January 6, 2012

Corporate America's Worst Nightmare Lives In A Tiny 1BR & Has A Lop-Eared Rabbit Named Crackers

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE80424T20120106?irpc=932

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-usa-companies-backlash-idUSTRE80424T20120106

As consumer power goes viral, company branding quakes

By Chris Taylor
Fri Jan 6, 2012 8:54am EST

(Reuters) - Corporate America's worst nightmare lives in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, loves browsing in flea markets and has a lop-eared brown and white pet rabbit named Crackers.

Meet Molly Katchpole. The 22-year-old Washington, D.C. resident has recently tangled with a couple of billion-dollar corporations, and cowed them into submission, without breaking a sweat.

Take Verizon Wireless, which had planned a $2 "convenience" charge for the privilege of paying a bill by phone or online. Katchpole, a Verizon user for eight years, was offended by the very idea that loyal customers could be penalized for paying what they owed. So she went on the website http://Change.org - organized a petition - and watched as it quickly racked up more than 165,000 signatures. As consumer outrage went viral, Verizon backpedaled within hours.

And how about Bank of America's infamous $5 monthly usage fee for debit cards? It too was kiboshed, partly thanks to another Katchpole petition and 300,000 of her outraged brethren, at a time when the Occupy Wall Street movement had been pressuring banks.

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January 5, 2012

WikiLeaks Backers Lose Bid to Keep Twitter Accounts From U.S. Prosecutors

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-05/wikileaks-backers-lose-bid-to-keep-twitter-data-from-u-s-.html

WikiLeaks Backers Lose Bid to Keep Twitter Accounts From U.S. Prosecutors

By Tom Schoenberg
January 05, 2012 2:22 PM EST

Three WikiLeaks backers lost their bid to keep information on them collected from their Twitter Inc. accounts from being turned over to U.S. prosecutors who are investigating the group’s publication of classified information.

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The subscribers challenging the order include Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of the Icelandic parliament; Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher who represented WikiLeaks at a 2010 hacker’s conference in New York; and Rop Gonggrijp, described in court papers as a Dutch activist and businessman.

The three subscribers argued that the U.S. subpoena to Twitter violated their privacy and their rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“We’re obviously disappointed by this ruling and we think the judge got it wrong,” said Aden Fine, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Jonsdottir. Fine said his client is considering her options, which include asking the appeals court to delay turning over the data.

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January 1, 2012

Magnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes off Japan's southeastern Izu islands - USGS

@Reuters: FLASH: Magnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes off Japan's southeastern Izu islands - USGS

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/01/powerful-quake-hits-tokyo

Powerful quake hits Tokyo

By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, January 1, 2012

A major 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Tokyo and surrounding areas Sunday, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said.

December 25, 2011

Sunday's Christmas Day DOONESBURY: "Good Night, Iraq"

December 22, 2011

Navy First: Same-Sex Couple Share First Homecoming Kiss

Uploaded by VirginianPilot on Dec 21, 2011

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta won a raffle on the dock landing ship Oak Hill to be the first to kiss a loved one on its return to port in Virginia Beach. Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell was waiting when she crossed the brow. Story: http://hamptonroads.com/2011/12/first-lesbian-couple-get-first-kiss-navy-homecoming

December 18, 2011

Former Czech President and Playwright Vaclav Havel Dies

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7BH08W20111218?irpc=932

Former Czech president Havel dies: TV

PRAGUE | Sun Dec 18, 2011 6:28am EST

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Former Czech President Vaclav Havel has died due to complications following a long period of illness, Czech TV reported on Sunday.

"Former president and playwrite Vaclav Havel has died," Czech television announced during an interview with Prime Minister Petr Necas.

December 17, 2011

When Cults Collide: How Big Sports & CEO Worship Threaten Societies

AlterNet / By Lynn Parramore

When Cults Collide: How Big Sports and CEO Worship Threaten Societies

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Big Sports in America, along with the corporate religion of CEO-worship, exhibits cult-like features that make the tolerance of criminal activity something we should expect. When cults collide, conditions emerge that are poisonous to healthy, law-abiding, open societies.

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In his essay “The Sporting Spirit,” George Orwell outed the cult-like aspect of large-scale sports, which arose in the 19th century in England and the U.S. in a way the world had not seen since Roman times. He debunked the myth that serious sports was nothing more than good clean fun. Sure, it’s possible for to play harmless games, but when losing means shame for the whole group, barbaric instincts surface. The competition takes on the character of warfare, where winning is the virtue, and getting in the way of winning is the vice. Intense rivalries beget a culture of cheating. Serious sports aren’t about fair play, concludes Orwell, but rather “hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.”

Along with the rise of nationalism, big time sports grew as heavily financed activities that could draw huge crowds and inspire extreme loyalty. People learned to identify with larger power units and to view everything in terms of competitive clout. Organized games flourished in urban communities where workers lived sedentary and confined lives without much chance of creativity or physical release. Cursing the other team on game day was an outlet for pent-up sadistic impulses.

In Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky notes that large-scale sports encourages anti-social human psychology and passive acceptance of traits like aggression. “It’s hard to imagine anything,” he observes, “that contributes more fundamentally to authoritarian attitudes than this does.” (See this video).

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December 17, 2011

Alternet: How Ayn Rand Helped Make The U.S. Into A Selfish, Greedy Nation

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/153454/how_ayn_rand_seduced_generations_of_young_men_and_helped_make_the_u.s._into_a_selfish,_greedy_nation

AlterNet / By Bruce E. Levine

How Ayn Rand Seduced Generations of Young Men and Helped Make the U.S. Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation

Thanks in part to Rand, the United States is one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world.

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Ayn Rand’s personal life was consistent with her philosophy of not giving a shit about anybody but herself. Rand was an ardent two-pack-a-day smoker, and when questioned about the dangers of smoking, she loved to light up with a defiant flourish and then scold her young questioners on the “unscientific and irrational nature of the statistical evidence.” After an x-ray showed that she had lung cancer, Rand quit smoking and had surgery for her cancer. Collective members explained to her that many people still smoked because they respected her and her assessment of the evidence; and that since she no longer smoked, she ought to tell them. They told her that she needn’t mention her lung cancer, that she could simply say she had reconsidered the evidence. Rand refused.

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Ethics—self-interest. For Rand, all altruists were manipulators. What could be more seductive to kids who discerned the motives of martyr parents, Christian missionaries and U.S. foreign aiders? Her champions, Nathaniel Branden still among them, feel that Rand’s view of “self-interest” has been horribly misrepresented. For them, self-interest is her hero architect Howard Roark turning down a commission because he couldn’t do it exactly his way. Some of Rand’s novel heroes did have integrity, however, for Rand there is no struggle to discover the distinction between true integrity and childish vanity. Rand’s integrity was her vanity, and it consisted of getting as much money and control as possible, copulating with whomever she wanted regardless of who would get hurt, and her always being right. To equate one’s selfishness, vanity, and egotism with one’s integrity liberates young people from the struggle to distinguish integrity from selfishness, vanity, and egotism.

Politics—capitalism. While Rand often disparaged Soviet totalitarian collectivism, she had little to say about corporate totalitarian collectivism, as she conveniently neglected the reality that giant U.S. corporations, like the Soviet Union, do not exactly celebrate individualism, freedom, or courage. Rand was clever and hypocritical enough to know that you don’t get rich in the United States talking about compliance and conformity within corporate America. Rather, Rand gave lectures titled: “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” So, young careerist corporatists could embrace Rand’s self-styled “radical capitalism” and feel radical — radical without risk.

Rand’s Legacy

In recent years, we have entered a phase where it is apparently okay for major political figures to publicly embrace Rand despite her contempt for Christianity. In contrast, during Ayn Rand’s life, her philosophy that celebrated self-interest was a private pleasure for the 1 percent but she was a public embarrassment for them. They used her books to congratulate themselves on the morality of their selfishness, but they publicly steered clear of Rand because of her views on religion and God. Rand, for example, had stated on national television, “I am against God. I don’t approve of religion. It is a sign of a psychological weakness. I regard it as an evil.”

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December 16, 2011

Did FBI Bury Its 1990s Gingrich Probe?

http://www.justice-integrity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=528:did-fbi-bury-its-1990s-gingrich-probe&catid=1:latest-news

Did FBI Bury Its 1990s Gingrich Probe?

By Andrew Kreig

The FBI in the 1990s investigated reports that then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich was at the center of a $10 million bribery plot involving his second wife, Marianne. But the FBI dropped the investigation before determining if any money might change hands after the bureau's director concluded the FBI lacked sufficient evidence to pursue a sting for evidence. That's the central allegation of a report Dec. 13 by DC-based investigative reporter Joseph Trento, who claims that the FBI 'buried" the probe. The Washington Post addressed the matter also in a column published Dec. 16 in the paper. Marianne Gingrich and her attorney say the family name was misused by rumor-mongers -- and there was no bribe, plan or reason for the FBI to investigate.

Trento, a longtime journalist who writes for the web-based national security non-profit DC Bureau, broke the story in a 6,000-word piece entitled, Newt Gingrich, Marianne and the Arms Dealer: A Buried FBI Investigation. The column was based on extensive interviews, including with arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, who died at 82 in October. "He had sold weapons to scores of dictators including Saddam Hussein," Trento wrote, "and he took many secrets with him to his grave. But one secret he did not take involves Newt Gingrich."

"DC Bureau has learned," Trento continued, "that Gingrich was at the center of a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation in the late 1990s for a scheme to shake down the arms dealer for a $10 million bribe in exchange for Gingrich using his influence as Speaker to get the Iraq arms embargo lifted so Soghanalian could collect $54 million from Saddam Hussein’s regime for weapons he had delivered during the Iran-Iraq War."

In FBI Considered A Sting Aimed At Newt Gingrich In 1997, Post reporter James V. Grimaldi wrote that "a series of second- and third-hand conversations alleging that the top man in Congress might be for sale" caught the attention of federal investigators. “There are so many falsehoods,” Marianne Gingrich, Gingrich's second-wife, told Grimaldi Thursday. “The FBI, they should have been protecting me, not going after me. This is scary stuff.”  Grimaldi wrote that Gingrich’s presidential campaign did not provide immediate comment.

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December 16, 2011

Christopher Hitchens' Unforgivable Mistake

http://m.gawker.com/5868761/christopher-hitchens-unforgivable-mistake

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Christopher Hitchens' Unforgivable Mistake

By John Cook, Dec 16, 2011 12:57 PM

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In its obituary, the New York Times quoted Hitchens' friend Ian Buruma, who told the New Yorker in 2006 that Hitchens was "always looking for the defining moment — as it were, our Spanish Civil War, where you put yourself on the right side, and stand up to the enemy." He shared that impulse with George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz, and they found their moment in the stupid decision to invade Iraq. For Hitchens, it was the opening maneuver in a grand, imagined clash of western civilization against the Islamofascist hordes.

It was something else for 113,000 civilians who died in the chaos unleashed. The great tragedy of Hitchens' life was that, toward its end, he aligned himself so stridently with the very fools, cowards, and charlatans who most desperately invited exposure by his prodigious skills as butcher. How can someone who devoted so much of his life to as noble a cause as destroying the reputation of Henry Kissinger blithely stand shoulder to shoulder with Rumsfeld?

People make mistakes. What's horrible about Hitchens' ardor for the invasion of Iraq is that he clung to it long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made. In September 2005, he defended the debacle in Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard in terms that are simply breathtaking in their lack of concern for the victims of his Mesopotamian adventure. It was headlined "A War to Be Proud Of."

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But surely Christopher, you recognize that the war has been badly bungled even if all your hearts were in the right place, right? "We need not argue about the failures and the mistakes and even the crimes, because these in some ways argue themselves." For Christopher Hitchens to identify a subject about which no argument is required is a rare thing indeed. Abu Ghraib—why argue? The $9 billion in cash that simply disappeared—what's to argue? Two months after the Hitchens wrote those words, U.S. Marines massacred 24 men, women, and children in Haditha. No need to argue.

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