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Jack Kerouac Videos. Bonus: My favorite Kerouac pome, ever: Hymn. Profiling 35 of the Deeply Troubled Individuals at the Heart of the Right-Wing Patriot Movement. June 15, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange. The house on Grettisgata Street, in Reykjavik, is a century old, small and white, situated just a few streets from the North Atlantic.

The shifting northerly winds can suddenly bring ice and snow to the city, even in springtime, and when they do a certain kind of silence sets in. This was the case on the morning of March 30th, when a tall Australian man named Julian Paul Assange, with gray eyes and a mop of silver-white hair, arrived to rent the place. Assange was dressed in a gray full-body snowsuit, and he had with him a small entourage. “We are journalists,” he told the owner of the house. Eyjafjallajökull had recently begun erupting, and he said, “We’re here to write about the volcano.” Ask Pablo: Which Is Less Bad For The Environment: Wine Or Beer? Pema Chodron: Buddhist Tonglen Meditation. Tonglen, a simple yet counter-intuitive meditation practice for tough times. Gulf Oil Spill: Ties to Cheney and Acoustic Switch Not Installed : Veterans Today. Ground work for Gulf disaster was established with a permissive tone with oil industry set in secret meetings in 2001.

An acoustic switch to automatically shut down oil wells was reversed by Federal agency in 2003 may be a major factor in blowup. (WASHINGTON, DC) – In secret meetings with the oil company officials in 2001, incoming Vice President Cheney set the foundation for a permissive, welcome mat with the oil industry. After stocking the Federal government’s Material Management Service with his cronies, this agency reversed an earlier 2000 decision requiring a mandatory accusatorial regulator, allowing BP and others not to install a $500,000 acoustic switch to automatically shut down oil gushers.

For BP, this had to be a dumb business decision. BP’s $650 million dollar well may have been saved by a half million investment in an acoustic switch. Rig survivors: BP ordered shortcut on day of blast. BP shortcut led to blast?

Rig survivors say BP, Transocean official argued over shortcut on day of blastBP official won argument: "This is how it's gonna be," he said, according to witnessBP says it won't comment on specificsBP routinely cut corners and pushed ahead despite safety concerns, workers say (CNN) -- The morning the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, a BP executive and a Transocean official argued over how to proceed with the drilling, rig survivors told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview. The survivors' account paints perhaps the most detailed picture yet of what happened on the deepwater rig -- and the possible causes of the April 20 explosion. The BP official wanted workers to replace heavy mud, used to keep the well's pressure down, with lighter seawater to help speed a process that was costing an estimated $750,000 a day and was already running five weeks late, rig survivors told CNN.

The soul seeker: A neuroscientist’s search for the human essence. The New Press - "Dream" by Stephen Duncombe. Joni Mitchell video: Refuge of the Road, a song for Chögyam Trungpa. "He snapped me out of [cocaine use]." Plus: Painting of Trungpa by Joni. Via Reader’s Digest (!)

: RD: Did you ever have problems with drugs or addiction? Mitchell: I did, briefly. I didn’t get involved for years, and then I went on Rolling Thunder and they asked me how I wanted to be paid, and I ran away to join the circus: Clowns used to get paid in wine – pay me in cocaine because everybody was strung out on cocaine. Greenpeace - coalminers on renewable energy. Sierra Club: Moving Beyond Coal and Investing in Renewable Energy. Mining+and+the+economy+e-brief+8+2010.pdf (application/pdf Object) MIDEAST: US Funds Apartheid Roads on West Bank. RAMALLAH, May 24, 2010 (IPS) - The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is helping Israel to construct an apartheid road infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian West Bank by financing nearly a quarter of the segregated road system primarily for the benefit of Israeli settlers. USAID’s figures state that the agency has financed 235 km of roads in the West Bank in the past decade, and is preparing to add another 120 km by the end of this year, reported Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook in the United Arab Emirates paper ‘The National’.

According to an April report released by the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), USAID has helped build 114 km of segregated roads in the Palestinian territory despite assurances from Washington six years ago that it would not assist in the construction after the Palestinian Authority (PA) protested. Palestinians are forced to use poorly-maintained smaller roads full of potholes and sometimes even dirt tracks. Atlas Ducked. Open Thread and Diary Rescue. Ex-Cop Goes Rogue on the Drug War, Tells Pot Smokers How to Outsmart the Police.

May 17, 2010 | Like this article?

Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Barry Cooper should know better than anyone that you don’t mess with the police. He was once a cop, and a dirty one at that. Have we got a video? Back in Black – Glenn Beck’s Nazi Tourette’s (The Daily Show) The Rachel Maddow Show - Maddow: 'Some dreams are bad dreams'. 40 Years Ago: Police Kill Two Students at Jackson State in Mississippi, Ten Days After Kent State Killings. The Tea Party Jacobins. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop, with Robert G. Cushing Houghton Mifflin, 370 pp., $25.00; $15.95 (paper) Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again by David Frum Doubleday, 213 pp., $24.95; $15.99 (paper) Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe Threshold, 325 pp., $29.99 Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism by Marc J.

Princeton University Press, 176 pp., $26.95 (paper) State of the Nation. If you've been following the electoral politics of the marriage equality movement, the National Organization for Marriage would certainly ring a bell.

NOM, with the aid of substantial funding from Mormon and Catholic churches and organizations, was the organization primarily responsible for passing Proposition 8 in California and approving Question 1 in Maine, both of which eliminated the legal right for same-sex couples to marry in their respective states. In each case, the campaign tactics used were despicable: both campaigns sought to convince the electorate that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to second-graders being recruited into a lifestyle of sodomy and depravity. Because of these higher-profile successes, NOM now has a reputation for being an organization focused primarily on pulling the long arc of history away from its inevitable pursuit of marital justice for the GLBT community.

BP working to formulate new approach to spill - Gulf oil spill. ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — A growing collection of crippled equipment littered the ocean floor Sunday near a ruptured oil well gushing crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the remnants of a massive rig that exploded weeks ago and the failed efforts since to cap the leak.

On the surface, nearly a mile up, a fleet of ships maneuvered to deploy the latest stopgap plans hatched by BP engineers desperate to keep the Deepwater Horizon disaster from becoming the nation's worst spill. An estimated 3.5 million gallons has risen from the depths since the April 20 explosion that killed 11, a pace that would surpass the total spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster by June 20. A ‘new level’ of disaster: BP’s 70-ton oil containment dome floats, no ‘plan B’

The Crisis Comes Ashore. Shattered Earth. Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, is today a lush tropical paradise.

But 73,000 years ago a supervolcano erupted here, causing the ground to collapse and creating a large basin that is today filled with water. The eruption brought humans to the brink of extinction. Challenges in Replicating Charter School Success. Michael Shuman Lecture: The Small-Mart Revolution. Revealed: Video Interrogation Of Guantanamo Child Detainee Omar Khadr. Editor’s Note: Omar Khadr was brutally tortured after he was captured.

This video does not depict the torture he was subjected to. Canadian Teen and Child Soldier Omar Khadr faces interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Fair Game - At G.M., Repaying Taxpayers With Their Own Cash. Spare Candy: Suggested Sunday reading (5/2/10) Howard Zinn's "Three Holy Wars" Dave Matthews and Friends "Iko Iko" with Bob Weir. Left I on the News. The Five Creepiest Moments of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. What Conservatives Mean When They Say "Libertarian"

Let’s Tell The Truth About Marijuana. Why Is GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell Against Regulating Wall Street? Wasn’t it lack of oversight of our financial institutions, pushed by anti-regulation Republicans, that got us in financial trouble in the first place?

Now, David Lightman of McClatchy looks at possible motives of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to go against bipartisanship and oppose efforts to reign in Wall Street. McConnell says that he was reacting strongly to concerns from Kentucky bankers, as well as to a Democratic effort to shut Republicans out of the process. However, critics say it was no coincidence that his blasts came after he met with Wall Street executives, and that his comments mirrored advice from Republican strategist Frank Luntz on how best to defeat the Democrats’ legislation. McConnell is charging that the White House isn’t interested in talking and that Democratic legislation would encourage bailouts for big financial companies, which is not true. Critics alleged that there was a connection between a trip that McConnell and Sen.

Unified GOP To Block Senate From Debating Wall Street Reform. Mitch McConnell has rounded up the necessary votes to block Democrats from bringing Wall Street reform to the Senate floor, a spokesman for the Senate Minority Leader said on Friday afternoon. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Thursday he planned to bring the bill to the floor next week where it would be debated and amendments added. McConnell has now persuaded 41 Republicans to vote against debating reform. 'We simply cannot ask the American taxpayer to continue to subsidize this 'too big to fail' policy. JB on my shoulder: Part I « Notes from the Grillo Pad. Dosmasks - Words by Pete Nicely and drawings by Jeff Hurlow. Tea Party: Tea Leaf Green -The Recher Theatre, Towson Md. 4-10-10. C.I.A. Document Details Destruction of Tapes. Tea Parties Protest Tax Day 2010 (PICTURES, VIDEO)