Ned's Second Line Look at the News

Razorlight: Rock and Roll Lies

2009-12-17T19:40:00.001-05:00

Watch the clip on Babelgum!

Music Razorlight 'Rock and Roll Lies' clip 1

An exclusive clip from forthcoming documentary 'Rock and Roll Lies': an intimate portrait of one of music’s most enigmatic and controversial frontmen Johnny Borrell, and his band, Razorlight. The film airs in full, exclusively on Babelgum from DECEMBER 9TH. Find out more at babelgum.com/razorlight

No Place to Run, No Place to Hide - So Stand by Their Side

2009-12-16T21:39:00.001-05:00

Will people never learn? All along the Ohio River, colon cancer is higher than other parts of the country - two nuclear production facilities from the early 1950s. Out west where they tested the bombs or mined the uranium, more of the same. Those who profit from the greed think they will never have to pay their price too... but they will, if not them, their grandchildren - fools, criminals and...

clipped from bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Ruling out the Nuclear Option -- Not Clean or Green

The Legacy of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Upon
US Indigenous & Communities of Color

Our communities suffer from diseases and illnesses that we contend are related to our exposure to the highly toxic processes of mining and milling uranium, the unsafe storage of radioactive materials and the lack of clean-up of sites and facilities, the transportation of highly radioactive waste through our communities, and the lack of safe disposal methods for highly deadly nuclear waste. Cancer, neurological damage, genetic damage, lung disease, respiratory disorders, lupus, and heart problems are among some of the illnesses that affect our communities.

US Afghan Surge is Really 86,000?

2009-12-16T17:55:00.001-05:00

During the Iraq and Afghan wars, there were no reports of casualties of contractors added to US Troop casualties and it was a long time before anyone knew what Blackwater, now Xe, was up to until they shot 17 Iraqi's last year. On top of all the other transparency problems, I don't fell very good about US soldiers having to depend on "mercenaries" for safety, transport, food, etc. How about you?

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com

Obama's War

Up to 56,000 more contractors likely for Afghanistan, congressional agency says

The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

Is CREDO Action Shilling for Fast Food Nation?

2009-12-16T16:03:00.001-05:00

To an old hand at how people with their own axe to grind plant stories that show them in a good light, I smell a rat, The big rat I smell is the USA Today story is that those aligned with the Fast Food Nation helped "validate" the USA Today "expose." A careful reading shows that the school lunch program will be revisited next year, so this is round one in trying to get Jack in the Box, KFC, Mickey D and others into the K-12 school lunch rooms. They already end up serving most of the food in US colleges because they are seen as revenue sources. The industry spokespeople and the university profs (whose research may well be funded by backers of fast food in K-12 lunchrooms) would not have joined in the story if it did not serve the ends of their "bosses."

Fast food meat may meet standards but the end product feeds obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, and type two diabetes.

So the question is this: is CREDO just being slow, or are they receiving support from the Fast Food Nation

clipped from act.credoaction.com

School Lunch Meat Gets an 'F'

It's hard to believe, but the USDA uses school lunch funds to help Big Meat offload thousands of tons of meat from old chickens that Kentucky Fried Chicken won't buy and usually goes to compost or pet food.

A recent investigation by USA Today found that the meat sold to U.S. school cafeterias faces less testing and lower safety standards than the meat that's served in most fast-food restaurants

Mac Powerbook Shot by Police - Harddrive Survives

2009-12-16T07:43:00.001-05:00

Seems Israeli Border Police are either too big of fans of Microsoft, or current political leadership is encouraging or tolerating US-style "cowboy" antics and "intimidation." I don't think the Mac laptop was intimidated - surprised maybe but not intimidated.

clipped from www.haaretz.com

Police shoot U.S. student's laptop upon entry to Israel

Lily Sussman, 21, wrote on her blog that border police subjected her to two hours of questioning and searches prior to shooting her Apple Macbook three times.

Being a woman is hard, when love dies in an Afghan family

2009-12-15T17:18:00.001-05:00

clipped from awwproject.wordpress.com

Where the Wild Dogs Were

I belong to a family in which love has died. I am the sister of a brother who thinks money is what makes life, and who is always angry; the word “happy” has been removed from his life’s dictionary. I am the daughter of a mother who can’t say anything; when she speaks, my brother will say, “You just shut up.” Then my mom will sit in the corner and pray.

She didn’t eat dinner. My brother and I ate. There was everything to eat on the tablecloth but my brother started complaining. He threw a glass at my head. My head hurt and I was afraid he would throw plates at me. Mom asked him, “Why?”

“She brought the wrong glass for me. I am going to teach her how to be a good woman, so she can have a future and marry someone.”

When I returned home with Mom, sad, tired and disappointed, my brother was at home, angry and nervous, and he didn’t ask what happened to us. He looked at me and asked, “When will you get your salary?”

His words were salt for my wounded heart.

Acorn's win as basic as US Constitution and Declaration of Independence

2009-12-14T18:03:00.001-05:00

Seems a lot of folks in US Congress need to go back to school and take civics class on US Constitution - it would be too funny if it were not so serious. I guess we need a Leave No Congress Member behind law or to require they pass a cvics class before they can take their seat! Grin.

clipped from www.indypendent.org

Why ACORN Won

On December 11, 2009, a federal judge ruled that Congress had unconstitutionally cut off all federal funds to ACORN. The judge issued an injunction stopping federal authorities from continuing to cut off past, present and future federal funds to the community organization.

The court ruled that Congress violated the U.S. Constitution “by singling out ACORN and its affiliates for severe sweeping restrictions” and that such action constitutes illegal punishment or a “bill of attainder.”

The U.S. Constitution has prohibited bills of attainder since 1787. U.S. founders objected to bills of attainder because in England Parliament passed many such bills against political enemies, used them to throw people in prison and even execute them without trial.

Have Your Say on US Ocean and Great Lakes Policy

2009-12-14T15:10:00.001-05:00

The Task Force’s Interim Framework is now available for a 60-day public review and comment period. After the close of the comment period on the Interim Framework, the Task Force will finalize its recommendations in both this report and the September 10, 2009 Interim Report, and provide a final report to the President in early 2010.

clipped from www.whitehouse.gov

The Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force

he Task Force is charged with developing a recommendation for a national policy that ensures protection, maintenance, and restoration of oceans, our coasts and the Great Lakes. It will also recommend a framework for improved stewardship, and effective coastal and marine spatial planning.

The Task Force's Interim Framework is open for comment through Friday, February 12, 2010.

Tuvalu at Copenhagen: 'The Fate Of My Country Rests In Your Hands'

2009-12-14T08:06:00.001-05:00

Key West, Florida, Sea Island, Georgia, Bangladesh could join Atlantis as being places of legend that sank into the sea - unless people stop trying to pretend clomate change is not real.

Jury Says: Bayer GM Rice Contaminated Rice Crops in Neighboring Louisiana Fields

2009-12-13T13:40:00.001-05:00

Bayer in cooperation with LSU researchers receiving funding from Bayer, found guilty of damaging neighboring fields. Bayer was researching a crop modified to resist a Bayer pesticide similar to how Monsanto has used GM methods to make Round Up ready corn. Illustrates the probvlem is not just GM - the problem is the nexus of cross interests between Bayer, or Monsanto with the FDA and with university "scientists" whose labs depend upon industry funding support, as well as FDA support, and US Congress members who write in supports for these methods and companies into a variety of laws and regulations, as well as international aid regulations.

clipped from www.stltoday.com

$2 million verdict against Bayer CropScience

Bayer CropScience LP must pay about $2 million for losses sustained by two Missouri farmers when an experimental variety of rice the company was testing cross-bred with their crops, a federal jury ruled.

Bayer and Louisiana State University had been testing the rice, bred to be resistant to Bayer's Liberty-brand herbicide, at a school-run facility in Crowley, La. The variety eventually "contaminated" more than 30 percent of U.S. ricelands, Don Downing, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said at the start of the trial.

The message from Lawrence of Arabia: Watch Your Back From Money and Power Grubbers

2009-12-12T19:30:00.001-05:00

Imperialists hungering for power ruined what could have been and gave us 90 plus years of conflict that runs up to today's conflicts. Now old fashioned imperialists are gone but global oil, the military-industrial complex, fundamentalist wannabe dictators and terrorists have agendas that don't support an Afghanistan for Afghans, a free Palestine and Israel, a prosperous Paskitan and on and on it goes.

Simple solutions for complex social-political issues are almost always wrong and cause more harm.

clipped from www.dw-world.de

Lawrence of Arabia offers lessons for Afghanistan

John Hulsman is the author of the recently released "To Begin the World Over Again: Lawrence of Arabia from Damascus to Baghdad."

Probably the most famous advice given by T.E. Lawrence in his "27 articles" postulates "Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly." Has the international community heeded that advice so far in its mission in Afghanistan?

You Go Sarah - Protect Arctic for all of us!

2009-12-11T19:22:00.001-05:00

clipped from bsnorrell.blogspot.com

VIDEO Gwich'in Sarah James: Protect the Arctic

CARIBOU PEOPLE: Sarah James, Gwin'in, descibes the need to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with wilderness protection, at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen.

Holy Nebula Batman! New views of galaxy from VISTA Chile

2009-12-11T18:50:00.001-05:00

Wow!

clipped from blogs.nature.com

Picture post: opening a new VISTA in astronomy - December 11, 2009

The European Southern Observatory has released the first picture from its newest telescope.

Image: the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion / ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Do not suck up the forests into your tailpipe!

2009-12-11T10:54:00.001-05:00

Bio-fuel sounds cool right? But what it means in developing world is cutting down forests and displace indigenous peoples to plant gazillions of acres of GM soya and palm oil. Climate gets worse, potential for unleashing untold unforeseen disasters is increased.

clipped from www.rainforest-rescue.org

Action: Multi-million UN carbon credits for agrofuels threaten climate, forests and people

A UN board has decided that soya, palm oil and other agrofuel plantations can now receive carbon credits through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The agrofuel industry, already boosted by EU and US targets, incentives and subsidies, can now look forward to hundreds of millions of extra subsidies. Please sign a letter to protest against this decision, which will cause more climate change, more deforestation, more land-grabbing, more water depletion and environmental contamination and more hunger. (Start: 11.12.2009)

Can Afghans Leap from 13th Century to 21st in 16 Months?

2009-12-11T08:00:00.001-05:00

Seems as though Mark Twain could have been writing about Afghanistan when he said "habit can't be changed by throwing it down the stairs, it has to be eased down one step at a time." Some of our military and President's "advisers" should read this blog!

clipped from captaincat.typepad.com

December 10, 2009

The tribal elders talked about how decisions taken amongst their tribal councils might be legitimized in the eyes of the state. What we foreigners have come to term the ‘informal justice system’ is the tribes’ own way of dealing with problems and crimes which take place in their communities.

The oldest tribal elder responds: “Slowly we will reach the point; but by taking the stairs, not by jumping.”

Chai Crashers Disrupt Tea Party Flat Earthers - grin

2009-12-10T12:52:00.001-05:00

What goes around comes around - eh? grin

clipped from www.youtube.com

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US Youth Crash Climate Denier Live Webcast in Copenhagen

Exhibition Linnea Strid - Uppsala - Dec. 11-15

2009-12-09T07:48:00.001-05:00

Exhibition,
originally uploaded by Linnea Strid.

Ms. Strid's hyper-realistic - photo-realism paintings are extraordinary - a must see if you are in the area!

Unintended consequences will cook us!

2009-12-08T18:15:00.001-05:00

Radioactive materials in oil and gas drilling - makes sense but I expect no one gave it any thought. Glad I did not grow up next to Long Beach's oil fields. Then again, it could explain why honky tonk music out of Tulsa and Bakersfield is so hot!

clipped from www.dw-world.de

Radioactive waste hidden in oil and gas production

According to by German public broadcaster WDR, the oil and gas industry has kept secret the dangerous amounts of radioactive waste produced. But experts like Harald Thielen of the Society for System and Reactor Safety acknowledge that the problem exists.

The WDR report says that in Germany alone, up to 2,000 metric tons of naturally-occurring radioactive waste is sucked out of the earth every year and dumped in the surrounding countryside. By extrapolating these figures to oil production in the United States, which produces much more oil and has lower industry safety standards, up to 260,000 metric tons of radioactive waste could be produced there.

"Fundamentalists" threaten Republicans and Democrats

2009-12-08T07:58:00.001-05:00

This story is about GOP but same party cleansing attempt is going on in Democratic Party where competing "Progressives" are trying to dictate the "correct" position on everything. The real story is that "fundamentalism" is a political virus infecting global politics and religions.

Beware of the Fundamentalist Flu it's the political pandemic that could do us all in - especially if it has its way in this week's climate talks

clipped from www.boston.com

Cultural revolution in the GOP

IF POLITICS were a science, some latter-day Isaac Newton would confirm an iron law - that a party’s pursuit of ideological purity inevitably leads to destruction. Witness the proposed resolution from a member of the Republican National Committee, James Bopp of Indiana, that the party deny funding to any Republican who fails to support more than two of 10 conservative litmus-test items.

Swine Flu Conspiracy Flops - On to the Next Scare Mongering Story

2009-12-07T18:42:00.001-05:00

clipped from afludiary.blogspot.com

A Shot Of Reality

We are now two months into the global H1N1 pandemic vaccination effort and one thing is abundantly clear; the dire warnings of the anti-vaccine crowd that `the vaccine is deadlier than the virus’ have not come to pass.

Somewhere between 100 million and 200 hundred million people worldwide have now received the shot, and the number of reported adverse effects has been about what we expect with the seasonal jab.

The vast majority of adverse affects reported have been mild. The CDC is investigating roughly 204 serious post vaccination reports (out of 46 million injections).

A Lawrence of Arabia Solution for Afghanistan?

2009-12-06T22:09:00.001-05:00

Go to Netflix or where ever you get films - rent Larence of Arabia and watch it as if you were looking for ideas of how to create a success out of Afghanistan. Not a bad idea but remember that - in the end - the Imperialists got the upper hand and that today, we are still paying the price.

clipped from circlingthelionsden.blogspot.com

Gant argues passionately that the key to success against the Taliban is to work with the tribes. He says: We demonstrated month in and month out that a small effective fighting force could unite with an Afghan tribe, become trusted and respected brothers-in-arms with their leaders and families, and make a difference in the US effort in Afghanistan. In doing so, we discovered what I believe to be the seed of enduring success in that country."
His strategy is based on the idea of Tribal Engagement Teams, working as part of an overall strategy that allows these teams working closely with a tribal group to decide how to engage the enemy. As Gant says: "TETs must be allowed to be on their own, grow beards, wear local garb, and interact with the tribesmen at all levels. They must be allowed to be what they are: American tribesmen...Rules of Engagement must change.

Madagascar ripe for greed and need ruination of environment

2009-12-06T19:08:00.001-05:00

Do we have time to wait for more forests - the earth's lungs - to die?

clipped from rakotomalala.blogspot.com

A Review of Media Content on Rosewood Massacre in #Madagascar

On the eve of the Global Climate Change Summit in Copenhague, a tragic development in conservation effort in Madagascar is currently taking place. Having already lost 90% of its original forest, An illegal logging traffic of rosewood that has been evoked in the Malagasy mediasphere for a few months has now been thoroughly exposed by an undercover team of investigators. The details of this very profitable traffic have been made public and shared by many citizen bloggers and scientific publications. The latest report produced by Global Witness and Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) states that about $460,000 USD a day worth of trade are made as the country is still marred in the absence of a government of national unity. The full report is available here (and in french here).

Eastern Congo, one story - Francoise

2009-12-04T16:59:00.001-05:00

No Fundamentalists here just a fifty year struggle over diamonds, rare minerals for computers, cell phones, nuclear weapons and millions of people killed, marginalized, exploited, and abused - in full view of world's leaders but out of sight and out of mind for most of us.

clipped from blip.tv

Francoise's Story | Condition: Critical

Francoise was burnt when the hut she was sleeping in was set on fire. The door was locked from the outside. Her neighbours broke the door down and she escaped with one of her children, but the other dies in the fire. Visit htt://www.condition-critical.org for more stories from people living through the war in Eastern Congo.

Sheila Chandra - Sunset over the Ganges

2009-12-04T08:13:00.001-05:00

There is more under the sun than most of us can imagine. This video shows the modern and traditional of India with great charm, beauty and class!

Power to the Pedal People!

2009-12-03T22:28:00.001-05:00

Home of Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts is also home to people powered hauling. college towns - gotta love em and it's my hometown too.

clipped from www.pedalpeople.com

a worker-owned human-powered delivery and hauling service
for the Northampton, Massachusetts area

Recycling & trash
Farm share delivery
Grocery delivery
Pedicab service
Yard care