Ed Fletcher - A ticket 'fiasco' threatens Burning Man festival

Organizers of the iconic counterculture event Burning Man are scrambling to solve a crisis that some fear threatens the very fabric of the event.

The problem has left perhaps 75 percent of the longtime participants who traditionally provide the creative spark for displays and activities without a ticket. The event is held annually at a remote site in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada. The crisis resulted from attempts to solve issues from last year, when, in addition to the normal problem of computer servers crashing as thousands of people rush to buy tickets online, the event sold out for the first time.

With the event increasingly becoming a bucket-list activity, organizer Black Rock City LLC set out to create a more egalitarian method for distributing tickets and thwarting scalpers.

Read More:

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/10/4253072/burning-man-festival-faces-ticket.html

Nathan Schneider - Is Anonymous Our Future?

The enigmatic Internet-driven collective Anonymous, thank goodness, has an anthropologist in its midst. For a few years now, Gabriella Coleman [4] has been arduously participant-observing in IRC chat rooms, watching Anonymous turn from a prankster moniker to a herd of vigilantes for global justice. In an extraordinary new essay at Triple Canopy, “Our Weirdness Is Free [5],” she summarizes what Anonymous is all about this way:

Beyond a foundational commitment to anonymity and the free flow of information, Anonymous has no consistent philosophy or political program. Though Anonymous has increasingly devoted its energies to (and become known for) digital dissent and direct action around various “ops,” it has no definite trajectory. Sometimes coy and playful, sometimes macabre and sinister, often all at once, Anonymous is still animated by a collective will toward mischief—toward “lulz,” a plural bastardization of the portmanteau LOL (laugh out loud). Lulz represent an ethos as much as an objective.

Read More:

http://www.truth-out.org/anonymous-our-future/1328546288

ACTA: “Usurps Congressional Authority”, “Threatens Numerous Public Interests”, “Backroom Special Interest Deal”, a “Masquerade"

We just beat back SOPA and PIPA with the web blackout.

Now everyone is talking about ACTA. But – because ACTA is complicated, and is just starting to receive coverage – most are not sure exactly what ACTA really is, or why we should be concerned about it.

We’ll give you an executive summary of what you need to know.

Instead of giving you the specifics about what’s actually in the bill (we provide links at the end for those who want to know), we’ll explain why the procedure used is a recipe for disaster.

Why are we stressing procedure over substance?

Because, as awful as ACTA is, there are other horrible bills such as the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement waiting in the wings … which may be even worse than ACTA.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28958

Ancient walled city, older than Egypt's pyramids, unearthed off Georgia coast

Six hours southeast of Atlanta off the Georgia coast on Sapelo Island, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient walled city which predates the construction of Egypt's pyramids. Known as the Sapelo Shell Ring Complex, this ancient city was constructed around 2300 B.C. and featured three neighborhoods each surrounded by circular walls twenty feet in height constructed from tons of seashells. Some of the earliest pottery in North America was also found buried in the remains of this lost city.

The site is quite an enigma because at the time of its construction the Native Americans living in the area were simple hunters and gatherers who had yet to invent agriculture. Many scholars believe agriculture is a prerequisite for civilization. Did these simple tribal people somehow make the leap from hunting-and-gathering to civilization in a single bound producing not only a walled city but also the new technology of pottery without the benefit of agriculture? Or did an already civilized people arrive on the coast of Georgia from elsewhere and, if so, where did they come from and why?

Read More:

http://www.examiner.com/road-trip-travel-in-atlanta/ancient-walled-city-older-than-egypt-s-pyramids-unearthed-off-georgia-coast

Paul Imison - Violence Sweeps Central America

While Mexico grabs the headlines of soaring murder rates and rampaging drug gangs, the really heavy bloodshed is taking place to the south. The much smaller nations of Guatemala and El Salvador are seeing their worst violence since the civil wars of the 1980s, while Honduras is currently the murder capital of the world with 86 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants; a murder rate nearly five times higher than Mexico’s.

Even relatively peaceful Costa Rica, which boasts the highest standard of living in Central America, has seen its murder rate double since 2004 in a wave of violence that authorities largely attribute to drug-trafficking. As a result, Washington is encouraging its mostly right-wing allies in the region to pursue the same policies of militarization that have devastated Colombia and Mexico.

Central America was originally included in the Merida Initiative security package signed by the Bush administration in 2008, which pledged $1.6 billion of funds to the region over two years; the vast majority of which went to Mexico. Since 2010, aid to the region has been cranked up under the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), an offshoot of the System for Central American Integration (SICA).

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/01/27/VIOLENCE-SWEEPS-CENTRAL-AMERICA/

3rd Annual TV News Trust Poll

PPP's 3rd annual TV news trust poll (2011 version here, 2010 version here) finds that Fox News tops the list for both the source Americans trust the most and the one they trust the least.

Fox is the most trusted TV news source for 34% of voters, followed by PBS at 17%, CNN at 12%, ABC News at 11%, CBS News at 8%, MSNBC at 5%, and Comedy Central and NBC each at 4%.

68% of Republicans pick Fox as their most trusted source, with no one else even hitting double digits. Democrats split closely three ways with PBS at 21%, ABC News at 19%, and CNN at 17%. Despite having a reputation for appealing to the left MSNBC actually polls in only 6th place among Democrats at 8%, finishing slightly behind even Fox News' 9%. Independents split almost evenly between Fox News (29%) and PBS (27%).

Fox is also the least trusted TV news source for 34% of voters, followed by Comedy Central at 16%, MSNBC at 15%, CNN at 11%, ABC News at 7%, CBS News at 5%, PBS at 2%, and NBC News at 1%.

Read More:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/01/3rd-annual-tv-news-trust-poll.html

Lauren Kelley - The 5 Most Outrageous Examples of Hidden Charges Companies Pass Off on Consumers -- And How to Fight Back

It seems like consumers are being squeezed from every angle these days. Our grocery bills are getting larger and other expenses going through the roof at the same time that many of us are losing jobs and having to downsize.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has helped spur a national dialogue about the financial sector’s role in the erosion of the U.S. middle class. But Wall Street mega banks aren’t the only corporations that have swindled American citizens; many of the companies we rely on for our food, transportation, and communication needs are also treating consumers unfairly by saddling them with a plethora of hidden fees and surcharges.

In 2006, the average U.S. adult paid $942 each year in hidden fees, according to research conducted by the Ponemon Institute. Six years later, it’s unlikely that this number has gone down. If anything, industries that took a financial hit during the recession are passing more fees onto consumers than ever, regardless of whether they’ve recovered.

A comprehensive list of the sneaky fees companies palm off on consumers could go on forever, but here are five particularly egregious examples that every consumer should be aware of – followed by a list of ideas for fighting back.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153769/the_5_most_outrageous_examples_of_hidden_charges_companies_pass_off_on_consumers_--_and_how_to_fight_back

Video - A warning to the public about chem-trails, fluoride poisoning, fema camps and false flag alien invansions.

Colleen Thomas gives a warning to the public about chem-trails, fluoride poisoning, fema camps and false flag alien invansions.

Watch Video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qder2Pf0G7o

Gregory Harms - The “Liberal” Media and American Foreign Policy

A recent article by Robert Naiman (Al Jazeera, Jan. 9) examines the New York Times’ current coverage of Iran’s nuclear program. In it he exposes a disappointing but unsurprising mishandling of the facts. References to the paper’s shameful prewar reportage on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime are appropriate. But if the Times is indeed liberal, why the repeated adoption and promotion of misleading, hawkish assumptions?

The New York Times could probably be fairly described as liberal. The term has lost much relevance and meaning in recent years, along with its counterpart designation “conservative.” But if we apply the label generally to mean mildly progressive and roughly approximating the political center, one could reasonably assert that the Times falls within range of the liberal framework. (I would argue it’s right-of-center, but will remain general for present purposes.) The paper’s editorial positions on domestic issues and social policy are safely categorized as such. When it comes to gun control, abortion, gay rights, immigration and so on, the paper is in the vicinity of the center (it is important to bear in mind that liberalism is a centrist philosophy, not a leftist one). Moreover, key members of the paper’s staff – former executive editor Bill Keller, former public editor Daniel Okrent – have openly admitted as much.

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/01/13/THE-LIBERAL-MEDIA-AND-AMERICAN-FOREIGN-POLICY/

Steve Benen - Victory for Internet Freedom: Obama Announces Opposition to SOPA, Congress Shelves Bill

Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there’s a lot less to worry about.

At issue are two related bills: the Senate’s Protect IP Act and the even more offensive Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, both of which are generated intense opposition from tech giants and First Amendment advocates. The first sign that the bills’ prospects were dwindling came Friday, when SOPA sponsors agreed to drop a key provision that would have required service providers to block access to international sites accused of piracy.

The legislation ran into an even more significant problem yesterday when the White House announced its opposition to the bills. Though the administration’s chief technology officials officials acknowledged the problem of online privacy, the White House statement presented a fairly detailed critique of the measures and concluded, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” It added that any proposed legislation “must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet.”

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153776/victory_for_internet_freedom%3A_obama_announces_opposition_to_sopa%2C_congress_shelves_bill

Louis CK On 20 Year-Olds And Jobs

Watch Here As Well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzxcjg7YZSs&feature=player_embedded

El Cielo de Canarias / Canary sky - Tenerife

El Cielo de Canarias / Canary sky - Tenerife from Daniel López on Vimeo.

Read and See More:

http://vimeo.com/23205323

Video - North Point's iBand - Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad using borrowed iPhones and iPads at North Point Community Church.
Download more free music from North Point -- www.northpointmusic.org/christmas

Paul Craig Roberts - Tyranny in the Forecast -- The Outlook for the New Year

In March 2010 when I resigned from my column with Creator’s Syndicate and put down my pen, I received so many protests from readers that two months later I began writing again.  This renewed activity has resulted in this new year in a website of my own.     My columns will first appear on my site. Sites on which readers are accustomed to find my columns are permitted to continue to post my columns as long as they link to my site and indicate my copyright.  The site will stay up if reader support justifies it.  Otherwise, I will conclude that the cost of the site exceeds the value of what I have to say.     This past year has not been a good one for the 99%, and the new year is likely to be even worse. This column deals with the outlook for liberty.  The next will deal with the economic outlook. Read More: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28475

Robert Scheer - On to the Next ‘Bubble Fantasy’

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/on_to_the_next_bubble_fantasy_20111222/

Posted on Dec 22, 2011

By Robert Scheer

Few journalists have greater influence on U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding the Middle East, than New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. But his tortured obit of a column this week on the official end of the neocolonialist disaster that has been the Iraq occupation reminds one that the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner often gets it wrong.

Was the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which he did so much to encourage, a “wise choice”? Friedman hides behind one of his trademark ambiguities: “My answer is twofold: ‘No’ and ‘Maybe, sort of, we’ll see.’ I say ‘no’ because whatever happens in Iraq, even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.”

Aside from the stunning amorality of assessing the cost of war from the standpoint of the royal “we,” Friedman seems wildly optimistic about what the invasion has wrought. On a day when Iraq’s prime minister, a Shiite, demanded that the leader of the Kurds arrest the Sunni vice president, Friedman celebrated the unity of the three groups as “the most important product of the Iraq war.” He blamed the failure of the U.S. occupation to accomplish more, in roughly equal measure, on “the incompetence of George W. Bush’s team in prosecuting the war,” “Iran, the Arab dictators and, most of all, Al Qaeda,” which he seems surprised to report “did not want a democracy in the heart of the Arab world.” 

Click to read more ...

Alexis Madrigal - The Case Against Alleged WikiLeaks Supplier Bradley Manning Takes A Strange Turn

http://countercurrents.org/madrigal201211.htm

By Alexis Madrigal

20 December, 2011
The Atlantic

The military hearing that will determine whether Bradley Manning will receive a court martial for his alleged role in leaking documents to WikiLeaks took a strange turn. In a courthouse in Fort Meade, Maryland, a prosecution witness testified that he found thousands of State Department cables on Manning's computer, but those cables did *not* match those released by WikiLeaks.

If the cables found on Manning's computer don't match the ones WikiLeaks has, the defense can argue that Julian Assange's outfit may have had a different source for the documents. Wired's Kim Zetter was in the courtroom and filed a report on this dramatic moment, which could become a lynchpin of the defense's case.

Special Agent David Shaver, a forensic investigator with the Army's Computer Crimes Investigations Unit, testified Sunday that he'd found 10,000 U.S. diplomatic cables in HTML format on the soldier's classified work computer, as well as a corrupted text file containing more than 100,000 complete cables...

But Shaver said none of the documents that he found on Manning's computer matched those that WikiLeaks published.

Click to read more ...

Nick Turse - The Drone That Fell From the Sky

Printed on December 20, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175482/ 

What a Busted Robot Airplane Tells Us About the American Empire in 2012 and Beyond 
By Nick Turse

The drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realized that something was wrong.  The oil temperature in the plane’s turbocharger, they noticed, had risen into the “cautionary” range. An hour later, it was worse, and it just kept rising as the minutes wore on.  While the crew desperately ran through its “engine overheat” checklist trying to figure out the problem, the engine oil temperature, too, began skyrocketing.

By now, they had a full-blown in-flight emergency on their hands.  “We still have control of the engine, but engine failure is imminent,” the pilot announced over the radio.

Almost two hours after the first signs of distress, the engine indeed failed.  Traveling at 712 feet per minute, the drone clipped a fence before crashing.

Land of the Lost Drones

The skies seem full of falling drones these days.  The most publicized of them made headlines when Iran announced that its military had taken possession of an advanced American remotely piloted spy aircraft, thought to be an RQ-170 Sentinel. 

Click to read more ...

You Tube Video - Cat Soothing Crying Baby to Sleep

Our cat Stewie helps put our new baby Connar to sleep... cutest bit is right at the end!

Alex Pareene - Five of the Biggest Hacks in American Media

By Alex Pareene, Salon

Posted on December 19, 2011, Printed on December 20, 2011
http://www.salon.com/

The Salon Hack List is a list of our least favorite political commentators, newspaper columnists, political news show hosts, and constant cable news presences, ranked roughly (but only roughly) in order of awfulness and then described rudely. Criteria for inclusion included being wrong about literally everything, shameless sycophancy, appearing on “Morning Joe” and being “Morning Joe.”

Last year, our countdown was based on each hack’s entire career. We’re still looking at their whole bodies of work, but we’re focusing on the hackiest thing each entrant did in this rapidly ending year.

1. Mark Halperin 

What more is there to say about Mark Halperin? He certainly hasn’t gotten any better since last year, when a panel of experts (me) named him the world’s second biggest hack. He’s still wrong about everything. He’s still shallow and predictable. He’s still both fixated solely on the horse race and also uniquely bad at analyzing the horse race.

Click to read more ...

Paul B. Farrell - Our decade from hell will get worse in 2012

Dec. 13, 2011

Commentary: Market crash, political gridlock, revolution, new class wars

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=FB1C4328-24E8-11E1-A0B0-002128040CF6

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Fasten your seat belts: 2011 was far worse than expected. Our earlier predictions for America’s Worst Decade just got worse.

As financial historian Niall Ferguson writes in Newsweek: “Double-Dip Depression … We forget that the Great Depression was like a soccer match, there were two halves.” The 1929 crash kicked off the first half. But what “made the depression truly ‘great’ …began with the European banking crisis of 1931.” Sound familiar?

Lumps of Coal for mutual funds

Commodity Futures Trading Corp, Invesco Technology Sector, Aston Value are among companies Chuck Jaffe has singled out to give his Lumps of Coal awards.

Yes, huge warnings: But America’s deaf. In denial. When we predicted the 2011-2020 “decade from hell” we didn’t see the big macro events dead ahead: Arab Spring virus that’s now Occupy Wall Street, promising to explode into an even more powerful force in 2012 … war on the middle class … widening inequality gap. … Washington gridlock … the Super Rich’s blind resistance to all new taxes.

Click to read more ...