How many damn times have we heard this phrase – “The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan…” Where’s the change should be the Republican’s catch phrase, why did people vote for Obama/change if all they wanted was the same Bush policies.
From the Wash Post:
DHS Cybersecurity Plan Will Involve NSA, Telecoms
The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials.
for the rest – http://tinyurl.com/n4×3d3
THE BOSS – The River – Glastonbury 2009
He’s literally smoking.
Watch this, then watch the Band of Brothers: Pacific Trailer
Did someone over at HBO watch Terence Malicks masterpiece and say “Hey, no one watched that… we can just copy it…”
Johann quotes my favorite part of the new dvd Greg Palast and I just released. Read the rest at the Independent site.
From the Independent UK
The indigenous people are weak. They have no guns. They barely have electricity
While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed – yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.
In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies – and, for today, they have won.
Here’s the story of how it happened – and how we all need to pick up this fight. Earlier this year, Peru’s right-wing President, Alan Garcia, sold the rights to explore, log and drill 70 per cent of his country’s swathe of the Amazon to a slew of international oil companies. Garcia seems to see rainforest as a waste of good resources, saying of the Amazon’s trees: “There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle.”
Jaw-drop on 1…2….3…
Beatbox Dub FX 10/10/2008 ‘Love Someone’
©Zach Roberts 2009
Administration turns down senator’s request to make public the list of 44 dumps, which contain arsenic and metals
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
A rift has opened between the Obama administration and some of its closest allies – Democratic leaders and environmental organisations – over its refusal to publicly disclose the location of 44 coal ash dumps that have been officially designated as a “high hazard” to local populations.
The administration turned down a request from a powerful Democratic senator to make public the list of 44 dumps, which contain a toxic soup of arsenic and heavy metals from coal-fired electricity plants, citing terrorism fears.
The refusal has put the Obama administration at odds with some of its strongest supporters over an emerging area of environmental concern in America.
Last Christmas, a retaining wall burst on a coal ash pond in Tennessee disgorging a billion gallons of waste and putting pressure on the authorities to bring in safety controls over the management of some 600 similar waste pools dotted across the country.
Some 44 of the most dangerous coal ash dumps are known to be located in populated areas in 26 separate locations. The high hazard designation means that a breach, like the one in Tennessee, could cause death and significant property damage if the sludge spills into surrounding neigbourhoods. But that is all the adminstration will disclose.
“Right now we have a blanket gag order,” Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who heads the Senate environment and public works committee told a press conference last week.
“We are losing what we cherish in America: the citizens’ right to know.”
Read the rest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/18/coal-dump-location-obama-usa
