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WillyT
WillyT's Journal
WillyT's Journal
October 29, 2013
Jesus... I Guess We COULD Just Consider Having A Vagina A Pre-Existing Condition...
October 29, 2013
Has to have been sarcasm... has to be... Nobody could be THAT stupid.
Talk about your divide and conquer.
WTF ??? - I Should Get My Health Insurance Cheaper Because I Don't Have A Vagina ??? - Is That...
what we've become ???Has to have been sarcasm... has to be... Nobody could be THAT stupid.
Talk about your divide and conquer.
October 28, 2013
Much of the speculation about the future of news focuses on the business model: How will we generate the revenues to pay the people who gather and disseminate the news? But the disruptive power of the Internet raises other profound questions about what journalism is becoming, about its essential character and values. This week’s column is a conversation — a (mostly) civil argument — between two very different views of how journalism fulfills its mission.
Glenn Greenwald broke what is probably the year’s biggest news story, Edward Snowden’s revelations of the vast surveillance apparatus constructed by the National Security Agency. He has also been an outspoken critic of the kind of journalism practiced at places like The New York Times, and an advocate of a more activist, more partisan kind of journalism. Earlier this month he announced he was joining a new journalistic venture, backed by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who has promised to invest $250 million and to “throw out all the old rules.” I invited Greenwald to join me in an online exchange about what, exactly, that means.
By BILL KELLER -NYT
Published: October 27, 2013
<snip>
Dear Glenn,
We come at journalism from different traditions. I’ve spent a life working at newspapers that put a premium on aggressive but impartial reporting, that expect reporters and editors to keep their opinions to themselves unless they relocate (as I have done) to the pages clearly identified as the home of opinion. You come from a more activist tradition — first as a lawyer, then as a blogger and columnist, and soon as part of a new, independent journalistic venture financed by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Your writing proceeds from a clearly stated point of view.
In a post on Reuters this summer, media critic Jack Shafer celebrated the tradition of partisan journalism — “From Tom Paine to Glenn Greenwald” — and contrasted it with what he called “the corporatist ideal.” He didn’t explain the phrase, but I don’t think he meant it in a nice way. Henry Farrell, who blogs for The Washington Post, wrote more recently that publications like The New York Times and The Guardian “have political relationships with governments, which make them nervous about publishing (and hence validating) certain kinds of information,” and he suggested that your new project with Omidyar would represent a welcome escape from such relationships.
I find much to admire in America’s history of crusading journalists, from the pamphleteers to the muckrakers to the New Journalism of the ’60s to the best of today’s activist bloggers. At their best, their fortitude and passion have stimulated genuine reforms (often, as in the Progressive Era, thanks to the journalists’ “political relationships with governments”). I hope the coverage you led of the National Security Agency’s hyperactive surveillance will lead to some overdue accountability.
But the kind of journalism The Times and other mainstream news organizations practice — at their best — includes an awful lot to be proud of, too, revelations from Watergate to torture and secret prisons to the malfeasance of the financial industry, and including some pre-Snowden revelations about the N.S.A.’s abuse of its authority. Those are highlights that leap to mind, but you’ll find examples in just about every day’s report. Journalists in this tradition have plenty of opinions, but by setting them aside to follow the facts — as a judge in court is supposed to set aside prejudices to follow the law and the evidence — they can often produce results that are more substantial and more credible. The mainstream press has had its failures — episodes of credulousness, false equivalency, sensationalism and inattention — for which we have been deservedly flogged. I expect you’ll say, not flogged enough. So I pass you the lash.
Dear Bill...
<snip>
Much More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&
Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News? - Bill Keller/NYT
Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?Much of the speculation about the future of news focuses on the business model: How will we generate the revenues to pay the people who gather and disseminate the news? But the disruptive power of the Internet raises other profound questions about what journalism is becoming, about its essential character and values. This week’s column is a conversation — a (mostly) civil argument — between two very different views of how journalism fulfills its mission.
Glenn Greenwald broke what is probably the year’s biggest news story, Edward Snowden’s revelations of the vast surveillance apparatus constructed by the National Security Agency. He has also been an outspoken critic of the kind of journalism practiced at places like The New York Times, and an advocate of a more activist, more partisan kind of journalism. Earlier this month he announced he was joining a new journalistic venture, backed by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who has promised to invest $250 million and to “throw out all the old rules.” I invited Greenwald to join me in an online exchange about what, exactly, that means.
By BILL KELLER -NYT
Published: October 27, 2013
<snip>
Dear Glenn,
We come at journalism from different traditions. I’ve spent a life working at newspapers that put a premium on aggressive but impartial reporting, that expect reporters and editors to keep their opinions to themselves unless they relocate (as I have done) to the pages clearly identified as the home of opinion. You come from a more activist tradition — first as a lawyer, then as a blogger and columnist, and soon as part of a new, independent journalistic venture financed by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Your writing proceeds from a clearly stated point of view.
In a post on Reuters this summer, media critic Jack Shafer celebrated the tradition of partisan journalism — “From Tom Paine to Glenn Greenwald” — and contrasted it with what he called “the corporatist ideal.” He didn’t explain the phrase, but I don’t think he meant it in a nice way. Henry Farrell, who blogs for The Washington Post, wrote more recently that publications like The New York Times and The Guardian “have political relationships with governments, which make them nervous about publishing (and hence validating) certain kinds of information,” and he suggested that your new project with Omidyar would represent a welcome escape from such relationships.
I find much to admire in America’s history of crusading journalists, from the pamphleteers to the muckrakers to the New Journalism of the ’60s to the best of today’s activist bloggers. At their best, their fortitude and passion have stimulated genuine reforms (often, as in the Progressive Era, thanks to the journalists’ “political relationships with governments”). I hope the coverage you led of the National Security Agency’s hyperactive surveillance will lead to some overdue accountability.
But the kind of journalism The Times and other mainstream news organizations practice — at their best — includes an awful lot to be proud of, too, revelations from Watergate to torture and secret prisons to the malfeasance of the financial industry, and including some pre-Snowden revelations about the N.S.A.’s abuse of its authority. Those are highlights that leap to mind, but you’ll find examples in just about every day’s report. Journalists in this tradition have plenty of opinions, but by setting them aside to follow the facts — as a judge in court is supposed to set aside prejudices to follow the law and the evidence — they can often produce results that are more substantial and more credible. The mainstream press has had its failures — episodes of credulousness, false equivalency, sensationalism and inattention — for which we have been deservedly flogged. I expect you’ll say, not flogged enough. So I pass you the lash.
Dear Bill...
<snip>
Much More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&
October 28, 2013
By BEN RATLIFF - NYT
Published: October 27, 2013
Lou Reed performing in New York City in 2009.
<snip>
Lou Reed, the singer, songwriter and guitarist whose work with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s had a major influence on generations of rock musicians, and who remained a powerful if polarizing force for the rest of his life, died on Sunday at his home in Amagansett, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 71.
The cause was liver disease, said Dr. Charles Miller of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where Mr. Reed had liver transplant surgery this year and was being treated again until a few days ago.
Mr. Reed brought dark themes and a mercurial, sometimes aggressive disposition to rock music. “I’ve always believed that there’s an amazing number of things you can do through a rock ‘n’ roll song,” he once told the journalist Kristine McKenna, “and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat. The things I’ve written about wouldn’t be considered a big deal if they appeared in a book or movie.”
He played the sport of alienating listeners, defending the right to contradict himself in hostile interviews, to contradict his transgressive image by idealizing sweet or old-fashioned values in word or sound, or to present intuition as blunt logic. But his early work assured him a permanent audience.
The Velvet Underground, which was originally sponsored by Andy Warhol and showcased the songwriting of John Cale as well as Mr. Reed, wrought gradual but profound impact on the high-I.Q., low-virtuosity stratum of punk, alternative and underground rock around the world. Joy Division, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, R.E.M., the Strokes and numerous others were descendants. The composer Brian Eno, in an often-quoted interview from 1982, suggested that if the group’s first album, “The Velvet Underground & Nico,” sold only 30,000 copies during its first five years — a figure probably lower than the reality — “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”
Many of the group’s themes — among them love, sexual deviance, alienation, addiction, joy and spiritual transfiguration...
<snip>
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/arts/music/lou-reed-dies-at-71.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all
Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock ’n’ Roll
Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock ’n’ RollBy BEN RATLIFF - NYT
Published: October 27, 2013
Lou Reed performing in New York City in 2009.
<snip>
Lou Reed, the singer, songwriter and guitarist whose work with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s had a major influence on generations of rock musicians, and who remained a powerful if polarizing force for the rest of his life, died on Sunday at his home in Amagansett, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 71.
The cause was liver disease, said Dr. Charles Miller of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where Mr. Reed had liver transplant surgery this year and was being treated again until a few days ago.
Mr. Reed brought dark themes and a mercurial, sometimes aggressive disposition to rock music. “I’ve always believed that there’s an amazing number of things you can do through a rock ‘n’ roll song,” he once told the journalist Kristine McKenna, “and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat. The things I’ve written about wouldn’t be considered a big deal if they appeared in a book or movie.”
He played the sport of alienating listeners, defending the right to contradict himself in hostile interviews, to contradict his transgressive image by idealizing sweet or old-fashioned values in word or sound, or to present intuition as blunt logic. But his early work assured him a permanent audience.
The Velvet Underground, which was originally sponsored by Andy Warhol and showcased the songwriting of John Cale as well as Mr. Reed, wrought gradual but profound impact on the high-I.Q., low-virtuosity stratum of punk, alternative and underground rock around the world. Joy Division, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, R.E.M., the Strokes and numerous others were descendants. The composer Brian Eno, in an often-quoted interview from 1982, suggested that if the group’s first album, “The Velvet Underground & Nico,” sold only 30,000 copies during its first five years — a figure probably lower than the reality — “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”
Many of the group’s themes — among them love, sexual deviance, alienation, addiction, joy and spiritual transfiguration...
<snip>
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/arts/music/lou-reed-dies-at-71.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all
October 27, 2013
By Douglas Main, Staff Writer - LiveScience
October 24, 2013 11:13am ET
As ice caps like this one, nicknamed Sputnik, melt, they expose tiny plants that have been frozen there for millennia, giving clues to the past climate.
Credit: Gifford Miller
<snip>
Plenty of studies have shown that the Arctic is warming and that the ice caps are melting, but how does it compare to the past, and how serious is it?
New research shows that average summer temperatures in the Canadian Arctic over the last century are the highest in the last 44,000 years, and perhaps the highest in 120,000 years.
"The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is," Gifford Miller, a researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a joint statement from the school and the publisher of the journal Geophysical Researcher Letters, in which the study by Miller and his colleagues was published online this week. "This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
The study is the first to show that current Arctic warmth exceeds peak heat there in the early Holocene, the name for the current geological period, which began about 11,700 years ago. During this "peak" Arctic warmth, solar radiation was about 9 percent greater than today, according to the study.
Miller and his colleagues gauged Arctic temperatures by looking at gas bubbles trapped in ice cores (cylinders drilled from the ice that show layers of snow laid down over time) taken from the region...
<snip>
More: http://www.livescience.com/40676-arctic-temperatures-record-high.html
Arctic Temperatures Highest in at Least 44,000 Years - LiveScience
Arctic Temperatures Highest in at Least 44,000 YearsBy Douglas Main, Staff Writer - LiveScience
October 24, 2013 11:13am ET
As ice caps like this one, nicknamed Sputnik, melt, they expose tiny plants that have been frozen there for millennia, giving clues to the past climate.
Credit: Gifford Miller
<snip>
Plenty of studies have shown that the Arctic is warming and that the ice caps are melting, but how does it compare to the past, and how serious is it?
New research shows that average summer temperatures in the Canadian Arctic over the last century are the highest in the last 44,000 years, and perhaps the highest in 120,000 years.
"The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is," Gifford Miller, a researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a joint statement from the school and the publisher of the journal Geophysical Researcher Letters, in which the study by Miller and his colleagues was published online this week. "This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
The study is the first to show that current Arctic warmth exceeds peak heat there in the early Holocene, the name for the current geological period, which began about 11,700 years ago. During this "peak" Arctic warmth, solar radiation was about 9 percent greater than today, according to the study.
Miller and his colleagues gauged Arctic temperatures by looking at gas bubbles trapped in ice cores (cylinders drilled from the ice that show layers of snow laid down over time) taken from the region...
<snip>
More: http://www.livescience.com/40676-arctic-temperatures-record-high.html
October 27, 2013
October 23, 2013
Link: http://www.accuracy.org/release/new-study-on-campaign-cash-behind-the-national-surveillance-state/
The study (.pfd File): http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/sites/all/files/2013_10_21_Ferguson_Jorgensen_Chen_2012_Elections.pdf
New Study on Campaign Cash Behind the National Surveillance State
New Study on Campaign Cash Behind the National Surveillance StateOctober 23, 2013
They comment today: “As the storm over surveillance broke, we were completing a statistical analysis of campaign contributions in 2012, using an entirely new dataset that we constructed from the raw material provided by the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service. … In our big sample, which pretty well approximates ‘business as a whole,’ Obama trailed far behind Romney.”
But they continue: “In sharp contrast to … claims that big business was deeply suspicious of the president, our statistical results show that a large and powerful bloc of ‘industries of the future’ — telecommunications, high tech, computers, and software — showed essentially equal or higher percentages of support for the president in 2012 than they did for Romney.
“We think this finding is the most significant of all: Firms in many of the industries directly involved in the surveillance programs were relative bastions of support for the president.
“Bush and Cheney may have invented it, but national Democratic leaders are full-fledged players in this 21st century National Surveillance State and the interest group pressures that now help to sustain its defenders in Washington work just as powerfully on Democrats as on Republicans.”
They add that “we do not believe that it would be impossible to strike a reasonable balance between the demands of security and freedom that accords with traditional Fourth Amendment principles. … But a system dominated by firms that want to sell all your data working with a government that seems to want to collect nearly all of it through them is unlikely to produce that.”
But they continue: “In sharp contrast to … claims that big business was deeply suspicious of the president, our statistical results show that a large and powerful bloc of ‘industries of the future’ — telecommunications, high tech, computers, and software — showed essentially equal or higher percentages of support for the president in 2012 than they did for Romney.
“We think this finding is the most significant of all: Firms in many of the industries directly involved in the surveillance programs were relative bastions of support for the president.
“Bush and Cheney may have invented it, but national Democratic leaders are full-fledged players in this 21st century National Surveillance State and the interest group pressures that now help to sustain its defenders in Washington work just as powerfully on Democrats as on Republicans.”
They add that “we do not believe that it would be impossible to strike a reasonable balance between the demands of security and freedom that accords with traditional Fourth Amendment principles. … But a system dominated by firms that want to sell all your data working with a government that seems to want to collect nearly all of it through them is unlikely to produce that.”
Link: http://www.accuracy.org/release/new-study-on-campaign-cash-behind-the-national-surveillance-state/
The study (.pfd File): http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/sites/all/files/2013_10_21_Ferguson_Jorgensen_Chen_2012_Elections.pdf
October 27, 2013
by Rania Khalek on October 25, 2013
<snip>
Today is day one of Urban Shield, an annual gathering of SWAT teams, law enforcement agencies and military contractors from around the world. The three-day long event, hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, includes a trade show, competitions and training exercises involving simulations of SWAT team raids and mock protests to test out suppression techniques, all in the name of “disaster preparedness” to fight terrorism.
This comes on top of a damning report released earlier this month by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations detailing the rise in crackdowns on peaceful protests by police departments around the globe, including inside the United States. In the past, police forces from countries notorious for abusing protesters, such as Israel and Bahrain, have participated in Urban Shield. This year, the Boston Marathon bombings have provided the impetus for further militarization.
In what’s either an ironic coincidence or Oakland’s sick way of proclaiming victory over demonstrators, today also happens to mark the second anniversary of Occupy Oakland’s violent eviction. As Police Magazine proudly declared in 2011, “Law enforcement agencies responding to two high-profile manhunts and Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.” In response, a coalition of 20 anti-police brutality groups across the Bay area have formed the Facing Urban Shield Action Network (FUSAN) to organize protests against the gathering. (More irony: As cops attending Urban Shield participate in protest suppression training exercises, police outside Urban Shield will be engaged in the real thing.)
This year’s event, which received $7.5 million in federal funding, is sponsored by major weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, ATK and Colt, as well as for-profit prison service providers like Corizon, all of which are participating in the event’s trade show. That means the federal government is essentially financing a major marketing opportunity for companies invested in police militarization and criminal justice privatization.
Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, is the Defense Department’s largest supplier of munitions, including depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which poisons the populations at their receiving end.
<snip>
More: http://raniakhalek.com/2013/10/25/today-is-day-1-of-urban-shield-2013-a-breeding-ground-for-police-repression/
... --- ... From Friday
Today Is Day 1 Of Urban Shield 2013, A Breeding Ground For Police Repressionby Rania Khalek on October 25, 2013
<snip>
Today is day one of Urban Shield, an annual gathering of SWAT teams, law enforcement agencies and military contractors from around the world. The three-day long event, hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, includes a trade show, competitions and training exercises involving simulations of SWAT team raids and mock protests to test out suppression techniques, all in the name of “disaster preparedness” to fight terrorism.
This comes on top of a damning report released earlier this month by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations detailing the rise in crackdowns on peaceful protests by police departments around the globe, including inside the United States. In the past, police forces from countries notorious for abusing protesters, such as Israel and Bahrain, have participated in Urban Shield. This year, the Boston Marathon bombings have provided the impetus for further militarization.
In what’s either an ironic coincidence or Oakland’s sick way of proclaiming victory over demonstrators, today also happens to mark the second anniversary of Occupy Oakland’s violent eviction. As Police Magazine proudly declared in 2011, “Law enforcement agencies responding to two high-profile manhunts and Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.” In response, a coalition of 20 anti-police brutality groups across the Bay area have formed the Facing Urban Shield Action Network (FUSAN) to organize protests against the gathering. (More irony: As cops attending Urban Shield participate in protest suppression training exercises, police outside Urban Shield will be engaged in the real thing.)
This year’s event, which received $7.5 million in federal funding, is sponsored by major weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, ATK and Colt, as well as for-profit prison service providers like Corizon, all of which are participating in the event’s trade show. That means the federal government is essentially financing a major marketing opportunity for companies invested in police militarization and criminal justice privatization.
Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, is the Defense Department’s largest supplier of munitions, including depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which poisons the populations at their receiving end.
<snip>
More: http://raniakhalek.com/2013/10/25/today-is-day-1-of-urban-shield-2013-a-breeding-ground-for-police-repression/
October 27, 2013
MSN NZ
09:38 Mon Oct 28 2013
<snip>
A 5.5-magnitude earthquake has struck off the east coast of Japan, the US Geological Survey says no tsunami warning has been issued. The quake hit at a depth of 26km at 3:13am (0513 AEDT) on Monday, about 324km east of the town of Namie, the USGS said.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre did not issue an alert.
A powerful 7.1-magnitude undersea quake off the east coast two days ago triggered a small tsunami, which was recorded as being as high as 55cm in one place.
Workers were evacuated from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Saturday but there were no reports of any damage. Japan's meteorological agency says the quake was an aftershock of the disastrous March 2011 tremor.
<snip>
More: http://news.msn.co.nz/article.aspx?id=8745884
Magnitude 5.5 quake strikes off Japan
Magnitude 5.5 quake strikes off JapanMSN NZ
09:38 Mon Oct 28 2013
<snip>
A 5.5-magnitude earthquake has struck off the east coast of Japan, the US Geological Survey says no tsunami warning has been issued. The quake hit at a depth of 26km at 3:13am (0513 AEDT) on Monday, about 324km east of the town of Namie, the USGS said.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre did not issue an alert.
A powerful 7.1-magnitude undersea quake off the east coast two days ago triggered a small tsunami, which was recorded as being as high as 55cm in one place.
Workers were evacuated from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Saturday but there were no reports of any damage. Japan's meteorological agency says the quake was an aftershock of the disastrous March 2011 tremor.
<snip>
More: http://news.msn.co.nz/article.aspx?id=8745884
October 27, 2013
Anybody Remember When GD Could Be Fun... Even Hilarious ??? - Different Days I Guess...
You may not love me, but I love y'all, and thank you for making me rethink the things I think.
That is all.
Profile Information
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