciation you felt isn't universal. That big symbol of victory and regime change, toppling saddam's statue, staged (dozens of iraqis at best not 1000s took part): http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/185455
For a few years they just left a lump of cement with some rebar sticking up in place of Saddam. Eventually they replaced it with a crappy statue which was quickly graffittied (All done, now go home). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI4gM_jg5vQ

The vast majority of the Iraqi populace wants the US gone within 1 year (as of 2006). There are lots of other statistics (much more valuable than your experience) that show Iraqis don't want you there and never fucking did. http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf

Incorrect. The California deregulation was something entirely different. Just because they slapped the word "deregulation" onto that monstrosity does not mean that all cases of monopoly-breaking are suddenly bad.

Allow me to explain. But first of all:

If AT+T's network sucks, go for somebody else.

The entire point of this discussion is that people cannot do that. They are stuck with the provider who is tied to their phone, forced into a multi-year contract, and even if they get out of it, they are limited to the carriers who provide decent service in their area.

Now, a history lesson:

This is exactly the sort of nonsense California implemented when they introduced a "deregulation" of electricity.

Before I go into this, let me explain that many states have done this pseudo-deregulation successfully. The California problem had nothing to do with deregulation, and the term deregulation is thrown around to mean 100 different things.

The problem in California was two-fold.

1) During their pseudo-deregulation, the California legislature decided that electricity prices would be fixed. This is true irony here: a government created a regulation overriding the market price, and called it "deregulation". That is definitely --NOT-- deregulation. During this transitional time period, the rules of supply and demand could not function.

California is hot, and during this transitional period, summer came - and air conditioners use lots of power. Under normal market forces, prices would go up when demand went up, and people who respond by conserving electricity. Instead, demand went up and price remained the same, so people kept using electricity at an increasing rate -- until the state ran out of capacity.

2) Electricity is not deregulated. It is heavily hugely highly regulated. Even with price fixing, the market has another solution: Building new power plants. Imagine if there was a shortage of green beans. Farmers would start growing more of them, since there is now money to be made. But that doesn't work with power, because there is so much regulation that you can't just buy a plot of land and build a power plant. The most efficient form of power we have is so heavily regulated it is basically illegal to build them at all. (Nuclear).

Read more at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010212/wasserman [thenation.com]

It's a good article, and it says essentially the same thing I am saying:

Most important was their assumption that there would always be a surplus of cheap wholesale electricity. So they sold off too much of their generating capacity and had too little of their own supply at a time when rates were still frozen.

aving dismantled key efficiency programs, the utilities now realized that their customers, buying power at fixed costs, had little incentive to conserve.

Wow, it is even worse than I thought:

A bill, AB 1890...Some consumer and environmental groups were furious about a wide range of issues, most notably the reactor bailouts, which they worried (correctly) would prolong the operating life of deteriorating nukes

OMG! Bailouts! I didn't know that. Ha! See: this is what they call "de-regulation" -- how is bailing out a failing company with a product that can't survive part of de-regulation? De-regulation would be letting them go out of business.

This is what allowed Enron to screw a good part of the country

Enron is irrelevant to this discussion. Equating financial oversight to electricity regulations is apples to oranges. This is another case of associating deregulation==bad in all cases.

This is exactly the sort of nonsense California implemented when they introduced a "deregulation" of electricity.

This is what allowed Enron to screw a good part of the country, created rolling blackouts during the height of the tech boom, and created a f-ing mess that lingers on today.

Read more at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010212/wasserman

If AT+T's network sucks, go for somebody else. Personally, I'll never have financial intercourse with Ma Bell again, because that is one diseased ho. But I digress.

You must have trouble keeping track of all of disney's products[pdf].

40 years? See end of http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000320/kitman/3 and beginning of http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000320/kitman/4 for some background on why we ended up with leaded gasoline to start with: it's because back in 1918-1921 there was a strong push to make gasoline more competitive with ethanol in high-compression engines so as to keep being able to sell gasoline as car fuel....

So the right number is closer to 90 years.

40 years? See end of http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000320/kitman/3 and beginning of http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000320/kitman/4 for some background on why we ended up with leaded gasoline to start with: it's because back in 1918-1921 there was a strong push to make gasoline more competitive with ethanol in high-compression engines so as to keep being able to sell gasoline as car fuel....

So the right number is closer to 90 years.

This diagram (a few years old but still fairly accurate) really tells you what the media business looks like:
http://www.thenation.com/special/2006_entertainment.pdf

So yes, nearly all of the big media companies are both RIAA and MPAA members.

I duhno about that.

"Halliburtonâ(TM)s $2.5 billion "Restore Iraqi Oil" (RIO) contract[26] was supposed to pay for itself as well as reconstruction of the entire country."

more

Notably 1:07 to end

I respect all of the posts of yours I have read, just showing you another perspective.

What the Rosenbergs did - giving atomic secrets to a hostile tyranny is treason.

In the U.S., treason is narrowly defined as "levying war against [the U.S.], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." The Rosenbergs did not make war against the U.S., and no state of war existed between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., so we were not enemies. We were rivals in a geopolitical game including nuclear brinksmanship and other brutal and stupid behavior on both sides, yes, but not enemies. (Indeed, at the time the Rosenbergs started their activities, we were allies with the U.S.S.R. against the Nazis.)

As for the Vassiliev notebooks -- they're crap:

Vassiliev, who acted as his own lawyer, was not an impressive witness. On the arcane but crucial question of whether, in his unfettered trawl through KGB archives, he'd ever seen a single document linking Alger Hiss with "Ales"--the code name of a Soviet agent in the 1940s who, Weinstein and Vassiliev insisted, had to be Hiss--he admitted he hadn't. He also failed to provide a satisfactory account of just how he'd managed, despite being required to leave his files and notebook in a safe at the KGB press office at the end of each day, to smuggle out the notebooks with his extensive transcriptions of documents, which, he explained, he couldn't even ask to have photocopied, because the contents were considered Russian state secrets.

So Vassiliev did what crank authors due when presented with criticism: brought suit under the U.K.'s libel laws.

Here's an article from the Nation that questions some of Vassiliev's conclusions on the Hiss case

Y'all y'all need to read this

I suspect that many Slashdotters are unaware of the numerous deep ties between Goldman Sachs and the Obama Administration. A few for instances:

• Obama has put his trust in the advice of menâ"Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Chief Economic Advisor Larry Summers, and, informally, former Clinton Treasurer Robert Rubin, all linked to the investment bank Goldman Sachs."
• "Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration, a recent lobbyist for investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is in line to serve as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Mark Patterson was a registered lobbyist for Goldman until April 11, 2008, according to public filings."
• "If AIG had managed to not collapse and not require $180 billion in taxpayer money, Goldman Sachs would be sitting today with some very very shaky investments. But since AIG collapsed, the folks at Goldman cleaned up. Goldman Sachs employees gave just shy of a million dollars to the Obama campaign, ranking second in contributions. Citigroup and JPMorgan ranked sixth and seventh. Goldman Sachs gave Obama four times more than they gave McCain."
• Obama nominated "Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission...Gensler is a reassuring figure to the moguls of finance; he was a partner at Goldman Sachs before being brought by Goldman honcho Robert Rubin to the Clinton Treasury Department."
• "When it came time to name a vice presidential running mate, Mr. Obama turned to Goldman Sachs Board Member James Johnson. Mr. Johnson was forced to vacate the post under controversy."

This above list is by no means exhaustive. Nor are the sources cited above (The Huffington Post, The Nation, etc.) exactly known for their fierce and unstinting criticism of Obama.

They should make goldenrod the official state color all vehicles to match the governor's Hummer. Oh, wait a minute. He gave up the Hummer to go green.

I haven't heard, is he still commuting from his home in Malibu to the office in Sacramento in a private jet?

They should make goldenrod the official state color all vehicles to match the governor's Hummer. Oh, wait a minute. He gave up the Hummer to go green.

Maybe they should call California the Green State and make green the official state color. Plus I don't have to change the paint job on my car. :P