Today's nationwide protest of Internet blacklist legislation is part of a brewing movement to keep control over the Internet out of the hands of corporations and governments. It's a struggle that puts Internet users before information gatekeepers. At stake is everyone's democratic right to information.
The movement owes its momentum to a recent sequence of events. In 2010 millions of Internet users became advocates in support of Net Neutrality protections. In 2011, the importance of digital freedom spilled out onto the streets as demonstrators with a mobile phones and a connection became a force in global protests.
Now, millions are rallying against two bills in Congress that allegedly protect intellectual property but go way too far, threatening to hold our free speech rights captive and stifle the creativity and innovation that's become a hallmark of the online community.
Over the weekend the White House succumbed to popular pressure and modified its position on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act (PIPA) saying it would not support any legislation that "reduces freedom of expression" or "undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
"Why We go Black"
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Video: Jonathan Turley: President Obama Can Have American Citizens Killed or Arrested at Whim
This is without a doubt the most frightening warning I've ever heard. At it doesn't come from some wild-eyed radical or right-winger. Jonathan Turley is a respected legal scholar If he says we are no longer a free nation then we should take it very seriously. And he isn't picking one party of the other. Turley says both the Bush and Obama administrations support this assault on the Constitution. He made his comments on Current-TV's 'Countdown.' He was on the program to discuss his Washington Post Op-Ed entitled, "10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free."
Jonathan Turley: 10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free
Jonathan Turley is a distinguished legal scholar. If he says we are no longer a free nation then that's a very frightening statement. And it's happening under a Democratic administration. It means this White House has basically kept in place the Bush administration's war on the Constitution. Either we fight for our freedoms now or we will cease to be a free nation altogether before too long:
Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.Full article
Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?
While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.
Deaths of headphone-wearing pedestrians on the rise
Anna Marie Stickel never heard the train coming. The 14-year-old was listening to music on her iPod while walking along the railroad track, taking a shortcut to school after missing the morning bus.
An Amtrak train traveling south along the stretch of track in Maryland's Middle River struck her from behind, instantly killing the high school freshman on Jan. 5, 2010.
Anna's tragic story sparked a national study examining the dangers associated with pedestrian use of headphones, according to Dr. Richard Lichenstein, director of Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children in Baltimore. She was among 116 cases studied.
Romney Says His Effective Tax Rate Is 'Probably' 15%
NYT: Facing Pointed Attacks, Romney
Under new pressure to release his tax returns, Mitt Romney on Tuesday acknowledged that he pays an effective tax rate of about 15 percent because so much of his fortune comes from past investments.
"It's probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything," Mr. Romney said. "Because my last 10 years, I've - my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, or rather than earned annual income."
The vast majority of the income Mr. Romney reported over 12 months in 2010 and '11 was dividends from investments, capital gains on mutual funds and his post-retirement share of profits and investment returns from Bain Capital, the firm he once led. And Mr. Romney also noted that he made hundreds of thousands of dollars from speaking engagements.
High court rejects appeal of former congressman
High court rejects appeal of former congressman - CNN.com
The federal prosecution of former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona will continue after the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear his appeal.
Renzi, a 54-year-old Republican, faces federal corruption charges related to an alleged illegal land-swap deal designed to help a business associate pay back $700,000 owed the lawmaker. He is also accused of misappropriating money from his family insurance business to fund his campaigns and for personal benefit.
The charges include conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and insurance fraud.
Fact check: GOP candidates stretch truth in S.C. debate
Source: USAToday:
Romney claimed that "this president has opened up no new markets for American goods around the world in his three years," ignoring trade deals Obama signed in October 2011 with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.
When we asked Romney's spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, about this claim, he said the three deals we mentioned were negotiated by the Bush administration and only approved by Congress under Obama. But that, too, ignores work by the Obama administration to break a stalemate and win agreement from lawmakers on the deals. The New York Timessaid that the culmination of the deals "end[ed] a political standoff that has stretched across two presidencies," calling the inking of the pacts "a rare moment of bipartisan accord" and "a victory for President Obama," who bucked some in his own party who opposed the deals.
So it would be accurate to say the president hasn't negotiated any new trade deals, but Romney goes too far when he denies the president any credit for opening up new markets.
Paul vs. history: Income tax
Rep. Ron Paul claimed that the United States had no income tax "up until 1913." Not quite. Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861 to help finance the Civil War.
During the debate, moderator Bret Baier asked each candidate how high they would set the income tax rate. Paul was the only candidate to say "zero" percent, drawing huge applause, and supporting his position with a bogus history lesson.
Paul: Well, we should have the lowest tax that we ever had and up until 1913 it was zero percent. What's so bad about that?
Yes, the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the explicit power to tax "from whatever source derived." But Congress did impose income taxes prior to that.
Donors Gave as Santorum Won Earmarks
And he calls himself a Conservative. Less government? Sounds like corruption to me:
The announcements flowed out of Rick Santorum’s Senate office: a $3.5 million federal grant to Piasecki Aircraft to help it test a new helicopter propeller technology; another $3.5 million to JLG Industries to bolster its bid to build all-terrain forklifts for the military; $1.4 million to Medico Industries to upgrade equipment for its munitions work.Full article
Each of the news releases represented an earmark or, in some cases, multiple ones — the practice by which members of Congress set aside money in federal spending bills for what critics often denounce as pet projects back home.
Mr. Santorum, who picked up the endorsement of a group of prominent Christian conservative leaders on Saturday, has been trying to persuade conservatives to coalesce behind his candidacy. His rivals for the Republican presidential nomination have seized upon his spending record in an effort to cast doubt on his fiscal conservative bona fides.
Occupy Movement to Converge on Capitol Hill and Congress
Thousands of Occupy protesters from across the country are expected to converge Tuesday on Capitol Hill to take their message to the halls of Congress, in what some observers say is the movement’s overdue moment to engage the American political system.
Protesters already have set up camps in public spaces, taken over foreclosed homes and shut down key shipping ports, but for the most part they have shunned the political system, viewing it as beyond salvation.
The congressional protest – which falls on the movement's four-month mark and the beginning of a new session of Congress – appears to represent a strategic shift aimed at winning support of the many Americans disillusioned with the legislative branch
“Often the complaint that I hear is that, 'you guys are targeting the wrong people.' And so we have that discussion about you know whether or not Wall Street is the source of the problem or really Congress is," said Aaron Bornstein, a 31-year-old neuroscientist and member of the Occupy Wall Street Think Tank, which will hold discussions at the event.
Transcript, Video: FoxNews South Carolina GOP Debate (1-16-12)
Full Transcript. Excerpt below:
But the controversy on the campaign trail in recent days has been about Governor Romney’s record. We are going to talk extensively about jobs, federal debt, world hotspots, and social issues, but, first, let’s clear the air.Full video of the debate:
Speaker Gingrich, on a debate stage in September, you vowed to, quote, “repudiate every effort of the news media to get Republicans to fight each other to protect Barack Obama, who deserves to be defeated,” close quote. And yet in recent days, you and your campaign have cited numerous outlets, from the New York Times to Salon.com, to attack Governor Romney’s business record, the exact line of attack the Obama campaign is using. Why?
GINGRICH: Well, first of all, I think that the staying positive through Iowa, through $3.5 million of negative attacks, proved you either have to unilaterally disarm and leave the race or you have to at least bring up your competitor’s record.
Second, I think it’s very important for us to look at job creation. As a young member of Congress, I worked with President Ronald Reagan. We passed an economic growth package. We created 16 million jobs. The American people within a framework that Reagan had established created 16 million jobs.
As speaker I came back — working with President Bill Clinton, we passed a very Reagan-like program, less regulation, lower taxes. Unemployment dropped to 4.2 percent. We created 11 million jobs. Now, those are real numbers that people can verify out in the open.
GINGRICH: Governor Romney as governor raised taxes and Massachusetts was 47th in job creation, fourth from the bottom. That’s a public record difference.
The second part of his campaign is citing his experience in business, which is perfectly legitimate, but if that’s a part of your campaign, then questioning it has to be equally legitimate.
And it struck me raising those questions, giving me an opportunity to answer them is exactly what campaigns ought to be about. And we need to satisfy the country that whoever we nominate has a record that can stand up to Barack Obama in a very effective way.
(APPLAUSE)
Monday, January 16, 2012
Poll: Disapproval of Congress Hits New High
But those same 84% are still going to vote to keep their member of Congress office. How many times do we allow them to fool us. Stop voting to reelect these people if you think they are failing you. Things won't get any better until we say - ENOUGH:
A record 84 percent of Americans say they disapprove of the way the Congress is doing its job compared with just 13 percent who approve of how things are going, according to a Washington Post/ABC News public opinion poll published on Monday.Source: Reuters
The disapproval rating for Congress inched up two percentage points since October and reflects a year of lows for Congress that ended in a battle over a temporary extension of the payroll tax cuts for 160 million Americans.
[...]The 84 percent disapproval rate is the highest for Congress in nearly 40 years of polling. The previous high was last October, when 82 percent of poll respondents said they disapproved of the way lawmakers on Capitol Hill were doing their jobs.
US honors MLK with service — and more Occupy protests
Occupy Wall Street is in the tradition of the civil rights movement led by MLKjr in the 1960s. And it is OWS that is laying the foundation for revolution in America last seen with the destruction of Jim Crow in the South:
Americans honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday with a traditional day of service as well as a new wave of protests by Occupy Wall Street to promote causes of economic justice.Full article
Across the nation, hundreds of formal events were planned for the federal holiday to celebrate the slain leader's birthday and legacy, from prayer services to parades to performances.
But it was the first time the annual King holiday has been held since the Occupy Wall Street movement reignited debate about social inequality and poverty. The protesters have targeted investment banks, noting the government bailed out Wall Street while many Americans still struggle with joblessness and housing foreclosures.
Not long before he was murdered in 1968, King was organizing a Poor People's Campaign as the next phase in the civil rights movement.
"Occupy Wall Street continues Martin Luther King's quest for economic justice through nonviolent action," the protest movement said in a statement.
Hackers Attack Israeli Stock Exchange In Escalating Mideast Cyber-Throwdown
Cyberterror is the next 9-11 waiting to happen. And the U.S. government is not preparing us. Not even the militarily prepared Israelis can stop it. There is already cyberwar going on. And if something isn't done we'll be hit just as we were at Pearl Harbor or on 9-11:
The websites of Israel's stock exchange and national airline were hit by hack attacks today after weekend threats from the pro-Palestinian hacker 0xOmar. It's the latest volley in the escalating hacker-on-hacker pissing-match currently drenching the Middle East in leaked credit card information.Full article
Today's attacks weren't very impressive; they briefly took down the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al Airlines, but didn't impact service in either cases. Still, they've captured headlines because of their place in the ongoing 'cyberwar' being waged between two groups of teen hackers on either side of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
This all started started in early January, when a hacker claiming to be a 19-year-old Saudi going by the name 0xOmar leaked about 15,000 Israeli credit cards and claimed to have a million more. Besides his burning hatred of Israel, he seemed like a pretty normal teenage geek in our chat with him, with a penchant for Xbox and web design.
Scientists Uncover The Mathematics Of Serial Killers
Let's hope it leads to actual results in fighting crime:
Andrei Chikatilo, “The Butcher of Rostov,” was one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. Between 1978 and 1990 in the Ukraine, he committed at least 52 murders before he was caught, tried and executed. The pattern of his murders, though, was irregular. There were long periods of no activity, interrupted by several murders within a short period of time.Full article
Hoping to gain insight into serial killings to prevent similar murders, his pattern of behavior was examined by Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury at UCLA. They’ve published a paper on ArXiv with their preliminary results.
What the authors used as the basis of their analysis was the hypothesis that “similar to epileptic seizures, the psychotic affects, causing a serial killer to commit murder, arise from simultaneous firing of large number of neurons in the brain.” Accordingly, they based their model on neuronal firing – the fact that, once a neuron fires, there’s a refractory period that has to pass before it can fire again. When it does fire, it can trigger other neurons to fire if they’re ready to. As you can imagine, though, those firings aren’t always in sync. So what the authors suggest is that there must be a threshold – that is, when a certain number of neurons fire, the serial killer becomes driven by an overwhelming urge to kill.
Fox News: ‘You Can Pee on Me All You Want, Don’t Shoot Me”
This is typical FOX. Justify any behavior in the most profane manner if it furthers the right wing agenda:
The party of “ideas” has come to this: The Republican Party’s publicity arm Fox News had Brad Stine on this morning’s edition of Fox and Friends to justify Marines peeing on dead “Taliban.” After he got through explaining that liberals are coming from a position of idiocracy based in feminine values of putting too much emphasis on feelings, he explained that guys will be guys and under pressure, they pee on people.
Summing this up, he said, “You can pee on me all you want, don’t shoot me.”
Can an Economy Still grow with Serious Debt?
The answer is - no. We are drowning in debt. That crowds out the necessary government investment in infrastructure that is necessary for a economy to grow:
Currently, there seems to be a positive correlation between current account balances and economic growth. Countries with big deficits like Greece, Spain and Britain are performing really bad, while surplus countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Germany and Sweden are performing really good. And China with its large surplus are outperforming India with its deficit.
Al Sharpton To Protest Michigan Emergency Takeover Law
Sharpton honors the memory of MLKjr. by fighting against tyranny in Michigan:
The Rev. Al Sharpton and others say they plan a demonstration outside the gated community where Republican Gov. Rick Snyder lives to protest what they say is a racially biased law that makes it easier for Michigan to take over financially struggling communities and school districts.
The protest is scheduled on Martin Luther King Day at Snyder's home in Washtenaw County's Superior Township, near Ann Arbor. The protesters plan to march Monday afternoon to a gatehouse outside the private subdivision that includes the governor's home.
Sharpton and U.S. Rep. John Conyers talked about the protest Sunday at a news at a Detroit church.
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