I thought this first item was interesting.
Alternet: Julian Assange Australia Senate Run Announced
Oh, and this from the Ozarker this morning. LOL Seems to make perfect sense some how doesn't it?
CrooksAndLiars: Westboro Baptist Church Offers to Advertise on Limbaugh's Show
Most excellent thanks to RJ at the Global Glass Onion and the Ozarker at Conflicted Doomer.
Thanks for the links guys!
and thanks to Dough at 3Es and David at ETFDaily for their links as well.
There are a lot of good folks out there working to get the word out to people about what's going on in the world, be sure to visit their blogs and sites and support their good work.
Japan
special thanks to Doug at 3E's news for the following video! Max does a great interview with Chris Martenson on Japan.
DesdemonaDespair: Graph of the Day: Radioactive Seawater Impact from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, March 2012
WSJ: Japan's Nuclear-Crisis Planning Falls Short
Global Conflict
BBC: 'Heavy fighting' in Syria capital
Independent: Robert Fisk: Madness is not the reason for this massacre (a must read article)
I'm getting a bit tired of the "deranged" soldier story. It was predictable, of course. The 38-year-old staff sergeant who massacred 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, near Kandahar this week had no sooner returned to base than the defence experts and the think-tank boys and girls announced that he was "deranged". Not an evil, wicked, mindless terrorist – which he would be, of course, if he had been an Afghan, especially a Taliban – but merely a guy who went crazy.
TheNation: Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen? Reuters: Iraq militia frees U.S. hostage after 9 months
JPost: Iran: West must accept success of our nuclear program
PajhwokUp to 20 US troops executed Panjwai massacre: probe --Lawmaker: Attack lasted one hour involving two groups of American soldiers in the middle of the night on Sunday 15 Mar 2012 A parliamentary probe team on Thursday said up to 20 American troops were involved in Sunday's killing of 16 civilians in southern Kandahar province. The team spent two days in the province, interviewing the bereaved families, tribal elders, survivors and collecting evidence at the site in Panjwai district. Hamidzai Lali, a probe delegation lawmaker, told Pajhwok Afghan News that their investigation showed there were 15 to 20 American soldiers who executed the brutal killings.
ABCNews: Israelis Agree Iran Hasn't Decided on Atom Bomb
BBC: Bali anti-terror raids kill five
CNN: Retired general: Afghan killings fallout could see troop return within weeks
CNN: Afghan ambassador: We trust U.S. probe into massacre - Afghanistan trusts the U.S. investigation into the massacre of 16 civilians allegedly at the hands of a U.S. soldier, the Afghan ambassador to the United States insisted Sunday, even as the Afghan leader said relations between the countries are at the "end of the rope."
Time: Netanyahu Makes the Case for Going It Alone Against Iran - By his own account, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Washington this month with two goals.
One was to continue his 15-year campaign to push Iran’s nuclear program to the top of the world’s agenda. That mission was accomplished, Netanyahu declared to the Knesset on Wednesday. The other aim was to hear Washington acknowledge that Israel has the right to launch a military operation on its own against Iran if it sees fit. “This position was positively received in the United States, I would even say in the most profound way,” he said.
WSJ: From Start to End, a Military Life of Puzzles -
Some who knew Robert Bales were puzzled when he abandoned what seemed like a promising career in the financial services industry to enlist in the Army in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Now, with that military career apparently ending, those who know him wonder about something else: how he could possibly be the U.S. soldier who went from house to house in Afghanistan, shooting, stabbing and burning innocent civilians—men, women and children.
From neighbors in Ohio who knew him as "Bobby" to soldiers from his base near Seattle who thought of him as a trustworthy warfighter, the apparent ...
BBC: US teacher 'shot dead' in Yemen's second city of Taiz
CSMonitor: North Korea vows satellite launch, with rocket that could reach Hawaii
Atlantic: Putin's Grandest Dream: Could His 'Eurasian Union' Work?The reelected president wants integrate the region under Moscow's leadership, but he's not the first Russian leader to over-reach.
ExtinctionProtocol: U.S. threatens sanctions with India over its ties with Iran
NOC: Terror, Trauma, and the Endless Afghan War - Amy Goodman, Op-Ed: “We may never know what drove a U.S. Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in U.S. history. The attack has been called tragic, which it surely is. But when Afghans attack U.S. forces, they are called “terrorists.”
eXiled: Photo Essay: Austerity Athens Street Art
CounterPunch: Massacre Fatigue in Afghanistan
LegitGov: US troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014: Panetta 15 Mar 2012 The Pentagon chief says he is 'confident' that the United States and Afghanistan would work out a treaty allowing the US military to stay longer in the country beyond the withdrawal deadline of 2014.
McClatchy: Twin blasts kill 27 in Syria's capital, Damascus
ExtinctionProtocol: Israeli diplomat says war with Iran would engulf the world in a nightmare
Truthout: How Mossad Justified Its Murder of an Innocent Iranian Electrical Engineer - "On July 23, 2011, a 35-year-old Iranian electrical engineering student named Darioush Rezaeinejad was gunned down as he and his wife, who was also wounded in the attack, waited for their child in front of a kindergarten in Tehran…. Rezaeinejad was the fourth Iranian scientist whom the Israelis had tried to assassinate, but what was different about his assassination is the subsequent effort by the Israelis to justify it after the fact."
IBTimes: The price of a life? In Afghanistan, it's as little as $210
NYT: Falling In and Out of War
CNN: Afghan villagers describe slaying's horror, differ on number involved - In Najabyan village, a visitor's eye is immediately drawn to the turquoise and green sheets blanketing mounds of dirt, and the red, green and gold...
OWS
ChicagoTribune: Protesters return to Zuccotti Park for Occupy Wall Street anniversary
LegitGov: Scores Arrested as the Police Clear Zuccotti Park
SFGate: Police say 73 detained after Occupy protest - But New York Police Det. Brian Sessa said the tipping point came when the protesters started breaking the park rules.
"They set up tents. They had sleeping bags," he said. Electrical boxes also were tampered with and there was evidence of graffiti.
Sessa said Brookfield Properties, the park owner, sent in security to advise the protesters to stop pitching tents and to leave the park. The protesters, in turn, became agitated with them. The company then asked the police to help them clear out the park, the detective said.
NOC: The American Spring: A Time for Occupy to Blossom
TheNation: The Purpose of Occupy Wall Street Is to Occupy Wall Street
NYT: U.S. Faces a Tricky Task in Assessment of Data on Iran
Truthout: Re-Occupation and Police Raid of Zuccotti Park Set Tone for Radical Spring
Alternet: 5 Freedom-Killing Tactics Police Will Use to Crack Down on Protests in 2012
Across America many cities and police forces are eyeing new ways to crack down on protesters. MSNBC: Occupy Protesters Vow Spring Surge
Domestic Financial News
CNNMoney: Stocks: Will housing continue to fuel rally?
ETFDaily: The U.S. Economy Is Running On Borrowed Money and On Borrowed Time Zerohedge: The Fed's Stress Test Was Merely The Latest "Lipstick On A Pig" Farce
MyBudget360: A shadow inflation hits shoppers through economic sleight of hand: Inflation and the hidden side of finances.
Economics21: Fed Set to Sell CDOs From AIG Bailout: Why Policymakers Should Care
Economist'sView: The Case for More Fiscal Stimulus
FiscalTimes: Goldman's Pal: Mayor Michael Bloomberg - Goldman Sachs has no shortage of friends in high places, including New York's City Hall. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who made his early millions on Wall Street before turning them into billions at his own financial data and news company, threw his support behind the investment bank, still licking its wounds from a withering resignation letter by a Goldman Sachs employee in The New York Times.
Calling Goldman Sachs "a great firm," Bloomberg used a morning radio talk show on Friday to accuse critics of unfairly "piling on" the bank and said the former staffer, Greg Smith, was wrong to air his views in the op-ed piece. His firm, Bloomberg LP, competes with Thomson Reuters. "I thought (it was) a nasty letter from an employee," said Bloomberg, who regards loyalty as non-negotiable.
ModeledBehavior: Great Big Hugs - Paul Krugman agrees that when Jamie Dimon says he just wants to be loved respected, that we should take him at his word When you make a billion dollars a year, you can buy anything you want — which means that goods and services yield almost no marginal utility. What you crave, then, is what money can’t buy: respect
Newsday: Depression-era census to be made public
WSJ: Wall Street Keys On Landlord Business - Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are lining up to become landlords to cash-strapped Americans by bidding on pools of foreclosed properties being sold by Fannie Mae.
BaselineScenario: A Colossal Mistake of Historic Proportions: The “JOBS” bill - The idea behind the JOBS bill is that our existing securities laws – requiring a great deal of disclosure – are significantly holding back the economy.
WSJ: Vital Signs: Continuing Manufacturing Expansion - Manufacturing continues to be a bright spot for the economy. The Federal Reserve said Friday that manufacturing output grew 0.3% in February, the third straight month of expansion.
MSNBC: Consumer Sentiment slips on higher gas prices
Bloomberg: Speculators Dumped Crop wagers before biggest rally
NYT: Marginal Tax Rates and Wishful Thinking
CNNMoney: Jobless numbers defy economic theoryFTAlphaville: Chinese Property "alert"
ETFDaily: “The Mother of All Shorts Has Begun,” says Ilczyszyn (TBT)
CharlesHughSmith: How To Cripple the Real Estate Market in Five Easy Steps
Global Financial News
Zerohedge; Morgan Stanley, Italy, Swaps And Misplaced Outrage
Reuters: GLOBAL ECONOMY WEEKAHEAD-This time it's different
Xinhuanet: China to be world's biggest importer soon: commerce minister - Xinhua
Cryptogon: Greece: Euro Free Alternative Currency Takes Off
BBC: PM to urge private roads funding - David Cameron will say much more private investment is needed in England's road network in a speech later.
BBC: Lagarde says China must reform economy and yuan - International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Christine Lagarde has said that China must stop its economy being too dependent on exports and investment.
SFGate: Germany to slash borrowing, balance budget by 2016
ETFDaily: Did German Gold Bailout Europe?
Peak Oil and Energy News
Hat Tip to PetroApocalypse at The Oil Age forum for the following video
WSJ: Gas Boom Unplugs U.S. Nuclear Revival
NOC: Scary Oil - Nouriel Roubini, Op-Ed: “The price of a barrel of Brent crude, which was well below $100 in 2011, recently peaked at $125. Gasoline prices in the US are approaching $4 a gallon, a damaging threshold for consumer confidence, and will increase further during the high-demand summer season. Not only are oil supplies plentiful, but demand in the US and Europe has been lower, owing to decreasing car use in the last few years and weak or negative GDP growth in the US and the eurozone.”
WSJ: No Relief in Sight at Gas Pump
CBSNews: Axelrod: GOP gas price talk "snake oil"
McClatchy: As natural gas production grows, questions arise about methane leaks
Zerohedge: Things That Make You Go Hmmm - Such As $4.00 Gas (Again)
Fuelfix: With Gas Prices Rising, Smog Rules May Stall
TheGlobeAndMail: ‘Saudi America’ heads for energy independence
Reuters: Exclusive: Iran sanctions seen spurring more Saudi oil sales to U.S.
Commodities/Metals
ETFDaily: Precious Metals Are Decoupling From The Stock Market (GLD, GDX, GDXJ, SIL, GG, ABX, KGC, AEM, IAG)
Mineweb: Australia finally imposes 30% mining tax
Environmental
USGS
M 2.8, Central California
M 4.6, Kuril IslandsIBTimes: Honeybee Deaths: Colony Collapse Disorder Linked To Corn Insecticides
NYT: Brazil Bars 17 at Chevron and Transocean From Leaving Country After Offshore Spill
DesdemonaDesapair: U.S. suffers extreme weather – March sees over 1700 daily high temperature records broken
HuffingtonPost: Colo. fires force town's 300 residents to evacuate
IBTimes: EPA Says No Evidence Fracking Polluted Water In Rural Pa.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found no evidence that hydraulic fracturing caused ground water contamination in a hamlet in rural Pennsylvania.
CNN: Arizona cities buried in rare snowstorm as much of U.S. enjoys balmy weatherUPDATE Reuters: 1-Chevron executives barred from leaving Brazil over spill
TexasTribune: Texas Farmers Battle Ogallala Pumping Limits
Mashable: Plastic eating fungus
MSNBC: Honeybee die-offs linked to insecticides
America in Decline
Zerohedge: Guest Post: We [Don’t] Take Care of Our Own
hat tip to czagain at Silent country for the following story
SilentCountry: Hours/week at minimum wage to afford a 2BR apartment
Truthout: How We Cured "the Culture of Poverty," Not Poverty Itself
Barbara Ehrenreich, TomDispatch: "Fifty years later, a new discovery of poverty is long overdue. This time, we'll have to take account not only of stereotypical Skid Row residents and Appalachians, but of foreclosed-upon suburbanites, laid-off tech workers, and America's ever-growing army of the working poor. And if we look closely enough, we'll have to conclude that poverty is not, after all, a cultural aberration or a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money."
BusinessInsider: The TSA Strikes Again: Now They Are Harassing A Child With A Broken Leg
Truthout: Five Right-Wing Violations Against Women That We Must Crush
Sarah Seltzer, AlterNet: "It's true that progressives and women's groups are fighting back with unprecedented vigor, and the campaigns against Komen, against Rush Limbaugh's sexist smears, against the Blunt Amendment, show that women can organize quickly and powerfully over social media…. The GOP War on Women is in full throttle over a year since it kicked off, taking its toll in particular on the state level where recent data shows that all the posturing has dramatically changed living conditions for women - and not for the better."
AJC: Ethics report ranks Ga. last
Economix; The Not-Much-Opportunity Society - Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential contender, likes to contrast his vision of an Opportunity Society in which people choose whether to pursue an education or hard work with an Entitlement Society, offered by President Obama, in which government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards. I’m not sure what Entitlement Society he’s talking about, since after-tax income has grown far more rapidly at the top than elsewhere, and federal taxes and transfers became less redistributive between 1979 and 2007. As far as I can tell, President Obama hasn’t done much to reverse this trend.
TheNation: This Week in Poverty: Me, Mom and Reagan - Here’s the new American reality: about half of all kids will spend at least part of their childhood in a family headed by a single mother, and the typical single mother is white, has one kid, is separated or divorced, works and probably earns less than $25,000 a year. Because when I was a kid being raised by a white single mom, President Reagan basically promised me we that we were different, special even. My Mom put herself through school and worked. The typical single mom, according to the president, was a “welfare queen” taking “government handouts” so she could drive her “Cadillac” and raise her “strapping young bucks” on “T-bone steaks.” He didn’t have to say she was black, lazy and never married—everyone knew it. This image persisted through welfare reform in 1996 when basic cash assistance was gutted, and it still grips the American psyche today. But a new report from Tim Casey, senior staff attorney at Legal Momentum—the nation’s oldest legal defense and education fund for women and girls—departs from this iconic portrayal of single moms. Instead, Casey goes out on a limb and turns to data from crazy outfits like the US Census Bureau. The report is a lot less fun than the alternative universe offered by the current crop of Republican presidential candidates, because Casey stubbornly insists on using “facts.”
TheAtlantic: Has the great recession made us forever poorer?
RawStory: Chicago cop tells reporters: ‘Your First Amendment right can be terminated’
Food and Water
NOC: Monsanto’s Roundup is Killing Human Kidney Cells - Anthony Gucciardi, News Report: “Monsanto’s ‘biopesticide’ known as Bt is not only developing mutated insects and requiring excessive pesticide use, but new findings show that it is also killing human kidney cells — even in low doses. Amazingly, Monsanto’s superweed-breeding Roundup also has the same effect. Scientists have demonstrated in new research that the Bt pesticide, in addition to Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup, exhibit direct toxicity to human cells.”
BigPictureAgriculture: Agriculture News March 2012
Internet and Online Privacy News
ArsTechnica: Op-ed: Imminent "six strikes" Copyright Alert System needs antitrust scrutiny With the "Copyright Alert System" going into operation over the next few months, major American ISPs will start sending out "strikes" to users accused of infringing copyrights online. Sean Flaim, who has just completed extensive research on the topic, argues that the system has real benefits—but it needs close supervision. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica.
ArsTechnica: RIAA and ISPs to police your traffic starting July 12
MailOnline: The CIA wants to spy on you through your TV: Agency director says it will 'transform' surveillance
Devices connected to internet leak information
CIA director says these gadgets will 'transform clandestine tradecraft'
Spies could watch thousands via supercomputers
People 'bug' their own homes with web-connected devices
Science and Technology
TeemingBrain: Utopia or dystopia? Corning’s viral video “A Day Made of Glass” envisions “a shift in the way we will communicate and use technology”
ANN: Earliest Christian burial in UK found - One of the earliest Anglo-Saxon Christian burial sites in Britain has been discovered in a village outside Cambridge. The grave of a teenage girl..
SingularityHub: 8,200+ Strong, Researchers Band Together To Force Science Journals To Open Access
ScientificAmerican: Message Encoded in Neutrino Beam Transmitted through Solid Rock
Technolog: 27% of Americans get News on Mobile Devices
NewScientist: The God issue: New science of religion
Medical and Health
SingularityHub: Privilege Has Its Rewards — How Longevity Will Become The New Class InequalityBusinessInsider: Relax And Rejuvenate At One Of Europe's Best Medical Spas
TechReview: With Relentless Testing, a Professor Watches His Body Get Sick - An unprecedented effort at molecular self-quantification shows how personalized medicine could help head off disease.
Krugman: The Collapse of Employment-Based Coverage
TheDownwardSpiral: Study: Health Care Premiums Will Surpass Median U.S.Incomes By 2033
MSNBC: Fewer kids dying from leukemia
Independent: Hope for tinnitus sufferers
Vitals: Cadmium in diet may increase breast cancer risk
Kunstler: Juked by Medicine
Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
PreppingToSurvive: Building the Walls of the Root Cellar
TransitionVoice: How Greece threatens you and how going local offers the only refuge
WaldenEffect: How to fix a broken tailgate
BackdoorSurvival: The Rising Tsunami of the Police State - The rank and file citizens of the United States of America are being herded down the path to a Police State. Or, better put, will soon be running from the rising tsunami of the police state. . . . a special Backdoor Survival view of the National Defense Resources Preparedness Order.CityFarmer: Hour-long TV Report by Radio-Canada Devoted to Urban Agriculture – in French
ModernSurvivalBlog: Dehydrated Food: Testing Dryness
CanadianDoomer: Dishwashing without a Sink
StrategicLiving: Fishing as a Survival Skill
Other News
CBSNews: Convicted Nazi criminal Demjanjuk dead
GlobeAndMail: Gunman kills several people at Jewish school in France TheTeemingBrain: Today we “medicate” anxiety, but for Kierkegaard it was central to being human Matt Cardin
WSJ: Red Bull Creator Dies
BBC: Thousands mourn Egypt Coptic Pope - Tens of thousands of Egypt's Coptic Christians hold an overnight vigil and attend a Mass for Pope Shenouda III, who died on Saturday aged 88
MercuryNews: Gilroy police: Iraq War veteran likely shot mother in Mustang before killing sister then self
Becker: Should K-12 Teachers Have Tenure?
BostonGlobe: Missouri campground deaths may be murder-suicide - The weekend killings of a woman and three children at a campground and resort in eastern Missouri was being investigated Sunday as a possible murder-suicide.
Truthout: Occupying Democracy: A Moral Revolution for Social Justice - "There are many philosophical justifications for favoring the wealthy and powerful. The Gospel of Wealth, Social Darwinism, Manifest Destiny, God's Will and ‘trickle-down economics' are but a few of the rationales. These rationalizations are a sign of pathological narcissism, i.e., the overvaluing of oneself and the undervaluing of others springing from greed, insecurity, fear and the lust for power. Such philosophies stand in stark contrast to the teachings of many spiritual traditions and the dictates of love, compassion and empathy."
BostonHerald: Family devastated by report mom slashed kids' throats
Independent: Dog's Nazi salute lands owner in jail for five months
RawStory: Nobel Peace Prize winner won’t support decriminalizing ‘homosexual acts’ in Liberia
Politics
IBTimes: Missouri Caucus 2012 Mess: 2 Ron Paul Supporters Arrested
Alternet: Julian Assange Australia Senate Run Announced
RawStory: Santorum: Romney’s dog an ‘issue of character’
YahooNews: Santorum renews promise to root out obscene pornography
Forums
TinfoilPalace: Dr Thomas Campbell (Phycisist) - My Big TOE - Physics, Metaphysics and the Nature of Consciousness
TinfoilPalace: The CIA wants to spy on you through your TV: Agency director says it will 'transform' surveillance
TheOilAge: U.S., Britain agree to oil stocks release
TheOilAge: Big Brother to go "live" September 2013
HubbertsArms: Economists "Baffled" By Slow Economic Growth Despite "Improving Employment"
HubbertsArms: Kiss our preps goodbye (Obama signs NDRP for resource seizure)
SilentCountry: The Mental Effects of Climate Change
SilentCountry: Totalitarian Amerika: Digital Fascism and you.........
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