Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Breaking News Wed. June 29, 2011

Hello guys! Hope everyone is doing well today.
We're having a nice day today. Been picking tomatoes and finally I got all the potatoes dug! It is a good day!
Thanks to RJ and the Ozarker for their help this morning with the blog links.
Check out their seriously cool blogs at RJ;s Global Glass Onion
and the Ozarker's at Conflicted Doomer.
be sure and visit the forums at the bottom of the post too. Lots of good info and discussion there!
well, going to post about an hour early as we have to go to town. I get to go once a week and this is the day! yeah!
take care all and enjoy life when you can. It's all we have.

Global Conflict
GlobeandMail: Taliban attack on eve of security conference leaves 21 dead  
UPI: Israel warns Assad not to start war
JERUSALEM, June 29 (UPI) -- Israel has reportedly warned Syrian President Bashar Assad not to start a war with the Jewish state to divert attention from his domestic problems.

WashingtonTimes: Athens erupts over austerityYoung protesters battle police as lawmakers debate measures to avoid default
BBC: Kabul hotel attack: Nato helicopters kill Taliban
Nato helicopters were called in to kill three militants to end a five-hour clash by suicide bombers and gunmen on a hotel in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
FT: Nato helicopters were called in to kill three militants to end a five-hour clash by suicide bombers and gunmen on a hotel in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
MaxKeiser: Live From Syntagma Square – Is it Revolution?
NYDailyNews: Greece erupts with riots as protestors face off with police over budget cuts
CSMonitor: Kabul raid shows Taliban's strength, tests Afghan security coordination
While last night's deadly suicide raid on Kabul's InterContinental Hotel showcased Taliban capabilities, early details also indicate some success in the new model of having Afghan forces take more of a lead on security.
ScientificAmerican: Is Karzai's Accusation That Coalition Forces Are Polluting Afghanistan with Nuclear Material Accurate or an Over-Reaction?
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's recent comment that U.S. and NATO-led forces use weapons with "nuclear components" may be a reference to depleted-uranium munitions, whose health impact is still being studied
Wired: Afghanistan, Iraq Wars Killed 132,000 Civilians, Report Says
And its data is reliant on existing tallies from the U.S., the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations and media reports. Some of them lack precision and aren’t able to go where conditions are most dangerous. Many of them disagree about exactly who is a civilian non-combatant: the National Counterterrorism Center, for instance, categorizes Afghan police and security contractors as civilians killed by terrorism. (The U.S. doesn’t officially keep body counts — at least not for U.S.-caused civilian deaths.) Think of the Institute’s data as a tally of civilian-death tallies.

NYT: Saudi Forces Withdrawing From Bahrain
CNN: Seven indicted in videotaped shooting of Pakistani teen

Hack Attacks
Wired: FBI Raids Iowa Woman’s Home in Lulz Security Hacker Investigation


Financial News 
Reuters: Special Report: A little house of secrets on the Great Plains
The secretive business havens of Cyprus and the Cayman Islands face a potent rival: Cheyenne, Wyoming.
At a single address in this sleepy city of 60,000 people, more than 2,000 companies are registered. The building, 2710 Thomes Avenue, isn't a shimmering skyscraper filled with A-list corporations. It's a 1,700-square-foot brick house with a manicured lawn, a few blocks from the State Capitol.
WSJ: Greece Secures Austerity Vote
ATHENS—Greece's Parliament has passed a controversial five-year austerity plan that the country promised its international creditors.
ThinkProgress: CHART: States That Cut The Most Spending Have Lost The Most Jobs
Forbes: This Woman May Soon Be Richer Than Carlos Slim And Bill Gates


CNNMoney: GREECE OKs AUSTERITY
9:23AM: Parliament approves austerity vote in an effort to win the last $17 billion of a European bailout.

AngryBear: Just When I Thought it was Safe to Click a Headline
I just couldn't resist clicking "Bank of America to pay $8.5 billion settlement over mortgages". Finally the Bankers are paying for destroying the economy. My enthusiasm rapidly faded as I read the article. Then I read "Shares of Bank of America Corp. jumped more than 4 percent, or 48 cents to $11.30 before the market opened". I should have stopped at the headline. More whining after the jump.
Reuters: IEA's move meant to send a shock wave to the marketA high level of emergency stocks enabled industrialized nations to divert their purpose to support a fragile economic recovery rather than to handle severe oil supply disruptions, a diplomatic source said.
BusinessInsider: Federal Withholding Tax Data Says The US Is Already In A Recession
CreditWriteDowns: Chart of the day: Job level relative to prior peak
BusinessInsider: New And Unexpected Uses For Credit Scoring Technology
CharlesHughSmith: Greece Is a Kleptocracy 
Despite a veritable flood of financial and political analysis about Greece, nobody seems to have noticed the obvious: Greece is a kleptocracy. Just as a refresher, here is the definition of kleptocracy. Ask yourself is this doesn't fit Greece like a supple leather glove: 
CreditWriteDowns: Hoenig: Big banks are fundamentally inconsistent with capitalism
ZeroHedge: Guest Post: “This Time It’s Different”– The Four Most Expensive Words In The English Language
Bloomberg: Buffett’s Forgotten $20 Helps Californians Bridge State’s $10 Billion Gap
TPM: Erickson To GOP: ‘Hold The Debt Ceiling Hostage’
BusinessInsider: Greece Vote May Be Delayed, But Now It's Clear That This Is Going To Pass 
BusinessInsider: CONFIRMED: Bank Of America Announces Huge Mortgage Settlement, And Big Loss In The Coming Quarter 
NakedCapitalism: Andrew Sheng Says Sustainability Means Caging Godzillas
Andrew Sheng, Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission, is wonderfully straightforward and realistic for an economist. He is willing to say, as he does in this video, things that are obvious yet somehow unacceptable to ‘fess up to in policy circles, like the planet simply cannot support 3 billion people in Asia living European lifestyles. He warns of the danger of creating the mother of all crises if governments cannot stem the tide of leveraged capital flows, and also discusses the role of China on the global stage.
FDL: More on the Medicare-for-Revenues Swap Floated in Debt Limit Deal
DailyCapitalism: Consumer Confidence Tanks In June
CEPR: Why Is It Relevant That EPI Gets Money from Teacher Unions, But It's Not Relevant That Erskine Bowles Gets $350,000 a Year from Morgan Stanley?
YahooFinance: Toyota to recall 82,200 vehicles in the US due to possible faulty computer boards
BusinessInsider: The Case For A Huge Surge In Treasury Yields
BlackListedNews: Austerity Riots – A Glimpse Of America’s Future?
USAToday: Lawmakers may revamp military retired pay
Bloomberg: Papandreou Clinches Votes for Greek Austerity Budget
Ibtimes: Canadian dollar surges on inflation jump
ChrisMartenson: The Screaming Fundamentals For Owning Gold And Silver 
BusinessInsider: China Just Issued A Warning To Anyone Worried About Inflation 
WSJ: IMF Forecasts Slow U.S. Growth, Warns on Debt 
BusinessInsider: Revenge Of The Chinese Tech Stocks 
Guardian: The Business podcast: Retail in retreat as high street suffersAs many household names in retail go out of business, we look at the future of the UK high street. Plus economist Ahmed Rahman on his quest for a 'unified growth theory'
WashingtonPost: Explaining the debt ceiling Debate  
NakedCapitalism: On Eurozone budgetary constraints
BusinessInsider: The Debt Ceiling Deal Is In Shambles 
BusinessInsider: Obama Proposes $600 Billion In Tax Hikes 
WSJ: The Deficit Is Worse Than We ThinkNormal interest rates would raise debt-service costs by $4.9 trillion over 10 years, dwarfing the savings from any currently contemplated budget deal.
Bloomberg: Biggest Tax Avoiders Win Most Gaming $1 Trillion U.S. Tax Break
CNNMoney: Debt ceiling: Just do it 
MSNBC: Lessons learned from the recession
As the economy rebounds, don't forget these 6 lessons from the downturn 
Reuters: Consumer confidence falls in June
Consumer confidence fell in June to the lowest point since November 2010 on concerns about the slack labor market and sputtering recovery, according to a Conference Board report released on Tuesday.
Reuters: Campbell Soup to cut jobs, save money
Campbell Soup Co (CPB.N) will shed nearly 800 jobs as part of a series of cost cuts, which include exiting the Russian market, automating operations at a factory in Australia and closing one in the United States.
Reuters: WRAPUP 7-Lagarde wins IMF top job, presses Greece on crisis

Peak oil and Energy News

EnergyBulletin: The new thirty years’ war: Winners and losers in the great global energy struggle to come
A 30-year war for energy preeminence?  You wouldn’t wish it even on a desperate planet.  But that’s where we’re headed and there’s no turning back.

ClimateProgress: Can Biomass Help Phase Out Coal? Dominion Plans to Switch Three Coal Plants to Biomass
PostCarbonInstitute: The Shrinking Pie: The End of “Development”?
TheOilDrum: OPEC spare capacity, rig count and the big picture
GizMag: U.S. Army aims for more energy-efficient base campsThe Barrel: More on US crude exports...considering the possibilities
The last time the US exported any large amount of crude was back in early 2000. It's always politically sensitive, because many observers think that at a time of high gasoline prices any attempt to export crude oil may result in still higher gasoline prices.
Platts: Regulators say fracking not as dangerous to water quality as thought
Platts: Pakistan receives 17 bids to supply 500,000 Mcf/day LNG for 10 years 
TheOilDrum: The Saudi Arabian Protectorate of Bahrain 
YahooFinance: Frank Holmes: Three Reasons $100 Oil Is Here to Stay
Bloomberg: Kuwait May Tap Private Investors for $14.5 Billion Refinery 
TheTelegraph: BP chief economist Christof Reuhl fears OPEC backlash
BP's chief economist Christof Ruehl has warned oil consuming nations that last week's decision to dump oil onto the market in frustration at high prices could backfire.


Environmental News
CNN: Tropical Storm Arlene strengthens as it moves toward Mexico

AUNews: (hat tip to GLP) Lightning kills 18 kids at primary school
A LIGHTNING strike at a primary school in western Uganda has killed 18 students and injured 50.

Lightning hit Runyanya primary school in Kiryandongo district, about 225km northwest of Kampala, killing 15 girls and three boys yesterday, police spokeswoman Judith Nabakooba said.
Local media reported that a further 21 pupils were burned after lightning struck at a second school in Zombo district, about 380km north of Kampala. Police could not confirm the incident.

Nabakooba could not provide an exact figure for the total number killed by lightning in recent weeks, but local newspaper The Daily Monitor reported a total of 28 killed and scores injured in the past week, including Tuesday's incidents.
 WasingtonsBlog: Fire Threatens Plutonium and Uranium Release at Los Alamos National Laboratory
RawStory: Experts warn epic weather ravaging US could worsen 
CloserLook: 25 years since global temps were below average
Hosted: Towns near NM fire, nuclear lab wary of smoke 
ABCNews: Los Alamos Fire: EPA Testing for Radiation 
ModernsurvivalBlog: Fort Calhoun Nuke Plant, Feet Away from Core Damage 
  FarmWars: The Great Gulf Coast Holocaust Pt 1
“The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.” Clarence S. Darrow
CommonDreams: If Brazil Has to Guard Its Rainforest, Why Does Canada/U.S. Get to Burn Its Tar Sands? 
MSNBC: Report: 25 years since global temps were below average
'Unmistakable signal,' says expert of the 41 indicators tracked in 'State of the Climate' 
CNN: Chilean volcano ash causes fresh disruption


America in Decline
I believe that one of the main reasons this country is in decline is because children are being raised by strangers for money.
My friend RJ sent this today, having been a stay at home mom myself, it really hit a chord for me.

this 1st one reminds me how much this country has changed, pam...growing up in a middle class suburb the 50s, i didnt know ANYONE who needed daycare or a domestic…because then, only one middle class job was needed to support a large family, and all the mothers were able to stay at home to take care of the kids…
Domestic Workers Need Rights — But Can Working Families Afford What They’ll Cost? - Deborah just gave birth to their first child, a baby girl. Her position at a nonprofit grants her three months of unpaid maternity leave; his job as a digital compositor offers him three weeks. Once they’ve used up all of their parental leave, they’ll face a dilemma more than 70 percent of American parents struggle with: the difficulty of finding affordable childcare.

MyBudget360: Who’s afraid of the middle class?
As housing values reach new lows the stock market is up 100 percent from the 2009 trough. Too bad over 30 percent of Americans have $0 in savings.
CommonDreams: How Greed Destroys America
America’s corporate chieftains are living like kings while the middle class stagnates and shrivels
CNN: Fungal disease may warrant endangered protection for bat species
SeattleTimes: Feds argue against warrantless GPS lawsuit
The Justice Department is asking a judge to throw out a lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller over a GPS tracking device put on a student's car without a warrant.

Food and Water
BigPictureAgriculture: Diesel Prices and Farming. What is the Plan?
MotherJones: How the Meat Industry Turned Abuse into a Business Model
As a long-time student of the meat industry, I read Ted Genoways' extraordinary article on conditions at the "head table" of a factory-scale pig-processing plant with delight. As a human being, my reaction was revulsion.
MotherJones: The Spam Factory's Dirty Secret
First Hormel gutted the union. Then it sped up the line. And when the pig-brain machine made workers sick, they got canned.
On the cut-and-kill floor of Quality Pork Processors Inc. in Austin, Minnesota, the wind always blows. From the open doors at the docks where drivers unload massive trailers of screeching pigs, through to the "warm room" where the hogs are butchered, to the plastic-draped breezeway where the parts are handed over to Hormel for packaging, the air gusts and swirls, whistling through the plant like the current in a canyon. In the first week of December 2006, Matthew Garcia felt feverish and chilled on the blustery production floor. He fought stabbing back pains and nausea, but he figured it was just the flu—and he was determined to tough it out.
CircleofBlue: The Stream, June 27: Food Prices, G20 and Global Food Security

Science and Technology 

CNN: NASA: July 8 selected for space shuttle program's last blast
GizModo: Bin Laden Killing Team May Have Used Night Vision Contact Lenses
NewScientist: Google+: Facebook for people who don't like Facebook 
NYT: Another Try by Google to Take On Facebook 
CNN: More Americans buying e-readers than tablets, study says 
CNN: Homeless turn to Twitter for food, shelter

Medical and Health
MoneyWatch: Long Term Care for Aging Parents Could Reach $300,000 Per Person: How to Cope
NYT: Spine Experts Repudiate Medtronic Studies
In an extraordinary move, a group of spine specialists are publicly repudiating the research of other experts that has backed the widespread use of a Medtronic bone growth product. In a series of reports published in a medical journal on Tuesday, the specialists called the research misleading and biased.
ScientificAmerican: Legacy of Mental Health Problems from Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Will Be Long-Lived
Service members returning from combat present a long-term treatment challenge
Brookings: The Uneven Aging and "Younging" of America: State and Metropolitan Trends in the 2010 Census
America is beginning to show its age as the baby boom generation advances toward full-fledged senior-hood. But the pace of this aging will vary widely across the national landscape due to noticeable geographic shifts in the younger population, with implications for health care, transportation, and housing, and possible impacts upon our ability to forge societal consensus.

Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
ModernSurvivalOnline: Review: Ruger BX-25 Factory High Capacity Magazines

Other News
RawStory: Charges dismissed against woman arrested while videotaping traffic stop from her front yard
CNNMoney: Ron Paul: U.S. should declare 'bankruptcy'
TheAtlantic: The Country Where Slavery Is Still Normal
The north African nation of Mauritania has tried three times to abolish slavery within its borders, most recently in 2007, and three times it has failed. Though the most recent effort established tougher legal penalties -- 10 years prison time for holding slaves, two years for "promoting" slavery -- the practice remains pervasive, with an estimated half million Mauritanians enslaved, about 20 percent of the population. Mauritanian slaves are forbidden from owning property, a last name, or legal custody of their own children.
USAToday: New Hispanic majority transforms culture of Pa. region
READING, Pa. — Reading High School marked a milestone this month: a graduation ceremony with its first Hispanic valedictorian. Noe Cabello is unlikely to be the last.
TheNation: No More Excuses, Rape is Rape!
It would sound pretty ridiculous if a policeman were to say, “I’m sorry, we can’t help you. Your rape does not fit the narrow 1929 guidelines for a forcible rape.”
But this is not too far from the truth.
Grist: What does the reverse Great Migration mean for urbanism?
BlackListedNews: Britain: Police Break Into Homes; Lecture People About Burglary Risks
WikiHow: How to Make a Desk Chair from a Car Seat 
Politico: New Senate push for DREAM Act
Top White House officials made their case for the long-simmering immigration law, the DREAM Act, on Tuesday at a a Senate hearing packed with attendees, including Jose Antonio Vargas, a journalist who took the Internet by storm last week with a first-person account of working for major news outlets while an illegal immigrant. 

The Forums
TinfoilPalace:TSA Cancer clusters appearing in scanner operators?
TinfoilPalace:Possible Early July Staged Event
TheOilAge:White House anticipates "significant" budget deal 
TheOilAge:If you can't pay them back, then don't
Hubberts-Arms:Greek Army Threatens Military Coup
Hubberts-Arms:If You Don’t Watch Television, You Live in a Whole Different World
SilentCountry:Fox may get keys to henhouse
SilentCountry:Wikkileaks: Banking Blockade.

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