Peter King, Chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, wants WikiLeaks placed on the Treasury Department's blacklist in order to "strangle (its) viability," by threatening, if not strangling, the viability of any person or company that dares to engage in any economic transaction with WikiLeaks or Assange. Conducting business, or providing any economic assistance to a blacklisted entity, even unknowingly, no matter how trivial, is a violation of federal law, for which you too may be blacklisted, losing access to all your property and interests in the U.S.
By Donal on Fri, 01/14/2011 - 3:16pm | World Affairs
My wife and I noticed several months ago that the food we chose to buy was getting much more expensive. I was probably more inspired by Michael Pollan and she by Mehmet Oz, but years ago we agreed that we would cut out the hydrogenated stuff and the high fructose stuff and the high sodium stuff.
And let’s just turn the tables around, and like, currently there’s an investigation into how Iceland became a part of the Coalition of the Willing for the Iraqi war, and there’s an investigation in our parliament. Let’s say that I would like to get the information from all members of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the U.S. Senate in relation to their knowledge about war crimes in Iraq. Would the U.S. authorities feel comfortable with that?
Assange’s position was rife with ironies. An unwavering advocate of full, unfettered disclosure of primary-source material, Assange was now seeking to keep highly sensitive information from reaching a broader audience.
In his post from Tuesday, Nihilism in Action, "real" conservative Daniel Larison joins movement conservatives in rejecting any political attribution of the bald, smirking assassin :
Although various leaks and a few other leaking groups are still cropping up in the news, Liberty and Solidarity offers the first argument I've seen that puts WikiLeaks in context as part of a larger, coherent movement.
By Donal on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 10:07am | Arts & Entertainment
Update: Rather than push Stardust's piece down, I'm updating here. Mother Jones has a photo essay on phone sex operators, which will ... probably not be so good for business. The woman above writes:
Though the unemployment rate dropped from November's 9.77% to December's 9.42%, almost 4 million "discouraged" workers are no longer in the labor force and thus not counted as unemployed in U-3.
Anyone who has been to a supermarket lately knows that food prices are spiraling higher. In the coffee aisle, prices are up 30% in the last couple of months alone, and chocolate, beef and chicken also have grown more costly. Sugar is at a 30-year high. Wheat prices have shot up 47%, thanks to droughts in Russia and floods in Queensland, Australia. And corn keeps surging, not only because of its use as food and feed, but also because of its role as part of the burgeoning biofuels industry.
Giffords says when her friend Chris Nakamura was killed by a motorist who received only a citation for the crash, it was a huge realization that the laws needed to change. When she was in the state legislature she worked to make the penalties stiffer for hitting a cyclist.
There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential. We spent $68 billion in 2010 on corrections - 300 percent more than 25 years ago. The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population. These facts should trouble every American.
Four prisoners in the supermax Ohio State Penitentiary have launched a hunger strike to protest what they call their harsh mistreatment under solitary confinement. The prisoners—Bomani Shakur, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Jason Robb and Namir Abdul Mateen—were sentenced to death for their involvement in the 1993 prison uprising in Lucasville, Ohio. For over 17 years, they’ve been held in 23-hour-a-day solitary lockdown.
By Donal on Wed, 01/05/2011 - 2:28pm | World Affairs
"Anne Francis stars in ... Forbidden Planet" RIP
Doomer James Kunstler is telling us, Gird Your Loins for Lower Living Standards. He says something like that every year right about now, so it must be time to put the Xmas tree back in the box. Still, he is entertaining.
Psychologists for Social Responsibility is deeply concerned about the pretrial detention conditions of alleged Wikileaks source PFC Bradley Manning, including solitary confinement for over five months, a forced lack of exercise, and possible sleep deprivation. It has been reported by his attorney and a visitor that Manning's mental health is suffering from his treatment. As a response, PsySR has issued this Open Letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
James Hamilton mentioned that The Wall Street Journal had a list of the best economics blogs, including his own - Econbrowser. Another was The Baseline Scenario run by James Kwak, who I recalled from a Democracy Now! interview, and Simon Johnson (above).
