Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Breaking News Tues. March 6, 2012

Going to post a little early today and get out in the greenhouse and garden (like a certain Ozarker I know! hehehe) and tend to the little plants. If anything of note happens, I'll update when I get back.

Check out this video from John Ludi! Looking good John, keep warm!




and for our reading pleasure...
George Monbiot: A Manifesto for Psychopaths - Ayn Rand’s ideas have become the Marxism of the new right.
It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the post-war world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.
Super Duper thanks to RJ at the Global Glass Onion and the Ozarker at Conflicted Doomer.
Be sure to drop in and visit the great folks lurking in the forums! Good stuff going on in there. 

Japan
DesdemonaDespair: Japan struggles with radioactive reactor water
After Fukushima: Images From Japan, One Year Later


Global Conflict
IBTimes: EU Seeks to Restart Nuclear Talks With Iran; Tehran Allows UN Officials to Parchin Site 
Atlantic: How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators
NYT: Iran Agrees to Limited Inspection of Secret Military Site, Reports Say
WSJ: Obama, Netanyahu Split Over 'Red Line' on Iran
Reuters: IAEA has "serious concerns" as Iran boosts nuclear work 
Bloomberg: Obama Shifts G-8 Talks to Camp David From Chicago in Abrupt Move 
ChicagoTribune: G-8 summit to be held at Camp David, not Chicago
President Obama is moving one of two major world summits from Chicago to the presidential retreat near Washington, with an aide saying the president has decided he wants a more "intimate" setting than his hometown for the May gathering.
The Group of Eight meeting will be moved to Camp David, according to the White House, but the gathering of NATO allies and the International Security Assistance Force will go on in Chicago as planned in mid-May.
Camp David will more closely approximate the remote settings in which the G8 leaders prefer to gather. Summits in large cities typically see clamorous protests, while those in the countryside are calmer and more sedate.
NYT: Republican Policies for Iran Differ Little From Obama’s
CBS: Gingrich: Israel shouldn't warn US on Iran attack 
WSJ: Navy, Marines to Require Breath Tests 
Reuters: Russian protesters fear Putin resorting to force 
LegitGov: Thirteen French officers captured by Syrian Army 
ChrisHedges: AIPAC Works for the 1 Percent
LegitGov: Israel prepares safety measures amid Iran war talks: Report 04 Mar 2012 Israel has recently been beefing up its wartime safety measures such as building shelters and boosting emergency services amid fears of a devastating Iranian counterstrike to a potential Tel Aviv attack. Israel has been transforming the parking lot of Tel Aviv's Habima National Theater into a sophisticated bomb shelter, the Associated Press reported. Roi Flyshman, spokesman for Israeli civil defense ministry, said the make-shift shelter, four stories underground and capable of accommodating up to 1,600 people, is "very advanced" and could serve as a blueprint for others. 
Time: Netanyahu Signals Determination on Iran, But War Will Have to Wait 
Cryptogon: Eastern Libya Declares Semiautonomous Region 
Zerohedge: Panetta Says Us Will Take Military Action In Iran If All Else Fails 
Reuters: Insight: Catch me if you can - oil sanctions against Iran 
CBS: Gingrich: 'Eliminate' Iran's govt over oil route 

OWS
USNews: Police arrest 68 people protesting education cuts inside Calif. state capitol
A day of boisterous protests over cuts to higher education that included thousands of students swarming the state Capitol ended with dozens of arrests after demonstrators refused to leave the building.
CommonDreams: Before Wall Street, Before Tahrir... They Occupied the Plantations
BusinessInsider: Donald Trump Just Made An Argument That's Straight Out Of Occupy Wall Street
TruthOut: Occupy AIPAC: "The Battle for Justice in the Middle East Is Our Battle"
NOC: Day 168: Live Coverage of the Occupy Movement


Hacker News
ArsTechnica: Julian Assange could face charges in the US according to leaked e-mails - E-mails leaked today from a private US intelligence company directly mention charges drawn up in the US against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange...
BBC: Top hackers arrested in FBI swoop
Time: Alleged LulzSec Hackers Arrested as Leader Turns Snitch

Domestic Financial News
CNN: High price soured Chevy Volt sales
Zerohedge: 3 Charts On The US Consumption Crash Dead-Ahead
Time: How ‘Shadow Inventory’ Is Killing the Housing MarketLAT: Thousands march on Capitol to protest cuts in college funding
LAT: Yahoo's CEO considering major restructuring, thousands of layoffs
Zerohedge: Apple Encounters Gravity As 3rd Biggest Drop In 3 Months Drags Market Down
PBS: Providence, Rhode Island, asks retirees to accept less - Angel Taveras, the mayor of Rhode Island's capital of Providence, on Saturday painted a dire fiscal picture of his city: by this summer, it could run out of money.
Tennessean: Canceled credit card debts come back to haunt taxpayers - Billions of dollars in credit card debt that was charged off during the Great Recession— some of it decades old — is coming back to haunt borrowers in the form of unexpected tax bills.
CNNMoney: Richard Fisher: QE3 would be like 'medical malpractice'‎ - Talking to the Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce, Fisher blasted investors for calling for a third round of quantitative easing, or QE3, by the Fed. "I am personally perplexed by the continued preoccupation, bordering upon fetish, that Wall Street exhibits regarding the potential for further monetary accommodation—the so-called QE3, or third round of quantitative easing," he said, adding that "trillions of dollars are lying fallow, not being employed in the real economy."
Economist: Income inequality: Growing apart

CalculatedRisk: Existing Home Inventory declines 21% year-over-year in early March
Barron's: Bank of America Seen as Vulnerable
Time: Are We Already Planting the Seeds of the Next Financial Crisis?
WSJ: Bad News for Boomers - If you're a baby boomer, you've got a big problem when it comes to the investment returns you can expect in retirement: It's the sheer number of other boomers who are also getting ready to leave the workplace and rely on their portfolios to help pay the bills.
BusinessInsider: You'd Be A Fool To Hold Anything But Cash Now
RTTNews: Stocks May Fall Sharply Amid Lingering Global Concerns - U.S. Commentary
WDEF: Judge clears way for record bankruptcy in Alabama - A judge in Birmingham has cleared the way for Alabama's largest county to move forward with the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
CharlesHughSmith: Welcome to Year Five in the Crazy House
Zerohedge: Biggest Dow Drop In 3 Months
ETFDaily: 15 Potentially Massive Threats To The U.S. Economy Over The Next 12 Months
HousingWire: Hope Now: Mortgage mods in January down 27% from year ago - An estimated 74,000 homeowners received mortgage modifications in January, down 27% from a year earlier, when 101,000 borrowers successfully completed trials
PoliticalCalculations: Gasoline Prices and the Unemployment Rate

Global Financial News
Time: Billionaire Rankings: Bloomberg Launches Daily List of the World's Richest People
Zerohedge: On Contagion: How The Rest Of The World Will Suffer
CNNMoney: India bans cotton exports
Reuters: Tax evaders exploit varying global tax rates-OECD
Telegraph: Spain’s sovereign thunderclap and the end of Merkel’s Europe - The Spanish rebellion has begun, sooner and more dramatically than I expected. As many readers will already have seen, Premier Mariano Rajoy has refused point blank to comply with the austerity demands of the European Commission and the European Council (hijacked by Merkozy). Taking what he called a "sovereign decision", he simply announced that he intends to ignore the EU deficit target of 4.4pc of GDP for this year, setting his own target of 5.8pc instead (down from 8.5pc in 2011). In the twenty years or so that I have been following EU affairs closely, I cannot remember such a bold and open act of defiance by any state. 
Reuters: Spain's safety net frays as care workers go unpaid
CreditWritedowns: The Tragedy that is Spain
Reuters: Bondholder group sees 1 trillion euro Greek default risk 
ChicagoTribune: Greece, economy worries weigh on stock futures
WSJ: Lloyd Blankfein Was Prepped For Gupta Testimony By Feds
TAE: Their Assumptions are Getting Very Ugly
CreditWritedowns: Is Germany about to lose its best friend? 
MacroBusiness: China headed for 3% growth
NakedCapitalism: Europe’s Recession Has Barely Begun
RTTNews: U.K. House Prices Unexpectedly Decline In February
Telegraph: Greek default looms as voluntary debt deal looks set to fail 


Peak Oil and Energy News
Today: 'Peak Oil' is back with a vengeance

Forbes: Peak or Plateau Oil, Oil Prices and Economic GrowthReuters: Analysis: Oil creeps toward top of Asia's economic worry list 
TheOilDrum: Tactics and Strategy at the Strait of Hormuz

Commodities/Metals
Zerohedge: Faber: "Middle East Will Go Up In Flames" ... "Have To Be In Precious Metals And Equities"Mineweb: Gold below $1,690 /oz as Greek debt swap fears hurt Euro
Zerohedge: Silver Catching Gold's Cold?
ETFDaily: Buy Gold “Right Away” Says Marc Faber 

Environmental
USGS
M 2.7, Colorado
M 3.3, Colorado
M 5.2, southern Sumatra, Indonesia
M 4.6, near the east coast of Honshu, Japan
MNN: Must-see photo: Giant roll cloud near Brazil
Guardian: : US tornado: Indiana woman loses legs saving her children Grist: Mad Rush: Limbaugh claims solar and wind industries don’t exist
Reuters: Tornado-ravaged areas hit by snowstorm, cold
PopSci: Massive Extraterrestrial Rock Hit Earth 13 Millennia Ago, According to Nano-Evidence
NarcoSphere: Lakotas arrested halting Keystone XL pipeline trucks
BSNorrell: CENSORED NEWS: Lakota arrests underway halting tarsands pipeline trucks
 GregPalast: BP Settlement Sells Out Victims 0
Some deal. BP gets the gold mine and its victims get the shaft. And a few lawyers will get vacation homes—though they won’t be so stupid as to build them on the Gulf Coast.
TruthOut: BP Settles While Macondo "Seeps"
Dahr Jamail, Al Jazeera: "As BP settles out of court for the first phase of thousands of lawsuits that could cost the company tens of billions of dollars, Al Jazeera has spotted a large oil sheen near the infamous Macondo 252 well.... Experts believe the oil is likely to be from a seep in the seabed ... many believe it may well have been caused by BP's blowout well and the failed attempts to cap it during spring 2010."
DesdemonaDespair: Video: Two dead, thousands evacuate in Australia floods – Floodwaters reach 160-year high after record rainfall in three states
NewScientist: Seedy scientists are polluting Antarctica
 

America in Decline
MyNews4: About 2,000 Sacramento-area teachers getting notices; including 100+ in Placer County
CNNMoney: Tax scam promises churchgoers 'free money'
HuffingtonPost: Turns Out Recovery Is For The Rich
LegitGov: New DHS Advisory Council to 'make academic community aware of their surroundings' - The council will advise the department on a wide range of issues -- from how the DHS can better recruit [spies] from campuses to emergency preparedness.
NOC: Free Trade Or Democracy, Can’t Have Both
slippery slope alert!  USAToday: Holder: Constitution doesn't cover terrorists
Bloomberg: Minorities Get Harsher Discipline in U.S. Schools, Survey Shows  
Marketplace: From middle class to working poor
OffTheCharts: Under $2 a Day in America, Part 1 - CBPP - Living on less than $2 per person a day is one World Bank definition of poverty for developing nations. Unfortunately, this threshold is increasingly relevant to the United States, according to a new study from the National Poverty Center.
BaselineScenario: Invisible Handouts and Anti-Government Conservatives - Ezra Klein wrote a column for Bloomberg discussing research by political scientist Suzanne Mettler and some of her collaborators. Mettler studies what she calls the “submerged state”—the growing tendency of government programs to provide benefits in ways that mask the fact that they come from the government—and its implications for perceptions of government and ultimately for democracy.
FDL: The Worst Administration on FOIA - A consensus has emerged during the presidency of Barack Obama. His administration is increasingly regarded as the worst on issues related to freedom of information and transparency.

Food and Water
ThinkProgress: Global Water Scarcity: Can We Solve It?
Treehugger: Lawmakers Push the FDA to Regulate Arsenic in the Food Supply
OffGridNews: Preparing for the Spring’s Mushroom Harvest


Internet and Online Privacy News  
Zerohedge: Can't Even Urinate In His Own Yard Anymore

Science and Technology
Strange, gigantic explosions fueled by solar energy detonate just above the surface of Venus, a new study finds.
The huge eruptions, known as hot flow anomalies (HFAs), have been seen before near Earth, Saturn and possibly Mars. But the new observation is the first unambiguous confirmation of the phenomenon on Venus, researchers said. It also shows that HFAs there are far different than what happens near our planet, which has a strong magnetic field, they added.
ScientificAmerican: Could a Penny Dropped Off a Skyscraper Actually Kill You?
Atlantic: How Space Exploration Can Save America 
ANN: Slavery research at Poplar Forest shows contradiction of Jefferson 
DesdemonaDespair: Belief in global warming on the rebound: National survey of American public opinion on climate change 
NewScientist: How to survive the next 100,000 years
Will humans be around in the deep future?  Given the track record of most mammals, we've got a pretty good shot at surviving for at least the next 100,000 years and possibly even a million years or more. Of course, that's not to say we won't face any challenges. We can expect threats we've encountered before, like colossal volcanic eruptions and pandemic bugs, as well as new ones like out-of-control technology.
Geek: DARPA's robot Cheetah sets land speed record
 If the words “skynet” and “terminator” come to your mind while watching the video above, don’t worry, you aren’t the only one.
ArsTechnica: NASA to use Virginia site to launch five rockets in experiment visible along Eastern Seaboard 
ScientificAmerican: The Science and Art of Neandertal Teeth [Slide Show] 

Medical and Health
ScientificAmerican: Industrial Chemicals Linked to Attention Problems in Children
BBC: We can rebuild him - How machinery is replacing body parts  
NYT: Rise in Preschool Cavities Prompts Anesthesia Use 
Atlantic: 5 so-called health foods you should avoid 
CNN: Artificial pancreas gives girl a vacation from diabetes 
WSJ: Ethiopians Trade Holy Water for AIDS Drugs 
CBSNews: ACP: Colon cancer screening should start at 50 
Atlantic: Are Robot Surgeons Better Than Human Ones? 
NewScientist: Gas-filled aspirin is a potent anti-cancer drug 

Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
ModernSurvival: United States Aquifer Locations

ModernSurvival: Mortar and Pestle; Survival Tool
CityFarmer: Farming is the new rock and roll
SuriviorJane: Nine Meals Away from Anarchy – A Doomsday Preppers Review - I was given the opportunity to once again preview an upcoming Doomsday Preppers show for National Geographic Channel - Nine Meals Away from Anarchy. Of course before I even get the DVD in the player, I’m struck by the title: Nine Meals Away from Anarchy. “Nine?’ I think to myself, “Heck I know some people if they miss one meal they’re ready to eat you alive! Okay… poor choice of words, maybe eaten alive isn’t appropriate for a prepper review, so let’s just say.., they aren’t very nice to be around if they miss a meal..
PreppingToSurvive: Do You Have What it Takes to Raise Backyard Chickens? - The following article has been contributed by Nate Smith, a backyard chicken enthusiast and blogger.
BackdoorSurvival: "Respect for the Lowly Pinto Bean"
WaldenEffect: Experiments with grafting 

Other News
BBC: Pair jailed for witchcraft murder
CBSNews: Ohio nursing home meth lab fire kills 1
Reuters: Colorado court says students can carry guns on campus
Spiegel: 'Better To Be a Dictator than Gay': Germany Slams Lukashenko Over Slur 
Alternet: Baltimore Mayor Signs Order to Prevent Police from Asking About Immigration Status
LAT: Forced medication of Jared Lee Loughner OK'd by court
BBC: No gun find after police shooting - A search of a car in which a man was shot dead by police in Cheshire has not located any weapons, according to the police watchdog.
CNN: Limbaugh revels in the crossfire after Fluke comments
McClatchy: In Mexico, Biden shoots down talk of drug legalization
FT: China: selling baby rights - The head of Guangdong’s family planning commission created a stir last July when he said the province had applied to the central government to relax the one-child policy. Now, a deputy from Guangdong to the National People’s Congress, Li Xinghao, has come up with an innovative variation on this theme of allowing more Chinese to have more children and wants it discussed at the NPC meetings this month.

Wired: Feds Move to Extradite Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom
DailyMail: Father who beat 16-year-old boy in Youtube brawl faces ten years in prison

Politics
Cincinati.com: Kasich turns down federal disaster aid - Ohio Gov. John Kasich said thanks but no thanks to immediate federal disaster relief Saturday, even as governors in Indiana and Kentucky welcomed the help.
Kasich did not rule out asking for assistance later, but his decision means tornado-ravaged towns in Ohio will not get federal aid now and are not eligible at this time for potentially millions of dollars in payments and loans.
The governor said Ohio can respond to the crisis without federal help and he would not ask federal authorities to declare the region a disaster area.
CapitalGainsAndGames: Update On Kasich And Federal Tornado Aid: Maybe It's Not Such A Bad Idea After All
FT: Conservatives Rally Around Romney to Show Unity
Politico: Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart: Joke's on Rush 
Atlantic: The Dark Side of Money in American Politics 
LAT: Republicans grow anxious for primary race to end
DailyKos: Birther madness in Tennessee's Republican PartyHosted: GOP hopefuls brandish their pro-Israel credentials 
Yahoo: Ann Romney: 'I don't even consider myself wealthy' 
Slate: Cato Goes to War  - The Koch brothers have launched an extraordinary campaign to take control of America’s most respected libertarian think tank. Will they destroy it? 

Forums

TinfoilPalace: Florida House Passes Anti-Sharia Law Within A Day Of Passing School Prayer Law
TinfoilPalace: Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor
TinfoilPalace: What do you think is FAKE or WRONG about religion?  
TheOilAge: The mother of all symmetries
TheOilAge: Congress passes authoritarian anti-protest law 
HubbertsArms: Warmonger McCain to call for air strikes on Syria 
HubbertsArms: Minnesota Republican Lawmaker Says Food Stamps Are Like "Feeding Wild Animals" 
SilentCountry: Bicycle Generator
SilentCountry: ‘The Hum’ leaves village ears ringing (Ireland)

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