Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Breaking News Tues. Aug. 23, 2011

A good post from Bill Hicks at the Downward Spiral today.
Colleges are Charging Huge Tuition Fees—Because They Can 
Though none of our political “leaders” will ever admit it, a sea change has taken place within the American economy since the market crash in 2008. The days when young people could spend four years self-actualizing while studying something "fun," and then still find a cubicle-dweller position somewhere that pays the bills after graduation are over. 
 If you are in college or have kids headed that way, it sure is something to think about.

Be sure to visit the forums linked at the bottom of this post as well as the many wonderful blogs that members publish. Thanks to RJ at Global Glass Onion and Marketwatch666.. He is a busy man!
and to the lovely and affable Ozarker! Her writing can be found at Conflicted Doomer!


Japan
Aljazeera: Under-fire Japanese PM set to quit - Naoto Kan, criticised over his handling of nuclear crisis, expects new prime minister to be appointed by end of August.
VancouverSun: Japan's Fukushima nuclear no-go areas to last 'decades': media

Global Conflict
MotherJones: The Informants - The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?

PopSci: As Kidnappings Increase, Mexicans Get Dubious RFID Tracking Chips Implanted In Their Arms
NYT: New Clashes Erupt Around Qaddafi Site 
SeattlePI: Abbas postpones Palestinian municipal elections
Hosted: Rise of Gaza middle class fuels resentment toward Hamas rulers, say wealth isn't tricking down
ArabNews: Israel and Egypt on dangerous ground
GlobeandMail: Activists say Syrian troops killed 7 following visit by UN team to Homs 
MetroUK: Gaddafi son Saif al-Islam rallies regime forces with bizarre appearance - The son and heir apparent of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam, resurfaced free and defiant early today a day after rebels claimed to have captured him, boasting in a bizarre reappearance that his father's loyalists still control parts of Tripoli and would crush the rebellion.
AlArabiya: Farrag Ismail: Egypt and Israel and the drums of war 
FP: The Road to Tahrir - The roots of Egyptians' rage can be traced back to bad economic advice from the IMF -- and the crony capitalism it left behind.
IntelDaily: “Riots played right into British govt’s hands”
LegitGov: Doctor: Israel using new weapons against Gaza 
BBC: Libya conflict: Defiant Saif al-Islam Gaddafi reappears
ExtinctionProtocol: Iran moves centrifuges to underground site 
TruthOut: Mystery of Qaddafi's Whereabouts Looms Large in Conflict's Endgame 
Guardian: Libya: the battle for Tripoli - live updates 
Aljazeera: The US and the new Middle East: Libya 
BBC: LIVE: Battle for Tripoli 
Guardian: Riots: Metropolitan police planned to hold all suspects in custody - Exclusive: leaked strategy amounts to a blanket policy of mass imprisonments and could lead to legal challenge, say lawyers
• Read Operation Withern's prisoner processing strategy
CNN: After months of blackouts, Web access returns to Libya

Hacker News
BusinessInsider: Disgraced Phone Hacking Editor Was Still Being Paid By Murdoch When He Worked For The UK Government

Financial News
MarketWatch666: taxes? it’s time to soak the poor… (video)
DemocracyNow: Covering Up Wall Street Crimes: Matt Taibbi Exposes How SEC Shredded Thousands of Investigations 
DemocracyNow: Covering Up Wall Street Crimes: Matt Taibbi Exposes How SEC Shredded Thousands of Investigations 
Boston.com: S&P chief to step down - US downgrade was not factor
Reuters: Deutsche Bank knew mortgage co it bought lied: Justice Dept 
MSN: Security flaw could expose credit card data - Do you have an account with BofA or Chase? Bank information may be at risk 

CNBC: Greek Crisis Now Worse, Not Better: Analyst  
YahooNews: USA becomes Food Stamp Nation but is it sustainable?
Bloomberg: Douglas Peterson to Become President of S&P
LAT: Goldman Sachs CEO hires criminal defense lawyer - Lloyd Blankfein retains Reid Weingarten amid the governments inquiry into the financial crisis. The move hints there could be new push to investigate the firm and its executives on criminal grounds.
Spiegel:Dutch Finance Minister on the Debt Crisis - 'We Are All Threatened by Contagion' 
Standard & Poor's and the Bilderbergers: All Part of the Plan?
Thanks to centralscrewtinizer @Hubberts-Arms for the above story
Forbes: Rick Perry: Middle Income Americans Don't Pay Enough Income Taxes
GlobeandMail: Risk of foreclosure rising for Americans
CSMonitor: US should raise taxes to help fix deficits, say business economists - US deficit-taming strategy should include boosting tax revenue, say a big majority of 250 business economists in the private sector. Their views, per a new survey, are at odds with GOP's position.
NYT: Members of Merkel's Party Emphasize Opposition to Euro Bonds
Mish: Bank of America Tanks; Gold Goes Parabolic, No Telling Where It Stops
Mish: Goldman Sachs Plunges in Late Trading on News CEO Blankfein Hires High-Profile 
ZeroHedge: Bundesbank: "Mein Entschluss: Anschluss-Plus" - Germany Reveals The European Annexation Blueprints  We were wondering how long it would be before Germany, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, would formally announce to the world that with it now openly calling the shots in Europe, it would be its way or the mutual assured destruction way.
WSJ: SF Fed Warns Baby Boomers May Wound Stock Market
ZeroHedge: Guest Post: Another Shocking, Blatant Coverup Attempt
WSJ: China Manufacturing Activity Declines  
Slate: A Tough Job, but Someone's Gotta Do It - What can the Obama administration do to help the long-term unemployed? 
RawStory: Fed secretly loaned $1.2 trillion in public money to Wall St. firms: report The Raw Story An analysis of tens of thousands of documents obtained by Bloomberg through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request shows that the U.S. Federal Reserve made approximately $1.2 trillion in loans from public money to support Wall Street firms in the midst of one of the worst financial crises ever. 

Spiegel: Out of Control - The Destructive Power of the Financial Markets 
GlobeandMail: U.S. consumer confidence continues decline 
MaxKeiser: Gold and Silver vigilantes have marked JP Morgan’s stock price for death using vicious butterfly put spreads 
GlobeandMail: UBS to shed 3,500 jobs 
HuffingtonPost: CEO Follies - Jeff Sachs - There may be no group of people in the world more out of touch with U.S. ground reality than super-rich CEOs of major U.S. companies railing against Warren Buffett's suggestion that the rich should pay higher taxes.  
TaxFoundation: Monday Map: Growth of High Income Taxpayers
OurFuture: The Real "Dropout Economy"  - We're living in a "Dropout Economy," and it's not the post-apocalyptic, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome fantasy that seems to fuel conservative dreams of a government-free utopia. This Dropout Economy comes at a huge cost in lost wages and lost revenue.  A new study provided to Whispers from the American Institutes for Research finds that for just one year—2002—some 40 percent didn't graduate, costing the federal income $566 million in potential taxes, state governments another $164 million and the students themselves $3.8 billion in lost income over their life. 

CalculatedRisk: Mortgage Delinquencies by State: Range and Current 
CalculatedRisk: Moody's: Commercial Real Estate Prices increased in June 
FDL: Screw the American People, Except for the Corporate People -- Two things have been crystal clear from the outset in the Obama Administration:
1. Banksters cannot be held accountable for anything no matter how awful, no matter how criminal, because that would interfere with the all-important financial sector and murder the confidence fairy.
2. The government won’t enact any programs that would actually help homeowners who have been destroyed by the housing crisis, because that might mean that banksters would have to take losses.
BusinessInsider: Here's Why Bank Of America's Stock Is Collapsing Again
NakedCapitalism: Mirabile Dictu! New York Times Tells Obama Administration Off, Backs Schneiderman on Mortgage Settlement -  Yves Smith - The editorial in today’s New York Times may be a sign that the tide is turning. The elites are starting to break ranks with the mortgage industrial complex.
Reuters: Please tax us, French super-rich tell government - Some of France's richest people, including the billionaire heiress of L'Oreal and the head of oil giant Total, urged the government on Tuesday to tax them more to help to solve the country's financial problems. 
CEPR: The Post Goes Into Overdrive In Its Social Security Scare Campaign - Showing once again why it is known as "Fox on 15th Street," the Washington Post headlined an article "Social Security crisis is worsening." The subhead told readers, "rise in disability applications driving it to the verge of insolvency."
BusinessInsider: The Cost Of Insuring European Bank Debt Has Doubled Since April 
HuffingtonPost: U.S. Workers Can Expect Only Modest Raises In 2012: Survey 
BusinessInsider: Stock Tip: Be Worried. Workers Are Consumers.
CNBC: China Factory Output Cools in August  
Guardian: Why capitalism is choosing Plan B - Across US states, governors are forcing through Greek-style austerity measures. Corporations wouldn't have it any other way
TheHill: Wall Street executives turn back on Obama, start donating to Romney
RawStory: Florida’s welfare drug testing costs more than it saves : Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to test welfare recipients for drugs is costing the state money, despite his claims that the program would actually save tax dollars. 

Peak oil and Energy News
NYT: The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins 
CNNMoney: Libyan oil could take years to come back
RawStory: Denmark to lay claim to the North Pole sea bed
Wired: Google invests in gigantic US wind farm - The company has invested in a project called the Atlantic Wind Connection, which is a plan to create a monstrous off-shore wind farm “backbone” along the United States’ Atlantic coastline. Reaching from New Jersey to Virginia, the project will stretch across 350 miles of the continent’s eastern coast.
Platts: Platts Analysis: China's oil demand rebounds to 9.05 million b/d in July - Chinese oil demand: up about 7% from a year ago
FuelFix: Oil firms unsure when they’ll return to Libya 
UPI: Crude prices hitting Saudi refiner

Commodities/Metals 
“Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert explain how Chavez’ request for his gold could mean collapse for JP Morgan.”
 Reuters: How to get $12 billion of gold to Venezuela
WSJ: Vital Signs: Cotton Prices Climb

Environmental News
WPRI: Magnitude 5.3 earthquake hits Colorado - The largest earthquake to strike Colorado in almost 40 years has shaken hundreds of people near the New Mexico border.
ExtinctionProtocol: Most powerful storm in Ontario in 15 years reduces parts of Goderich to rubble
Grist: ‘I’m scared out of my mind’—but still getting arrested to stop the tar-sands pipeline [VIDEO]
MSN: Irene could become massive Category 4 hurricane Florida would be first U.S. area to feel it, landfall in Carolinas likely  
TreeHugger: US Military's Open Burn Pits in Afghanistan May Be Making People Sick 
CNN: 2011: Year of billion-dollar disasters
GlobeandMail: Strong quake hits Japan, no danger of tsunami
BusinessInsider: Irene Will Be A CAT 4 Hurricane Thursday When It Arrives In The U.S.
NBCNews: Hurricane Irene rapidly strengthening, forecast to become Cat. 3 later today. Track the storm here. MAP: 
Reuters: Where Haiti’s money has gone - What happens when you drop billions of dollars onto a country like Haiti? Immediately after the earthquake happened, in January 2010, I said that “one of the lessons we’ve learned from trying to rebuild failed states elsewhere in the world is that throwing money at the issue is very likely to backfire”. But that’s exactly what we did — with predictable results.   
LAT: A gnawing question answered: It's a capybara roaming Paso Robles - A wastewater treatment plant worker's photos of a 'weird-looking' creature go viral on the Internet. Wardens used the pictures to confirm that the animal was an adult capybara, the world's largest rodent.
CNN: USGS: Colorado experiences largest quake in more than 40 years
CNN: Irene intensifies over warm waters as it roars toward Carolinas

America in Decline
SFGate: Is 'hot sauce mom' a child abuser?
Cryptogon: New UAV for Police Can Taze People from Above - The ShadowHawk is the seven-foot, 50-lb copter that is the toy-sized dealer of destruction from Texas-based Vanguard Defense Industries. The copter is the result of three years of development. If being tased from above sounds frightening to you, I suggest you cease all criminal activities now (simply staying indoors is an option).
MotherJones: You Have the Right to Remain Silent…After Questioning
MotherJones: Terrorists for the FBI
MSN: Post 9/11, surveillance cameras everywhere - Security industry boomed for years, but terror is rarely a focus 
Care2: 1 In 5 American Children Now Living In Poverty
Time: Has America Become a Nation of Squatters?

Food and Water
FDL: A few facts about the Nebraska SandHills….
First, the disclaimer.  I’m an ecosystem researcher and I’ve been working in the Nebraska SandHills for 10 or so years.  The SandHills are the major recharge zone for the Ogallala (or High Plains) aquifer.  That’s where water goes into the system to (hopefully) replace what we take out via wells.  The SandHills are also the largest “grass stabilized” dune field in the world, and without the grasses, they would be the largest sand dune field in the Western Hemisphere.  The soils are very very sandy and porous, allowing quick and efficient infiltration of any fluids that happen to impinge upon them.  My colleague and I have just made the first measurements of the recharge rate (although only at a single point) in the region and I have a pretty good idea of how easily things can work their way down to the water table (i.e. the aquifer).

Science and Technology
BBC: When algorithms control the world - There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements.
In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.
Their weapon of choice - the algorithm.
ABC: Rats Love Cats? Maybe, if Rats Infected With Parasite - Stanford University researchers found a certain group of rats was actually attracted to that same odor.
Cat urine is naturally a warning to rats to stay away from an area where their natural predators may be lurking. But study rats infected by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii ("toxo" for short) didn't show that fear and, instead, parts of their brains associated with sexual arousal were activated. 


Medical and Health
Aljazeera: Outsourced: Clinical trials overseas - As US pharmaceutical companies move their operations abroad, India has become a testing ground for trial medicines.
PopSci: Controversy Should Not Stop Us From Developing Memory-Erasing Drugs, Neuroethicist Argues 
MSN: $100,000 price tag for treatment with new cancer drug - First medicine approved for anaplastic large cell lymphoma costs $4,500 a vial 
CNN: 5,000 kids a year hurt in falls from windows
CNN:Human Factor: A bridge from dyslexia

Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
The Urban Farming Guys 
Making Jelly from all those Mulberries!

Other News
RawStory: Federal Communications Commission officially drops ‘Fairness Doctrine’ from rulebook
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Monday that it had eliminated the fairness doctrine and 83 other "obsolete" provisions from its rulebook.
StraitsRisk: Sri Lanka deploys military to quell unrest over strange urban legend 
LAT: Prosecutors drop rape case against Dominique Strauss-KahnThe New York prosecutors acknowledge that a case they initially said was 'very strong' dissolved after they lost confidence in the accuser, Nafissatou Diallo.
BBC: Somali pirates given life in US prison


Politics
RawStory: Rick Perry disavows 9-month-old book ‘Fed Up!’
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has disavowed views put forward in his book Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington just one week into his presidential campaign and only 9 months after it was first published in November 2010.
Time: Rick Perry Was Against Social Security Before He Was For It
UPI: Town halls not popular forum this recess

The Forums
TinfoilPalace:Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan's Teachings
TinfoilPalace:New Mexico Cop Says Military Responsible for Cattle Mutilations
TheOilAge:46 Million Americans now on Food Stamps
TheOilAge:Holy F/ck! Massive Rad plume > Hawaii
Hubberts-Arms:New Reality For Many Baby Boomers Will Be To Work As Wage Slaves Until They Drop
Hubberts-Arms:US 'hacker next door' gets 18-year sentence: report
SilentCountry:Colleges are Charging Huge Tuition Fees—Because They Can
SilentCountry:FBI Wants Surplus Stores To Spy on Customers

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