Tuesday, July 19, 2011
UK media ignore Murdoch role in Iraq war
While the British ordinary citizens are buried under piles of news about Murdoch's empire hacking into the voicemails of the royal family , celebrities, high-ranking politicians, a murdered teenager and the relatives of the dead soldiers , almost all media fail to report Murdoch's worst allegation : the endorsement of illegal war in Iraq.
Media observers accuse Murdoch's newspapers of being the main newspaper propagandizing the fraudulent military conflicts.
The media tycoon had given his full support to the illegal Iraq war, and many times praised former Prime Minister Tony Blair for his courage saying: "I think Tony is being extraordinarily courageous and strong on what his stance is in the Middle East."
News International papers began doing their best convincing people about what they called the grave threat of Saddam Hussein weapons, even two years before the publication of the government's dossier on Iraq's non-existent Weapon of Mass Destruction.
As the UK government was beating the drums of the war louder in 2003 , Murdoch's newspaper initiated even more pro-war propaganda. Murdoch who was the strong supporter of attacking Iraq and ousting Saddam, even said:"The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in the any country." However after the invasion News International never apologized for the false information they had published pushing the economy to the brink of collapse.
Anonymous To Create Its Own Social Networking Site
The futuristic group equated Google’s topical action against them to the tittle-tattles of activists being banned from various social sites like Facebook,Twitter, Youtube and administration blocking websites using internet expurgation tools.
As a retort, Anonymous has strong-willed to create their very own social networking site which they named ‘Anonplus’, i.e. Anonplus.com.
The site has only been proclaimed. At the bottom left hand corner, it says “Revision: 0.1 Alpha.” this version number is predestined to be a sign of the site very early in development. There is still no way to sign up or interact. The slogan is “Social NetworkingAnonymously,” while the caption is “Welcome to Anonplus.com the Anonymous Social Networking site.”
Although the inventiveness sounds odd since it says whatever Anonymous is regarding but it is possible to build such a social network which shares only the information you allow it to and so Anonymous might be aiming for that, they most probably would keep your personal details clandestine unless you want to share them yourself. The world of social networking is really heating up and that’s called true globalization!
An Anonymous spokesperson wrote in a statement “This is one social network that will not tolerate being shut down, censored, or oppressed – even in the face of blackout. We the people have had enough…enough of governments and corporations saying what’s best for us – what’s safe for our minds. The sheep era is over. The interwebz are no longer your prison.”
Some voters favor good looking candidates
BOSTON, J
uly 19 (UPI) -- Low-information voters who watch a lot of television appear more influenced by candidates' good looks than those who watch little TV, U.S. researchers say.
Study co-authors Chappell Lawson and Gabriel Lenz of the Massachusetts and colleagues used data from the 2006 U.S. Senate and governors' races and found for every 10-point increase in the advantage a candidate has when rated by voters on his or her looks, there was a nearly 5 percent increase in the vote for that candidate by less-informed voters who watch a good deal of television.
That same advantage in looks was worth only about a 1 percent increase among low-information voters who watch little television.
"It's not that this effect influences all voters exactly the same way," Lawson says in a statement. "Voters who watch a lot of television but don't really know much about the candidates, besides how they look, are particularly susceptible."
The researchers used two 2006 surveys of American voters -- one that sampled 36,500 citizens about their voting choices, levels of knowledge and television-watching habits, and one that asked voters to choose, based solely on appearances, which candidates seemed more competent in 64 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races.
The study, published in the American Journal of Political Science, finds the appearance advantage among low-information voters translates into a substantial edge at the ballot box, the size of the effect is roughly equivalent to the influence of incumbency.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/19/Some-voters-favor-good-looking-candidates/UPI-52791311051981/#ixzz1SYEuZHJV
Ex-CIA officer: Israel likely to attack Iran
While Robert Baer didn’t reveal the sources behind his prediction, he referred to former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s warnings of an Israeli attack on Iran as “no bluff.”
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Barak: Dagan jeopardized Israeli deterrence against Iran
Baer told the KPFK Radio on Tuesday recent comments made by Dagan that an Israeli attack on Iran could lead to a regional war, “tell us with near certainty that [Prime MinisterBinyamin] Netanyahu is planning an attack, and in as much as I can guess when it’s going to be, it’s probably going to be in September, before a [UN General Assembly] vote on the Palestinian state.”
Monday, July 18, 2011
Government-funded electric car company folds; more than $500,000 in taxpayer funds lost
Activist Post
The State of California is completely overwhelmed by debt; roughly $377 billion in debt to be specific. To make matters worse, the City of Salinas and their residents are now going to have to eat over half of a million dollars in losttaxpayer dollars. Mike Ryan, President and Co-Founder of the now-defunct Green Vehicles company just added insult to injury by breaking the news to city officials via e-mail.
This represents something far too common in today’s world of bloated, incompetent government: funding of non-viable or unreliable projects with taxpayer money with no guarantees.
Green Vehicles received two loans from the government of Salinas since 2009, one for $300,000 and an additional $240,000 loan after the corporation began showing their hand as a failure.
In situations like these, the people of Salinas who are having their hard-earned money squandered by bureaucrats should be able to dictate the terms and approval of a loan. Perhaps if the local government held a town hall and/or a vote they wouldn’t be struggling to get a measly half of the lost funds returned.
'Ending wars best resolution to US debt'
About 80.5 percent of the respondents to a Press TV poll believe “ending war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and reducing military spending” is the best way for the US to reduce its 14-trillion-dollar debt.
A total of eight percent said the best resolution was for the US to default on its debt, and 2.9 percent of the respondents believe Washington could get loans from foreign banks or governments to bailout its economy.
The US officially hit its 14.3-trillion-dollar debt ceiling on May 16, up from 10.6-trillion-dollar when Barack Obama took office in 2009.
Small Arkansas Town Wants To Ban Free Speech, No “Group” Will Be Able To Meet Without Cities Permission :
The Intel Hub
By Alex Thomas
July 18, 2011
A small Arkansas town of 850 is attempting to ban groups from meeting to talk about the city without first getting permission from the city itself.
In a move reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the Gould, Arkansas City Council has moved to ban all groups from discussing the city, even in their own home!
Mayor Earnest Nas, in strong statements supporting the peoples constitutional rights, said he is willing to go to court to stop this plan.
“This is America and even though this is Gould, Arkansas, this is still part of America. And in America, you can’t just vote and violate peoples constitutional rights,” said Nash.
This ordinance would effectively ban citizens from talking about the city at the dinner table, boy scout meetings, and book clubs. In fact, the ordinance is so Orwellian that the interview that the local Fox affiliate did with the mayor would actually be considered illegal under the proposed city ordinance.
A prominent lawyer looked over the ordinance and immediately deemed it unconstitutional.
John DiPippa, Dean of the Law School at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, expressed disbelief when he first read the proposed law.
“The truth is the city of Gould doesn’t have the authority to tell anyone that they have no right to petition them, no right to speak and no right to exist in their city,” DiPippa told Fox16.
If the precedent is set in Gould, Arkansas it is only a matter of time before it is proposed in a town near you.
If the city council of this town actually believes that they can legally stop citizens from talking about city issues in the privacy of their own home they have another thing coming. This is America not Nazi Germany.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
FDA issues raw milk warning for SC dairy
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YORK, S.C. — A federal agency is warning people not to drink raw milk from a South Carolina dairy because of a bacterial illness but the owner of the dairy says her products are germ-free.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a Saturday news release that it has confirmed three North Carolina cases of campylobacteriosis associated with raw milk from the Tucker Adkins Dairy in York, S.C.
The people who became ill reported drinking milk from the dairy on June 14 and becoming sick in the middle of June. One person was hospitalized, the agency said.
Dairy owner Carolyn Adkins said that South Carolina health officials have told her that samples of her dairy's milk are free of the bacterial illness that can infect the gastrointestinal system. The infection can cause symptoms that include diarrhea, abdominal cramps and nausea.
"I hate that anybody has gotten sick," she said. "It just does not seem that it was related to our milk."
She said she plans to continue selling raw milk from her 27-cow farm because she has abided by the state's strict regulations regarding the product.
"They'll shut me down if I've violated anything," she said.
Spokesman Adam Myrick of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control said on Saturday evening they're still waiting for lab results to come back and there have been no South Carolina cases of the infection related to the dairy.
He said although the agency believes people should drink pasteurized milk, it's legal to sell raw milk in South Carolina.
Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/07/16/1900886/fda-issues-raw-milk-warning-for.html#ixzz1SNXkETAr
Federal Court Rules That TSA ‘Naked Scans’ Are Constitutional
Last weekend, a Tennessee woman was arrested at the Nashville airport for disorderly conduct after she refused TSA security measures for her children. The woman didn’t want her two children to have to go through a whole-body-imaging scanner. When a Transportation Security Administration officer told her the machines were safe, she said, “I still don’t want someone to see our bodies naked.”
She won’t be pleased with a ruling then out of the D.C. Circuit today. This morning, the federal court ruled that the “naked scans” of air travelers do not violate Americans’ constitutional rights. Privacy rights group EPIC had sued the Department of Homeland Security, alleging violations of innocent passengers’ Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches. The court says that argument doesn’t fly.
In the opinion [pdf] from the D.C. Circuit Court (the Volokh Conspiracy), Judge Douglas Ginsburg writes that the advance imaging technology is not unreasonable given the security concerns on airplanes, and that people have the option to opt out for a pleasurable patdown. The court notes that some “have complained that the resulting patdown was unnecessarily aggressive,” but the judges don’t seem overly concerned about that. Ginsburg writes:
On the other side of the balance, we must acknowledge the steps the TSA has already taken to protect passenger privacy, in particular distorting the image created using AIT and deleting it as soon as the passenger has been cleared. More telling, any passenger may opt-out of AIT screening in favor of a patdown, which allows him to decide which of the two options for detecting a concealed, nonmetallic weapon or explosive is least invasive.
Good news for body scanner manufacturers Rapiscan and L-3. Bad news for those who don’t like having to choose between digital nudity and frisking. Legal scholar Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy expresses mild surprise at how easily the court dismissed privacy concerns with the TSA screens, as he regards the court as a Fourth-Amendment-friendly one.
Photos: How To Protect Your Dignity From The TSA
There was a small rebuke in the opinion for the TSA. The judges ruled that the TSA had violated an administrative law requiring public comment before issuing a new rule making the body scanners their primary tool for airport security. It would be too disruptive to have the TSA stop using the scanners, writes Judge Ginsburg, but they do expect that the TSA will now take comments. In this case, “better late than never” doesn’t really mean much.