A new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation analyzes more than 2,500 pages’ worth of FBI documents extracted using Freedom of Information Act litigation and finds disturbing, system-wide violations of civil liberties on a scale that is far beyond anything reported to date…
Continue reading… “EFF: FBI May Have Committed More Than 40K Intelligence Violations Since 9/11”
Noted speed freak, serial-killer fangirl, and Tea Party hero Ayn Rand was also a kleptoparasite, sneakily gobbling up taxpayer funds under an assumed name to pay for her medical treatments after she got lung cancer…
Continue reading… “Ayn Rand Slyly Took Government Assistance While Decrying Others Who Did The Same”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has officially approved the unregulated planting of Monsanto’s genetically engineered alfalfa. In a move that will undoubtedly set a precedent for what comes next (namely, the question of whether or not to deregulate GE sugarbeets) Vilsack did nothing more, and nothing less than obliterate our choice as organic consumers to be assured that we are avoiding genetically modified organisms in our food…
Continue reading… “Monsanto Wins Big and Consumers Again Get Screwed”
Should the government here have this kind of power?
On Thursday Jan 27th at 22:34 UTC the Egyptian Government effectively removed Egypt from the internet. Nearly all inbound and outbound connections to the web were shut down. The internet intelligence authority Renesys explains it here and confirms that “virtually all of Egypt’s Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.” This has never happened before in the entire history of the internet, with a nation of this size. A block of this scale is completely unheard of, and Senator Joe Lieberman wants to be able to do the same thing in the US…
Continue reading… “Egypt Turns Off Internet, Lieberman Wants Same Option For US”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnw5BvxSDmM[/youtube]
As China gears up for the Year of the Rabbit, the nation’s Communist authorities have censored a bunny cartoon with political overtones. The Chinese New Year – which falls this year on February 3 – is the country’s biggest holiday. Families come together for several days of feasting and gift-giving. But, this year, a New Year-themed cartoon posted on a popular Chinese website seems to have rankled officials. Censors have deleted the video, in an apparent reaction to its biting political satire.
The three-minute animation begins with rabbit babies being poisoned, a blatant reference to a recent toxic milk scandal that left six children dead…
Continue reading… “China Bans Satirical Bunnies”
The dairy industry is butting heads with the FDA over the agency’s plan to increase testing for antibiotics in milk. Food safety advocates are concerned about overuse of drugs in dairy cows (and increased antibiotic resistance in humans), while the industry says the new testing procedures would cause a lot of milk to be wasted because the results can take a full week to come back.
Certain farms are already caught regularly with milk containing illegal levels of drugs—and farmers also use drugs that are not regularly tested for.
Continue reading… “Dairy Industry Fights FDA’s Proposed New Drug Testing for Milk”
Google, the company that fought censorship in China and vowed not to censor even anti-Semitism, has begun a subtle censorship campaign of its own.
As of today, if a Google search user begins typing in a term such as “BitTorrent,” Google’s Auto Suggest feature stops listing possible terms as soon as he types the second “T” in the word. Likewise, it won’t auto-complete the pirate-familiar words “megaupload,” “utorrent” or “rapidshare.”
Continue reading… “Google Engages in Subtle Form of Censorship”
LOOK! Up in the sky. It’s a bird? It’s a plane?
It’s my weed bags being flung over the border!
Marijuana smugglers apparently have a problem with the US border fence near Tucson, Arizona -and those pesky border patrols. So they’ve turned to ancient technology to deliver the goods -a catapult!
Continue reading… “Mexican Drug Smugglers Catapult Weed Over Border fence into US”
Dubai’s “The World,” a collection of artificial islands designed to resemble a map of planet Earth, is reportedly sinking back into the water. From the Telegraph..
Continue reading… “Dubai’s Artificial Islands “Sinking””
Questions such as how much fresh water we have left on Earth, where it is located, and how we can access it are all nearly impossible to answer. However, scientists working on understanding and revealing the planet’s surface structure are helping to hone in on an answer. University of British Columbia researchers have created a world’s-first with their new map that outlines how fluid flows through Earth’s various porous surfaces. Information gleaned from the map can help us discover more about water supplies worldwide.
Continue reading… “First-Ever Global Map to Delve Deep Into Earth Surface Helps Reveal Water Supply”
Here’s a good Boston Globe report on the first decade of Portugal’s bold experiment with drug decriminalization and increased treatment. Ten years ago, Portugal — whose drug problem had been spiraling out of control — decided to treat drug addiction as a public health matter, not as a criminal matter. They decriminalized possession of drugs, and increased treatment available to addicts, and experienced an immediate, dramatic and sustained drop in negative effects from drug use — though the use of some drugs went up…
Continue reading… “Portugal: 10 Years of Decriminalized Drugs”
Shani Shingnapur, the world famous temple town in Maharashtra where houses have neither doors nor locks, now befittingly has its first commercial bank branch with no locks on its front door. The public sector UCO Bank is the first to throw open the doors of commercial banking to this unique town of 3,000 people. Bowing to local religious sentiments, the bank last week decided to open the branch without a lock on its front door…
Continue reading… “Bank in India Launches Branch Without Locks”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.