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Shiite Militias Cling to Swaths of Basra and Stage Raids - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...30iraq.html al-sadr iraq militia sadr city shiite war on terror
shared by alex thorn on 30 Mar 08 - Cached
  • Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.
  • alex thorn on 30 Mar 08
     
    Shiite militiamen in Basra openly controlled wide swaths of the city on Saturday and staged increasingly bold raids on Iraqi government forces sent five days ago to wrest control from the gunmen, witnesses said, as Iraqi political leaders grew increasingly critical of the stalled assault.
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Lesser-Evil Math Doesn't Compute: Freedom Plaza Has the Same Name as Tahrir Square | Tr... - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...1309097120 Lesser-Evil Math Doesn't Compute: Freedom Plaza Has the Same Name as Tahrir Square | Truthout
shared by thinkahol * on 27 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 27 Jun 11
     
    In an electoral system corrupted by money, media, and parties, the US people are offered a choice every four years between two hideously awful candidates for an office that increasingly resembles an imperial throne. And increasingly the primary motivation of voters is to oppose the candidate they believe is the greater evil.
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Big Content condemns foreign governments that endorse FOSS - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...ernments-that-endorse-foss.ars open source Special 301 USTR IIPA absurd recommendations self-serving
shared by Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • University of Edinburgh law lecturer Andres Guadamuz wrote a blog entry this week highlighting some particularly troubling aspects of the IIPA's 301 recommendations. The organization has condemned Indonesia and several other countries for encouraging government adoption of open source software. According to the IIPA, official government endorsements of open source software create "trade barriers" and restrict "equitable market access" for software companies. The profound absurdity of this accusation is exacerbated by the fact that Indonesia's move towards open source software was almost entirely motivated by a desire to eliminate the use of pirated software within the government IT infrastructure. It's important to understand that Indonesia has not mandated the adoption of open source software or barred government agencies from purchasing proprietary commercial software. The Indonesian government issued a statement in 2009 informing municipal governments that they had to stop using pirated software. The statement said that government agencies must either purchase legally licensed commercial software or switch to free and open source alternatives in order to comply with copyright law. This attempt by Indonesia to promote legal software procurement processes by endorsing the viability of open source software has apparently angered the IIPA. In its 301 recommendations for Indonesia, the IIPA demands that the government rescind its 2009 statement. According to the IIPA, Indonesia's policy "weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness" because open source software "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations [and] fails to build respect for intellectual property rights." The number of ways in which the IIPA's statements regarding open source software are egregiously misleading and dishonest are too numerous to count. The IIPA seems to have completely missed the fact that there is a very robust ecosystem of commercial software vendors in the open source software market and that open source software is at the heart of some of the most popular consumer electronics products that are sold in the United States. It has clearly become an important part of the US software economy and increasingly serves as an enabler of innovation and technological progress. In light of the profitability of Red Hat and other open source leaders, it seems absurd to contend that open source software adoption will weaken the software industry or reduce its competitiveness. In fact, the emergence of open source software has contributed to creating a more competitive landscape in the software industry by offering alternative business models that enable smaller companies to gain traction against the dominant incumbent players. The IIPA's position is profoundly hypocritical, because many parts of the US government, including the Department of Defense, have issued their own memos endorsing open source software adoption. The IIPA's disingenuous move to equate open source software with piracy reeks of desperation. The BSA and other IIPA members are likely losing sleep over open source software because that development model and approach to licensing will empower developing countries to build their own domestic IT industries, eliminating the need for them to tithe to American software giants. It's another failing of the 301 review, which Big Content wants used to coerce other countries into adopting ever-more-stringent copyright laws.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10
     
    In accordance with US trade law, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) is required to conduct an annual review of the status of foreign intellectual property laws. This review, which is referred to as Special 301, is typically used to denounce countries that have less restrictive copyright policies than the United States. The review process is increasingly dominated by content industry lobbyists who want to subvert US trade policy and make it more favorable to their own interests. We have already noted the targeting of Canada for its supposedly lax copyright laws, but that is not the only nation drawing the ire of Big Content. One of the organizations that plays a key role in influencing the Special 301 review is the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a powerful coalition that includes the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The IIPA, which recently published its official recommendations to the USTR for the 2010 edition of the 301 review, has managed to achieve a whole new level of absurdity.
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Bloggers are Africa's new rebels - Chicago Tribune - 0 views

archives.chicagotribune.com/...chi-corr_africajan13 social movements africa blogging us intervention politics obama washington
shared by Arabica Robusta on 27 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Dagem, as he chose to be called, was a new type of African revolutionary: a blogger.
  • The U.S. should take note. As it prepares to engage with Africa more intensely than at any time since the Cold War, in part by the Pentagon’s establishment of a new Africa Command headquarters to coordinate military and security interests, the U.S. will be competing on an increasingly flat information playing field.
  • Gone are the days when Washington could control its messages in client states. The scruffy cyber cafes of Chad and the man in Congo who rents his cell phone by the minute – sometimes climbing atop a tree to improve reception – ensure that Washington’s voice will have to vie with those of the resource-hungry Chinese, or with the designs of Al Qaeda recruiters.
  • Arabica Robusta on 27 Dec 09
     
    "The U.S. should take note. As it prepares to engage with Africa more intensely than at any time since the Cold War, in part by the Pentagon's establishment of a new Africa Command headquarters to coordinate military and security interests, the U.S. will be competing on an increasingly flat information playing field."
  • Arabica Robusta on 27 Dec 09
     
    This older article highlights the immorality of much that is called U.S. foreign policy and journalism. The lesson learned here is not what it should be, that people on the grassroots are fighting against authoritarian violent governments funded by the U.S. Rather it is a bland, neoimperialist comment about what the U.S. propaganda machine has to deal with in future interventions.
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American Democracy Beyond Casino Capitalism and the Torture State | Truthout - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...1305143581 With all due respect to Charles Dickens it appears be the worst of times for public and higher education in America if not democracy itself; schools are increasingly viewed as a business prized above customer satisfaction efficiency while largely judged t
shared by thinkahol * on 16 May 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 16 May 11
     
    With all due respect to Charles Dickens, it appears to be the worst of times for public and higher education in America, if not democracy itself; public schools are increasingly viewed as a business and are prized above all for customer satisfaction and efficiency, while largely judged through the narrow lens of empirical accountability measures. When not functioning as an adjunct of corporate value or a potentially lucrative for-profit investment, public schools are reduced to containment centers, holding institutions designed to largely punish young people marginalized by race and class.
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Some of the most considered Middle East crisis - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/-considered-middle-east-crisis middle east crisis
shared by Muslim Academy on 11 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 11 Aug 12
     
    Zionism is one of the Middle East Crisis which has been increasingly vital for imperialist powers for strategic positions. In 1918, the majority of area that was a part of Turkish Empire was sided along Germany in 1st World War. This area was defeated from Arab armies and by British. During 1920, French and British imperialism further divided Middle East to hand over the pieces of land to the rulers. Lebanon was called as another state which was dominated by the Christian bourgeoisie through a compromise that was taken by the leaders of Moslem peasantry and Druze.
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U.S. schools: grooming students for a surveillance state | Privacy News - PogoWasRight.org - 0 views

www.pogowasright.org/?p=13175 U.S. schools: grooming students for a surveillance state
shared by thinkahol * on 05 Sep 10 - Cached
  • thinkahol * on 05 Sep 10
     
    Schools are increasingly invading student privacy both in school and outside of school. Are schools grooming youth to passively accept a surveillance state
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t r u t h o u t | Do Not Pity the Democrats - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/do-not-pity-democrats63204 t r u h o | Do Not Pity the Democrats
shared by thinkahol * on 17 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 17 Sep 10
     
    There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic. The intent, design and function of these institutions, controlled by corporate money, are to bolster the hierarchical and anti-democratic power of the corporate state. These institutions, often mouthing liberal values, abet and perpetuate mounting inequality. They operate increasingly in secrecy. They ignore suffering or sacrifice human lives for profit. They control and manipulate all levers of power and mass communication. They have muzzled the voices and concerns of citizens. They use entertainment, celebrity gossip and emotionally laden public-relations lies to seduce us into believing in a Disneyworld fantasy of democracy.
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YouTube - Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch YouTube - Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio
shared by thinkahol * on 20 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 20 Oct 10
     
    This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed using 50 classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald's life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.   Will Donald's feelings of disenfranchisement lead him to be persuaded by his radio's increasingly paranoid and divisive rhetoric? Or will our favorite Disney duck decide that this voice is not actually on his side after all? Watch and find out!   * Listen to Glenn Beck's response on his radio show to this remix video: YouTube via stopbeck.org - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHHByFFSh54  * Better yet check out ikat381's remix of Beck's response using Mickey Mouse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbjjTLVrkKA  This transformative remix work constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. "Right Wing Radio Duck" by Jonathan McIntosh is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License - permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.  * Please link back to my website: http://www.rebelliouspixels.com * English captions are now working in case you're not fluent in duck-speak  * Learn about fair-use at the Center for Social Media: http://centerforsocialmedia.org * Learn about transformative works at the OTW: http://transformativeworks.org * Useful Media Matters archive of Glenn Beck clips: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Jonathan McIntosh http://www.rebelliouspixels.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  List of Cartoons used:  * Window Cleaner - 1940 * Lucky Number - 1951 * Symphony Hour - 1942 (Mickey Mouse Cartoon)  * Put-Put Troubles - 1940 * Donald's Dilemma -19
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Radical Anti-tax Groups Growing Threat, Say Law Enforcement - Local News | News Article... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...0,2933,586904,00.html Joseph Stack manifesto anti-tax IRS
shared by Skeptical Debunker on 22 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Stack's manifesto offers insight into his personal journey as a tax protester - and into the large and growing movement that attracted him. Passages of Stack's manifesto suggest that he was involved in a notorious home church scheme that was popular in the part of California where he lived before he moved to Texas, MacNab said. Stack wrote that he was part of a group who held tax code readings and "zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful 'exemptions' that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy." He said they had "the best high-paid experienced tax lawyers in the business." MacNab said Stack likely was referring to a notorious scheme run by lawyers William Drexler and Jerome Daly. It was based on the idea that citizens could establish themselves as a church and gain the same tax exemptions afforded to religious institutions. The scheme didn't work, and Drexler and Daly were disbarred and imprisoned. If this was the operation Stack was referring to, it may have been a turning point in his life. He wrote: "That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie." This inspired him to take action, write to politicians and meet with likeminded anti-tax protesters. He wrote: "I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity." His anti-tax and anti-government beliefs may also have been fueled by Section 1706, an obscure and relatively unknown change in the tax code that focused on his industry and went into effect in 1986. Section 1706 essentially removed technical workers like software engineers from a safe haven classification of "self-employed consultant," making it easier for the IRS to challenge how Information Technology companies classified their employers. An association of IT companies and industry professionals, now called TechServe Alliance, was created to protest the changes in tax law that it says singled out the industry. "It made the whole business riskier for people using independent contractors because it favored the so-called employment business model," Mark Roberts, TechServe CEO, told FoxNews.com. "It created havoc on a number of folks." Roberts was quick to condemned Stack's behavior as "an act of a very, very sick individual." "I don't see a long-term lasting effect, just a troubled wayward person acting in response to a legitimate issue. But I don't think that actually impacts the issue," Roberts said. Noting that Section 1706 was passed years ago, he added: "We still resent the fact that it singles out the industry, but folks have basically learned to adapt. It's kind of been awhile since this was a burning issue in the industry."
  • Skeptical Debunker on 22 Feb 10
     
    Joseph Stack, the 53-year-old software engineer who crashed his small plane into a seven-story office building in Austin, Texas, was part of a growing, violent anti-tax and anti-government movement that has become increasingly alarming to law enforcement agencies.\n\nStack, who torched his home Thursday morning before setting out on his suicide flight, was fueled by his hatred of the Internal Revenue Service, which had offices and employed nearly 200 workers in the building.
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American politics: Increasingly, only the wealthy need apply - latimes.com - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...-pols-20101212,0,6688232.story American politics: Increasingly only the wealthy need apply - latimes.com
shared by thinkahol * on 20 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 20 Dec 10
     
    Though John Adams railed against it more than two centuries ago, we now find ourselves in a new age of aristocratic despotism.
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A Philosophical Orientation Toward Solving Our Collective Problems As a Species | Think... - 0 views

thinkahol.wordpress.com/...llective-problems-as-a-species Philosophical Orientation Toward Solving Our Collective Problems As a Species | Thinkahol's Blog
shared by thinkahol * on 29 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 29 Dec 10
     
    To know what the most important virtue of our age is we need to have at least a basic understanding of our age. Our era is becoming increasingly characterized by uncertainty. Fortunately or unfortunately, more than a cursory elucidation of our situation is beyond the scope of this essay. There are geopolitical, economic, technological and environmental trends worth mentioning. When the more philosophical portion of this  discourse arrives I will argue that the virtue of wisdom underlies the meaningfulness and efficacy of all other virtues, and this in broad strokes is primarily due to (1) the aforementioned instability in our surroundings ; (2) the relationship between the deontological and virtue; and (3) the nature of agency itself.  Whether uncertainty itself can provide an ethical foundation for us to elaborate on will be a separate question, and finally I speculate on where wisdom leads us in the context of a philosophy that is politically active and not doomed to irrelevance to and by the larger population.
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Creeping Tyranny | Mother Jones - 0 views

motherjones.com/...creeping-tyranny Creeping Tyranny | Mother Jones
shared by thinkahol * on 07 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 07 Jan 11
     
    Go read this Glenn Greenwald post and this followup from Nick Baumann about Gulet Mohamed, an American citizen who was recently arrested in Kuwait, brutally tortured (I think it's OK to use the word since it's someone else's police we're talking about), and then put on a no-fly list so he can't return to America. This is not the first time this has happened, and if you're really worried about an increasingly tyrannical government, this is the kind of thing to worry about. If a crime has been committed, then let him come home and charge him. If not, then he's an American citizen, and no American government should be allowed to unilaterally strand its own citizens overseas. This whole affair is revolting.
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Chris Hedges: This Time We're Taking the Whole Planet With Us - Chris Hedges' Columns -... - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/..._whole_planet_with_us_20110307 Chris Hedges: This Time We're Taking the Whole Planet With Us - Hedges' Columns Truthdig
shared by thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 09 Mar 11
     
    Civilizations rise, decay and die. Time, as the ancient Greeks argued, for individuals and for states is cyclical. As societies become more complex they become inevitably more precarious. They become increasingly vulnerable. And as they begin to break down there is a strange retreat by a terrified and confused population from reality, an inability to acknowledge the self-evident fragility and impending collapse. The elites at the end speak in phrases and jargon that do not correlate to reality. They retreat into isolated compounds, whether at the court at Versailles, the Forbidden City or modern palatial estates. The elites indulge in unchecked hedonism, the accumulation of vaster wealth and extravagant consumption. They are deaf to the suffering of the masses who are repressed with greater and greater ferocity. Resources are more ruthlessly depleted until they are exhausted. And then the hollowed-out edifice collapses. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elites, after clearing their forests and polluting their streams with silt and acids, retreated backward into primitivism. As food and water shortages expand across the globe, as mounting poverty and misery trigger street protests in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the elites do what all elites do. They launch more wars, build grander monuments to themselves, plunge their nations deeper into debt, and as it all unravels they take it out on the backs of workers and the poor. The collapse of the global economy, which wiped out a staggering $40 trillion in wealth, was caused when our elites, after destroying our manufacturing base, sold massive quantities of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities to pension funds, small investors, banks, universities, state and foreign governments and shareholders. The elites, to cover the losses, then looted the public treasury to begin the speculation over again. They also, in the name of austerity, began dismantling basic social services, set out to break th
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Fast Track to Inequality - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...02herbert.html Fast Track to Inequality - NYTimes.com
shared by thinkahol * on 26 May 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 26 May 11
     
    The clearest explanation yet of the forces that converged over the past three decades or so to undermine the economic well-being of ordinary Americans is contained in the new book, "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class." The authors, political scientists Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of the University of California, Berkeley, argue persuasively that the economic struggles of the middle and working classes in the U.S. since the late-1970s were not primarily the result of globalization and technological changes but rather a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the very rich. Those changes were the result of increasingly sophisticated, well-financed and well-organized efforts by the corporate and financial sectors to tilt government policies in their favor, and thus in favor of the very wealthy. From tax laws to deregulation to corporate governance to safety net issues, government action was deliberately shaped to allow those who were already very wealthy to amass an ever increasing share of the nation's economic benefits. "Over the last generation," the authors write, "more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and superrich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind."
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In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war - Glenn Greenw... - 0 views

www.salon.com/...index.html In a pure coincidence Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war - Glenn Greenwald Salon.com
shared by thinkahol * on 13 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • As usual, the ideas stigmatized with the most potent taboos are the ones that are the most obviously true.
  • thinkahol * on 13 Jun 11
     
    When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specifically vowed that "broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake."  This no-fly zone was created in the first week, yet now, almost three months later, the war drags on without any end in sight, and NATO is no longer even hiding what has long been obvious: that its real goal is exactly the one Obama vowed would not be pursued -- regime change through the use of military force.  We're in Libya to forcibly remove Gaddafi from power and replace him with a regime that we like better, i.e., one that is more accommodating to the interests of the West.  That's not even a debatable proposition at this point. What I suppose is debatable, in the most generous sense of that term, is our motive in doing this.  Why -- at a time when American political leaders feel compelled to advocate politically radioactive budget cuts to reduce the deficit and when polls show Americans solidly and increasingly opposed to the war -- would the U.S. Government continue to spend huge sums of money to fight this war?  Why is President Obama willing to endure self-evidently valid accusations -- even from his own Party -- that he's fighting an illegal war by brazenly flouting the requirements for Congressional approval?  Why would Defense Secretary Gates risk fissures by so angrily and publicly chiding NATO allies for failing to build more Freedom Bombs to devote to the war?  And why would we, to use the President's phrase, "stand idly by" while numerous other regimes -- including our close allies in Bahrain and Yemen and the one in Syria -- engage in attacks on their own people at least as heinous as those threatened by Gaddafi, yet be so devoted to targeting the Libyan leader?
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Rule by Rentiers - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...10krugman.html Rule by Rentiers - NYTimes.com
shared by thinkahol * on 13 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 13 Jun 11
     
    What lies behind this trans-Atlantic policy paralysis? I'm increasingly convinced that it's a response to interest-group pressure. Consciously or not, policy makers are catering almost exclusively to the interests of rentiers - those who derive lots of income from assets, who lent large sums of money in the past, often unwisely, but are now being protected from loss at everyone else's expense.
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on, "Would We Be Better Off If John McCain Were President?" | Thinkahol's Blog - 0 views

thinkahol.wordpress.com/...-if-john-mccain-were-president on "Would We Be Better Off If John McCain Were President?" | Thinkahol's Blog
shared by thinkahol * on 19 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 19 Jul 11
     
    Articles like these are increasingly laying bare the fact that with the most consequential policy decisions of the U.S. government are largely a result of unaccountable institutional forces that are the ground under which both of the two major political parties operate.
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The Cult That Is Destroying America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/...ult-that-is-destroying-america The Cult That Is Destroying America - NYTimes.com
shared by thinkahol * on 27 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 27 Jul 11
     
    Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis - a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences - it's increasingly obvious that what we're looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system. And no, I don't mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are. No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.
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Iraq Withdrawal? Don't Take It to the Bank | MichaelMoore.com - 0 views

www.michaelmoore.com/...ithdrawal-dont-take-it-to-bank Iraq Withdrawal? Don't Take It to the Bank | MichaelMoore.com
shared by thinkahol * on 18 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 18 Aug 11
     
    The Washington Post brings the unsurprising news that Iraqi leaders have agreed to begin talks with the U.S. on allowing the foreign military occupation of their country to continue beyond this year - re-branded, naturally, as a mission of "training" and "support." The move comes after an increasingly public campaign by top White House and military officials to pressure Iraqi leaders into tearing up the Status of Forces Agreement they signed with the Bush administration, which mandates the removal of all foreign troops by the end of 2011.
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