Greg Palast - The Fukushima Story You Didn't Hear on CNN

Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant: 

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earth- quake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could "completely and utterly fail" during an earthquake. 

"Utterly fail during an earthquake." And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure. 

The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I'm not supposed to have. Good thing I've kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building ....

Read More:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101715893

John Pilgar - The Dirty War on WikiLeaks is Now Trial by Media in Sweden

War by media, says current military doctrine, is as important as the battlefield. This is because the real enemy is the public at home, whose manipulation and deception are essential for starting an unpopular colonial war. Like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on Iran and Syria require a steady drip-effect on readers' and viewers' consciousness. This is the essence of a propaganda that rarely speaks its name.

To the chagrin of many in authority and the media, WikiLeaks has torn down the facade behind which rapacious western power and journalism collude. This was an enduring taboo; the BBC could claim impartiality and expect people to believe it. Today, war by media is increasingly understood by the public, as is the trial by media of WikiLeaks' founder, and editor Julian Assange.

Read More:

http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/the-dirty-war-on-wikileaks-is-now-trial-by-media-in-sweden

Josh Golin & Susan Linn - Save the Lorax: Shun the New Film

Universal Studio’s animated film The Lorax opened in theaters this past week and environmentalists and people who care about children are already outraged—with good reason. For more than forty years, the Dr. Seuss classic has been a clarion call for reducing consumption and promoting conservation. But the book’s eloquent environmental message is being crushed by the film’s slew of corporate cross-promotions. 

The Lorax, who once spoke for the trees, now speaks for corporations. While he once warned how rampant greed and consumerism destroyed the Truffula Trees, he now sells Truffula Chip Pancakes at IHOP. The Lorax, who taught a powerful lesson about the fragility of ecosystems by describing the fate of the Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans, and Humming-Fish after their forest was destroyed,  now welcomes consumers-in-training at Target, Pottery Barn Kids, and Whole Foods. His image is emblazoned on Seventh Generation diapers and packages of YoKids Yogurt. He’s marketing HP in classrooms. And he’s promoting Target, Comcast Xfinity, and more through online Lorax advergames and sweepstakes.  

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/01-12

David Rosen - You Are Being Tracked Online: Here Are 5 Ways to Protect Your Privacy

If you listen carefully when you turn on your smartphone or tablet computer or go online using your computer, you’ll hear a deep sucking sound. That's the sound of all your personal data being gobbled up by a growing array of digital service providers.

On Feb. 23, the White House issued a long-awaited report outlining a framework for personal cyber privacy, “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Global Innovation in the Global Digital Economy.” Billing itself a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights," the report stresses the need for transparency, security, accuracy and a reasonable limits to what is collected.

Unfortunately, this “white paper” is in keeping with the Obama administration’s overall policy of compromise so that both policy and principle meet the vested interests of those with power. As with the banking and financial service regulation or oversight over healthcare providers, insurance companies and big pharma companies, the interests of the digital data collectors and the advertising industry will be furthered while the privacy rights of ordinary digital user will be sacrificed.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154419/you_are_being_tracked_online%3A_here_are_5_ways_to_protect_your_privacy

Amy Fried - What's Worse Than Being Called the "S" Word?: Why Rush's "Apology" Added Insult to Injury

So much of the outrage against Rush Limbaugh has focused on his having called Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, a "slut" and a "prostitute," that I think it's easy to lose sight of what's even worse than what he called her. 

First, let's remember that Sandra Fluke was testifying about the difficulty that all students at Georgetown have getting insurance coverage for birth control pills. It may have been easy for Rush to call the (presumably single, straight and childless - after all, she did not testify about herself) Fluke a slut. But that let the anti-woman crowd pretend that this issue is somehow about morality or premarital sex. But, of course, the anti-birth control forces don't discriminate between married and single women, or between women with twenty children or women with none. It has nothing to do with morality. Mitt Romney had it right with his first, gut reaction to a question about the Blunt amendment: it is not government's role to involve itself in the personal decisions made between men and women. (Unfortunately, of course, he immediately caved on that issue.) 

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-s-Worse-Than-Being-Ca-by-Amy-Fried-Ph-D-120305-243.html

Jillian C. York & Trevor Timm - Surveillance Inc: How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators

Reliance means vulnerability, and the activists and citizen journalists of the Arab uprisings rely heavily on the Internet and mobile technology. They use text messaging to coordinate protests, for example, or social media sites to upload the photos and videos that then make it into mainstream global media. In the first protests in Tunisia, because traditional journalists could not get access, citizen journalists filled in, using YouTube and the live-streaming platform UStream to give the world -- including, for example, the Egyptians and Syrians who later began revolts of their own -- a window into the events there.

For all of the good this technology has done, activists are also beginning to understand the harm it can do. As Evgeny Morozov wrote in The Net Delusion, his book on the Internet's darker sides, "Denying that greater information flows, combined with advanced technologies ... can result in the overall strengthening of authoritarian regimes is a dangerous path to take, if only because it numbs us to potential regulatory interventions and the need to rein in our own Western corporate excesses."

Read More:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/surveillance-inc-how-western-tech-firms-are-helping-arab-dictators/254008/

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

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

William K. Black - Apple's Anti-Employer Control Fraud

Apple has released a report on working conditions in its suppliers’ factories, highlighting a form of control fraud (fraud in which the head of a company subverts it for personal gain) that criminology has identified but rarely discussed.  I write overwhelmingly about accounting control fraud because it drives our recurrent, intensifying financial crises.  The primary intended victims of accounting control frauds are the shareholders and the creditors.  Other private sector control frauds target customers (e.g., George Akerlof’s 1970 article on “lemons”), and the public (e.g., the unlawful disposal of toxic waste, illegal logging, and tax fraud).

Anti-employee control frauds most commonly fall into four broad, but not mutually exclusive, categories – illegal work conditions due to violation of safety rules, violation of child labor laws, failure to pay employees’ wages and benefits, and frauds based on goods and loans provided by the employer to the employee that lock the employee into quasi-slavery.  Apple has just released a report on its suppliers that shows that anti-employee control fraud is the norm.  Remember, fraud is hidden and is often not discovered and Apple did not have an incentive to make an exhaustive investigation.  Apple calls its inquiries “audits” and it is apparent that most of its information comes from reviewing written and electronic records at its suppliers.  That is exceptionally revealing.  The suppliers know that they can defraud their employees with such impunity that they don’t even bother to get rid of records that prove their frauds.  Apple has resisted making public its suppliers and the report refused to identify which suppliers committed which violations – often for years despite repeated, false promises to end their anti-employee control frauds. 

Read More:

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2012/01/anti-employee-control-fraud.html