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Good Morning!
June, 2012. Photo credit: joanneleon
It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.
~Thomas Paine
News
Occupy protesters to hold national conference in Philadelphia
Organizers expect about 1,500 protesters from Occupy groups around the country will gather on Philadelphia's Independence Mall in the days leading up to the Fourth of July
Occupy groups from across the country are headed to the city for a national gathering on Independence Mall, starting Saturday and running through the Fourth of July. Organizers say about 1,500 protesters are expected for marches and gatherings in support of the group’s push for economic equality and other causes.
National Occupy Guitarmy 99 Mile March, July 5-11 2012
A call for support from Occupiers, Friends, and Musicians from Philadelphia to New York City
The Occupy Guitarmy is spearheading #99MileMarch from Philadelphia to New York City from July 5 to July 11, 2012 in honor of Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday (July 14, 2012) and in celebration of the National Gathering of Occupy movement.
We call on Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York musicians, social justice activists, union members, and occupy supporters to help support our action. We actively seek: daily, overnight, and long haul marchers, daily location event organizers, street medics, guitar techs, kitchen staff, live-streamers, caravan vehicles, oral historians, and general volunteers. We ask that marchers, volunteers, and on-site supporters of our action visit our website (www.99milemarch.org) to engage with us in advance. Please contact us if you plan to march with us!
For more information and details on how to get involved, visit 99milemarch.org and @99MileMarch
'Govt Secrecy as Public Privacy': A New Standard for Oxymoronic Newspeak
If there was an ongoing contest in the art of self-contradicting newspeak, a quote from a U.S. military official during the Vietnam War would be the reigning victor for most of the modern era. In describing the decision to ignore the prospect of civilian casualties and vaporize a Vietnamese village, that unnamed official famously told Peter Arnett of the Associated Press that “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
Epitomizing the futility, immorality and nihilism of that era-defining war, the line has achieved true aphorism status—employed to describe any political endeavor that is, well…futile, immoral and nihilistic.
But now, ever so suddenly, the Vietnam quote has been dethroned by an even more oxymoronic line—one that perfectly summarizes the zeitgeist of the post-9/11 era. As Wired’s Spencer Ackerman reports, “Surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won’t tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency [because] it would violate your privacy to say so.”
How a Lone Grad Student Scooped the Government and What It Means for Your Online Privacy
A gifted computer scientist, Mayer suspected that online advertisers might be getting around browser settings that are designed to block tracking devices known as cookies. If his instinct was right, advertisers were following people as they moved from one website to another even though their browsers were configured to prevent this sort of digital shadowing. Working long hours at his office, Mayer ran a series of clever tests in which he purchased ads that acted as sniffers for the sort of unauthorized cookies he was looking for. He hit the jackpot, unearthing one of the biggest privacy scandals of the past year: Google was secretly planting cookies on a vast number of iPhone browsers. Mayer thinks millions of iPhones were targeted by Google.
Sanders Statement on Student Loans
"Young people in Vermont and across the country are facing extraordinary challenges. They are paying three to four times as much as their parents did for a college education. With families already overburdened, it would have been awful to have let interest rates double.
"In Vermont, nearly 70 percent of college graduates are carrying student loan debt, on average about $30,000. This puts Vermont at the sixth-highest student loan debt load in the country. I'm glad the Senate was able to pass this common-sense provision and keep the interest rate on federal subsidized Stafford loans at their current rate of 3.4 percent."
'Heat... Fire... Disaster': What Climate Change Looks Like
Western US fires are being driven by extreme temperatures, which are consistent with IPCC projections
“What we’re seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, referring to raging wildfires in the US west, in a press briefing on Thursday. "It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster... This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future."
Oppenheimer, speaking alongside other scientists, argued that shorters winters with less snow, coupled with earlier Springs, and extreme summer heat -- all contributors for the fires burning in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico -- were also conditions that he and his colleagues at the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted would result from carbon-induced climate change.
Why bats are summer's best friend
But most amazing to me was the stat that bats need to eat their body weight in insects every day to survive. In fact, bats are a major control against those insects that most bug human beings, like mosquitoes and other biting summer nuisances. (Besides bug eating, they also pollinate plants in the Southern Hemisphere, where they are responsible for pollinating about 80 percent of rain forest plants). So the recent threats to bat health, especially White Nose Syndrome (a fungus that kills 95 percent of those it infects) not only kill bats, but can lead to out-of-control insect populations.
So it is in our own human best interest to keep bat populations healthy. Fewer insects means fewer itchy bites, and more importantly, fewer pesticides needed for our food crops - including those in our own gardens!
Here’s why the prettiest tomatoes taste the worst
Farmers have been selecting for this even-ripening gene for 70 years, little realizing that they were closing the flavor gap between a tomato and a water balloon. Now, almost all commercial tomatoes go beautifully red all over when ripe, and almost all have reduced sugar and reduced tomato-y taste.
The Fight for PACE Continues...
Despite FHFA’s sustained effort to crush Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), PACE continues to re-surface as one of the most scalable and viable mechanisms to improve residential energy efficiency and create jobs without dependence on public subsidy.
Perhaps that is why yesterday, in a hearing held on Capitol Hill by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, PACE took center stage when Senator Al Franken asked the panel of invited experts to name the single most important thing Congress could do to scale up energy efficiency retrofits. In response to Senator Franken’s query, David Sundstrom, Administrator of the Sonoma County Energy Independence Program (SCEIP), indicated that PACE was a particularly scalable strategy – given that 28 states and District of Columbia have already enacted the enabling legislation needed for PACE – and the key action needed would be for Congress to encourage (or, if that approach is unsuccessful, then to direct) the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to reverse its long-standing opposition to PACE.
Why Is The Pentagon Unable To Keep Awards Records?
In striking down the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, aimed at punishing liars who insult the nation's most-decorated war veterans, Kennedy states that the Defense Department lacks a comprehensive database of Medal of Honor winners.
"Without verifiable records, successful criminal prosecution under the Act would be more difficult in any event," Kennedy writes in the meaty decision.
[ ... ]
The U.S. solicitor general told the high court Congress and the Pentagon in 2008, "investigated the feasibility of establishing a database," the justice writes. According to Kennedy, they concluded such a database "would be impracticable and insufficiently comprehensive."
U.S.: Some Taliban at Gitmo could go to Afghanistan
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is considering a new gambit to restart peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan that would send several Taliban detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan officials told The Associated Press.
Under the proposal, some Taliban fighters or affiliates captured in the early days of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and later sent to Guantanamo under the label of enemy combatants would be transferred out of full U.S. control but not released. It's a leap of faith on the U.S. side that the men will not become threats to U.S. forces once back on Afghan soil. But it is meant to show more moderate elements of the Taliban insurgency that the U.S. is still interested in cutting a deal for peace.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others have said that while negotiations with the Taliban are distasteful, they are the best way to settle the prolonged war.
IMF approves $18.2 million for Afghanistan
WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund on Friday approved $18.2 million disbursement to Afghanistan following the first performance review of its new loan program.
Blog Posts of Interest
The Evening Blues - 6-29-12 on DailyKos by joe shikpack
Freaky Friday: Stonewall Edition on DailyKos by Dave in Northridge
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