General Interest

David Callahan, David Cay Johnston & Arianna Huffington are interviewed by Francesca Rheannon. They discuss how the economic elites fight for control of the political elites.

Source: David Callahan, David Cay Johnston & Arianna Huffington: Rich liberals, Corporate Politics and Third World America.

Matt Taibbi is interviewed by Tavis Smiley

The Rolling Stones editor explains the inner workings of Wall Street and criticizes the U.S. bank bail out.
Source: November 11, 2010, Matt Taibbi interviewed by Tavis Smiley

Timothy McBain talks to Andrew Bacevich about Military-Industrial Complex Cutbacks

Will the proposed defense cuts reduce the total national security budget?
Source: Tuesday, January 25, 2011. Military-Industrial Cutbacks?

This is a cool little short film on a group Thailand kid's dreams of playing soccer. Go to full screen to be able to follow along with the subtitles better

"And we can't stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people there will be no mercy ..." so sayeth Obama, unless, he did not add out loud, said tyrant is one of our many "friend-to-America" tyrants, and that is OKAY apparently to Mr. Peace Prize who campaigned on changing the Bush slippery slope of executive office abuse and war criminality.

Once again, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!!" as Chicken Little declared, as well as Obama, Clinton, Kerry, Lieberman, McCain, et al. and all their corporate media buddies.

No time to stop and reflect on what is going on, like America once again waging war on another nation! What is the prob, seriously? This is the normalized drill from here on out. The U.S. Constitution as quaint and irrelevant as the Articles of the Geneva Conventions.

Only low level radiation so far. Click the pics to enlarge. The first one is of the jet stream for Friday March 18th; and the second is a graphic on the health effects

Few radioactive particles on U.S. west coast

VIENNA (Reuters) - Minuscule amounts of radioactive particles believed to have come from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant have been detected on the U.S. west coast, two diplomatic sources said Friday.

The level of radiation was far too low to cause any harm to humans, they said. One diplomat, citing information from a network of international monitoring stations, described the material as "ever so slight," consisting of only a few particles.

"Even a single radioactive atom can cause them to measure something and this is more or less what we have seen in the Sacramento station,"

[historical info taken from American Experience presentation and poetry from Jonathan Fink]

On April 5, 2011, 400,000 New Yorkers, 1 out of 10, showed up in the rain to mourn the deaths of 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, who had died in the deadliest workplace accident in New York history.

The victims of this fire, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers, incidentally, had been the vanguard group of picketers and protesters who had incredibly managed to trigger the biggest work stoppage in history -- 10,000 garment workers -- at the end of 1909.

Tragically, the women’s own workplace, unlike hundreds of others by the end of that year, continued to ban union representation. That the gross building negligence of this particular management would ensure the excruciating deaths of these most valiant of the pro-union workers was the ultimate in cruel fate.

Peter B. Collins interviews Scott A. Bonn

The book “Mass Deception” connects propaganda and distortions by the Bush administration to elite deviance and state crimes and violations of international criminal law. Dr. Bonn's book illustrates how those in the highest seats of power deceived and manipulated ordinary, hard-working, trusting Americans. Those Americans then sent their sons and daughters to fight in needlessly wars.
Source: Peter B. Collins on January 10, 2011, Bush’s Rehtoric and Lies Produced “Mass Deception”
 

Capturing Geothermal Energy

What if, right below our feet, we had enough potential clean energy to keep the U.S. supplied for thousands years? That's what the U.S. Department of Energy calculates. But there's a catch: we have to get to all that potential geothermal power. Reporter: Craig Miller. From the California Report.
Source: The California Report, 33x20: Capturing Geothermal Energy

Andrew Murray has compiled 10 compelling reasons why the United States as well as NATO should not intervene in Libya. He acknowledges the intense and seductive political and media campaigns going on now to launch intervention in Libya "ostensibly on humanitarian grounds" but with political ends as always at bottom. The Arab League he asserts is pressuring for a "no fly zone." The Arab League he explains is for the most part "a collection of frightened despots desperate to get the US military still more deeply involved in the region."

Here are his ten reasons to "resist the siren calls for intervention":

1. Intervention will violate Libya’s sovereignty. This is not just a legalistic point – although the importance of observing international law should not be discounted if the big powers in the world are not to be given the green light run amok. As soon as NATO starts to intervene, the Libyan people will start to lose control of their own country and future.

This is written from the hip, a few minutes after watching a Charlie Rose show. I am venting for catharsis. I caught the show while channel surfing and saw that California Congresswoman Barbara Lee was the first guest so I broke down and watched her segment.

I don’t think I have ever seen usually obsequious, administrative shill Charlie so interruptive, cliche ridden, confrontative, and insistent on selling his and the neoliberal/neocon war friendly agenda not only in terms of the Afghanistan War but also pressing pressing pressing a reluctant Rep. Lee to change her position against US military intervention in Libya.

I have major issues with Charlie Rose and avoid watching him. He clearly likes to rub elbows with the patriarchs of power whether corporate, political, celebrity or military and serves them the friendliest softballs. He enjoys offering them all his little table for their agendas which little table is too little for the American “little guys and gals” with their pesky populist needs.

The first video is what pi sounds like when put to music. Pi day and Einstein's Birthday are both on March 14 (3-14) . The second is how the Fibonacci Sequence is incorporated in tool's Lateralus (And you thought Rock was all sex and drugs, didn't you?). And lastly, how a Swiss mathematician named Leonhard Euler developed a new field of math by trying to solve a problem for the citizens of a Prussian town

Manning’s father appeared briefly on Frontline clips on the NewsHour tonight. My heart went out to him, but even more to Manning after only a few minutes of taking in “Daddy.”

How sad that Bradley’s daddy can’t see and celebrate the heroic champion his son actually and, okay, allegedly is. I am sure there is some degree of awe within his father over the great lengths Bradley has gone and is still willing to go to stand up to a ferociously toxic and violent patriarchal authority -- the entire evil military industrial security complex.

Dad assuredly gave Manning a lot of experience and practice in fighting blind and formidable authority I’d venture. Funny, how psychologically wounded children sometimes end up having the greatest courage and spirit as adults, as well as honor. Maybe, too, that fateful and sustained experience with a parent such as the one I seemed to be witnessing tonight gives them the hunger or will to try, though there is a horror in the futility, to work out such a primal relationship of crazymaking and identity-sabotaging “conditional” as opposed to “unconditional” love with other authorities later in life.

The real cost of Defense spending is over a trillion dollars per year

Stealing from Social Security to Pay for Wars and Bailouts

Robert Reich shows that inequality causes the booms and busts that United States has been experiencing.
Source: Aftershock with Robert Reich

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address delivered January 17, 1961 where he explains to the nation the "military-industrial complex".
Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address

Timothy McBain interviews William Hartung

William Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation and an expert on weapons proliferation and military spending. He updates us on the state of the current military-industrial complex. He comments on how companies like Lockheed Martin have exceeded what Eisenhower envisioned when he coined the phrase.
Source: A Complex Situation

End of the American Dream reports that a Rasmussen poll found that 67% of Americans do not want war with Libya. 17% of them do.

HAH! As if that matters to anyone in power.

Yeah, I know Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Barack Obama keep protesting they really don't want to go to war with Libya. Can’t you hear the reluctance in their voices these days? Look at their grave faces advising restraint! Especially Robert Gates'.

That is rich. Not since Tom Sawyer feigned so much pleasure in whitewashing the fence has such a perfect con been executed. Oh, wait. There were Gates’ assurances on the NewsHour that the military budget had been seriously slashed. Oh, all right. Then there was anything Obama promised pre-election. Anyway ...