Breaking News Mon. May 30, 2011

Some good news! Let's hear it for the state of Texas!
ActivistPost: Texans Revolt Against TSA Tyranny (Video)
also,
ABCNews: Department of Justice, Texas Battle Over "No Pat-Down" Law
(I'm really pulling for the Texans on this one!)


AmericanDream: 30 Actual News Headlines From 2011 That Are Almost Too Bizarre To Believe
(Many of these stories had been posted here as well, but seeing them all lined up is a real eyeopener. Just read down through those headlines and you'll begin to get a good whiff of what is coming. You could add to that list all the horrific environmental and weather disasters and get a good overview of what is in store for us.)

Don't forget to check out the great forums linked at the bottom of this post as well as the blogs of our good friends rj, at Global Glass Onion, and the Ozarker who can be found typing away at her blog, Conflicted Doomer.


Japan
EnergyCollective: What Does A Melted Nuclear Core Look Like?
BBC: Storm suspends work at Japan Fukushima nuclear plantThe operator of Japan's crippled nuclear plant has suspended some of its outdoor work due to a tropical storm, just days after it admitted it was not prepared for harsh weather.
BreitBart: Greenpeace warns of radioactive sea life off Japan
Environmental activist group Greenpeace warned Thursday that marine life it tested more than 20 kilometres (12 miles) off Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant showed radiation above legal limits.
ExtinctionProtocol: Typhoon Songda slams Japan and could wash radiation out to sea
Reuters: Honda decides to suspend share buybacks after quake
Honda Motor (7267.T) said on Monday it has decided to suspend share buybacks temporarily to preserve funds after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Global Conflict
 I had to stop and cry over the next story. The little boy is my grandson's age.
WashingtonPost: Apparent torture of boy reinvigorates Syria’s protest movement
Just as a warning, the description of what was done to the little boy is explicit and horrific. I wish I hadn't read it. 
RawStory: Bahraini pro-democracy female doctors reportedly abused, tortured
Telegraph: Nato issues apology for bungled Afghan airstrikeA senior Nato general has issued a “heartfelt apology” after helicopters killed women and children in a bungled airstrike in Helmand Province.
RawStory: Karzai gives US ‘last warning’ over Afghan civilian deaths 
ibtimes: Taliban suicide bombers strike Herat, 4 killed
Taliban rebels led by suicide bombers attacked an Italian military base near a government building in Herat in Afghanistan's west on Monday, killing four people and wounding dozens, a Reuters report said.
ZeroHedge: CIA Warns Of A Greek Military Coup, Rebellion, If Austerity Intensifies
BBC: Afghan leader Karzai issues 'last warning' to Nato
ElEconomista: More than 30,000 Greeks in Athens take center inspired by the protests of Spain 
VOA: Suspected Al-Qaida Militants Take Over Yemen Coastal Town
Guardian: Yemeni demonstrators killed as troops raid protest camp
At least 20 reported dead in Taiz as tanks and bulldozers storm square
NYT: Data Breach at Security Firm Linked to Attack on Lockheed
TruthOut: Raise Your Hand if You Think the Expansion of Our Nuclear-Industrial Complex Escapes Iran
ibtimes: France suspects 3 aid workers in Yemen kidnapped 
WashingtonPost: Haqqani insurgent group proves resilient foe in Afghan war
BBC: Shift in Taliban tactics alarms Afghanistan government 
RawStoary: Britain trained Saudi troops that crushed protests in Bahrain
Saudi troops sent into Bahrain to help quash protests received training from Britain, The Observer said Sunday, citing government documents.
TruthOut: Haitian Mayor's Office Vows to Destroy All Refugee Camps, Launches Violent Campaign
TruthOut: Netanyahu’s Border War 
Reuters: Brotherhood says won't force Islamic law on Egypt 
Guardian: Yemeni demonstrators killed as troops raid protest camp
Medical workers say at least 20 dead as Republican Guards use tanks and bulldozers to clear activists in city of Taiz
WashingtonPost: Insurgents attack NATO base in Afghan city of Herat; downtown blast kills at least 4
Hosted: Lawyer: Mladic won't live to see a trial
The lawyer for war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic said Monday that the former general is so ill he won't live to see the start of his trial on genocide charges.

Financial News
NakedCapitalism: Will Greeks Defy Rape and Pillage By Barbarians Bankers? An E-Mail from Athens
CoveringDelta: Accusations of Treason in the Greek Parliament
WashingtonPost: Instead of signs of recovery, a sucker punch for state budgets
ZeroHedge: To QE3 or Not to QE3 and Does it Matter?
BusinessInsider: GREECE: There Are New Emergency Bailout Talks That Could Spell The (end?) Of National Sovereignty

Big news on the Greece front: In order for the country to get future bailout money, the country will have to give up some sovereignty.
Specifically, according to a bombshell FT report, outside authorities will take over various functions related to tax collection (a big time problem in Athens) and privatizations.

BusinessInsider: Greeks Yank Billions Out Of Country's Banks As Crisis Worsens 
Reuters: EU racing to draft second Greek bailout: sources
MaxKeiser: Panic capital flight out of Greece as EU Requests Severe Bail-Out Conditions Including International Tax Collection 
NYT: At I.M.F., a Strict Ethics Code Doesn’t Apply to Top Officials
Spiegel: The Haircut War
Tensions Worsen Between Berlin and European Central Bank 
REUTERS: World copper demand growth to slow in 2011
Global demand growth for copper is expected to slow to 8.4 percent in 2011-12, slowing substantially from the average growth of 16.4 percent between 2005-2010, the International Wrought Copper Council (IWCC) said.
LAT: Crystal Cathedral Ministries' church and campus will be sold to Orange County developer
SFGate: Boomerangers come back to households in S.F.
Cole Armstrong, 24, graduated with degrees in political science and economics from Swarthmore, going on to win a prestigious internship at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association.
Just one hitch: It is part time and unpaid.
Economist's View: "We Have No Idea What the Inflation Rates for Health Expenditures Really Are"
TruthOut: Defaulting on US Debt Dangerous to Even Consider, Say Experts 
BusinessInsider: SocGen: "The China Domino Has Fallen!", Big-Time Inflation Coming All Around The World 
MineWeb: Indian investors bail out of silver
Investors, skittish after recent wild swings in the metal, are waiting for calmer waters before wading back into the metal that rose as much as 175% between August 2010 and the start of May 2011
MaxKeiser: Moral Hazard Tornado Heading This Way
LegitGov: Top lobbying banks got biggest bailouts: study

Peak oil and Energy News
DownwardSpiral: The CIA Accurately Predicted How Long World Oil Supplies Would Last—in 1978 
MarketWatch666: the oil crunch - civilization running on fumes...
CNBC: Brent Oil Slips Below $115 as Driving Season Starts
EnergyBulletin: Why Keystone pipeline will weaken the US
TheStar: Hamilton: Pricey oil fuelling dirtier projects 

EnergyBulletin: ENERGY: Peak Oil and the Great Recession
ConsumerEnergyReport: Scientists Create Ethanol From Hydrogen They Created From Ethanol
Telegraph: US could lift Cuba embargo after oil discoveryThe five decade-long United States embargo against Cuba could finally be lifted after the discovery of an enormous oil field in Cuban waters. (look out Cuba, not that you have something we want, you're in trouble)
NYT: Shale Boom in Texas Could Increase U.S. Oil Output

Environmental News
Telegraph: Record gas emissions 'puts drive to halt temperature rise at risk'

Record levels of greenhouse gases were emitted into the earth’s atmosphere last year, according to new international figures.
TriCities: Tornadoes cause estimated $33.7 million damage to farms in Southwest Virginia
DesdemonaDespair: Continued drought threatens Three Gorges Dam’s power to maintain Yangtze water transportation
Reuters: Ice melt to close off Arctic's interior riches: study
BEIJING - The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower project, might lose the battle against the worst drought to hit Central China in 50 years if no rains fall by mid-June.
"If the drought continues and there is no rainfall before June 10, the dam will lose the capacity to relieve the drought," Wang Hai, director of the transport division of the China Three Gorges Corporation, told China Daily on Friday.
ExtinctionProtocol: Typhoon Songda slams Japan and could wash radiation out to sea 
ChinaDaily: Three Gorges Dam's power is seeping away
HispanicallySpeaking: Mexico Suffering Under Severe Heat with Over 11 States Seeing 100 Degree Plus Weather
SciNewsBlog: Will Global Warming Make the Earth Uninhabital Within 50 Years? 
Guardian: Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink
Exclusive: Record rise, despite recession, means 2C target almost out of reach
MontrealGazette: Dreadful La Nina season now over 
ExtinctionProtocol: Ground cracks reported in Spain- video 
DesdemonaDespair: Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink 
RawStory: China drought threatens more than 34 million people
Spiegel: The Dawn of the Anthropocene Era
'We Are the Top Predator on Earth'
(no, death is.)

America in Decline
FDL: American Winter: The Right’s War on Birth Control and Education
It’s a shocking historical juxtaposition. The pro-democracy movement known as the Arab Spring is in significant part a consequence of rising literacy and declining birth rates in the Mideast. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Right is mounting a direct assault on education and a renewed war on contraception. This ought to tell us something.
LAT: Here's what LAX passengers say TSA agents lost or damaged
In a three-year period, passengers at LAX filed 1,702 such claims. Also: Texas' bill against pat-downs, small-business owners' vacation plans, and JetBlue's charity auction.

Food and Water
VOA: Ethiopia Reduces Food Rations as Prices Soar
Unusually poor rains in the Horn of Africa, compounded by a shortage of reserve food supplies, have forced Ethiopia to reduce the size of emergency rations to needy citizens. The sudden shortage of emergency supplies comes as over-the-counter food prices are soaring.
WashingtonPost: Chinese dog eaters and dog lovers spar over animal rights
BEIJING — The mutts were destined for the dinner table — all 520 of them crammed onto a truck hurtling down a Beijing highway toward awaiting restaurants in northeastern China.
Then, fate intervened in the form of a passing driver, an animal lover who spotted the truck and angrily forced it off the road.

Science and Technology
ScientificAmerican: Astronomical Deficit Forces Downsizing of U.S. Telescope Projects
The federal fiscal crisis is pushing NASA and National Science Foundation officials to make painful choices between present and proposed astronomy programs
TechnologyReview: The Kindle Swindle
What is and isn't good about reading on a device
BlackLIstedNews: The Techno-Rapture's Soul Sucking Embrace
EmptyWheel: About the Lockheed Martin Hack

Medical and Health
Reuters: Germany has 11 E.coli deaths, world's worst outbreak
An E. coli outbreak that has killed 11 people and made more than 300 seriously ill in Germany has spread to other north European countries and is expected to worsen in the coming week.
YGLESIAS: Medicare Privatization Will Increase Health Care Spending
AngryBear: Get the Lead Out II
There is an absolutely serious hypothesis that the sharp drop in violent crime in the USA since the early 1990s is due to the EPA and, in particular, to the shift from leaded to unleaded gasoline roughly two decades earlier.
MotherJones: Vermont Passes Single-Payer Health Care, World Doesn't End
InterFax: Ukraine: Three people diagnosed with cholera in Mariupol
According to a preliminary report from the Emergencies Ministry, two people got the infection from eating saltwater fish, and the other got it from ingesting seawater.
HealthLand: Mind Reading: The Researchers Who Analyzed All the Porn on the Internet
Searching all the porn on the Internet might not seem like the most scientifically productive activity, but computational neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam did it anyway.
For their new book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire, Ogas and Gaddam analyzed the results of 400 million online searches for porn and uncovered some startling insights into what men and women may really want from each other — at least sexually. I spoke recently with Ogas.
MaxKeiser: Peak Medicine
Hospitals hunt substitutes as drug shortages rise
RawStory: Victory over AIDS epidemic finally within reach: U.S. researcher
Good: Flu Vaccines Can Lead to Seizures in Children

Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
LAT: Gardening as politics: Digging the Founding Gardeners
America's Founding Fathers knew the importance of gardening and the environment. Today's efforts — urban farming, composting, even drought-tolerant yards — echo their ideals.

Other News
CNN: Man spends 27 years wrongly imprisoned writing songs
NYT: Witchy Town’s Worry: Do Too Many Psychics Spoil the Brew?
CEPR: Bruce Ramsey and the Seattle Times Can Say Untrue Things About Social Security Because the Government Cannot Sue for Libel
CNN: Why people stick by scandal-plagued pastors
al-bab: A road to change in Saudi Arabia?
The arrest and continuing imprisonment of Manal al-Sharif, the Saudi woman who was filmed at the wheel of a car, has been attracting a lot of media attention outside the kingdom – and rightly so. From an international perspective it is ludicrous that women's driving should still be a contentious matter, and of course this is just one aspect of a much bigger debate about gender equality in Saudi Arabia (or the lack of it).
WashingtonPost: Supreme Court upholds Ariz. law punishing companies that hire illegal immigrants
TampaBayOnline: Animal carcasses found behind Tampa pizzeria still mystery 
HuffPost: PBS Hacked, Claims 'Tupac Alive' In New Zealand


The Forums
TinfoilPalace: "Life in the USA" 
TinfoilPalace: Westboro Church to Picket in Joplin
TheOilAge: When will the next natural disaster occur?
TheOilAge: Alien Pyramids
Hubberts-Arms: The CIA Accurately Predicted How Long World Oil Supplies Would Last—in 1978 
Hubberts-Arms: US intelligence director secretly visiting Korea
SilentCountry: Ron Paul: The Last Nail (in the coffin)  
SilentCountry: MASSIVE Public Sector Layoffs Ahead