North Korean Labor Camps | VICE News This guy menacingly brandished a railroad spike at Shane until his Russian mobster driver “Billy the Fish” grabbed it out of his hands and asked, “This your lights-out switch?” Shortly after I arrived in Siberia, our British editor, Andy Capper, texted me: “You’ll love Siberia. Everything is so close and the people are so nice.” He was of course being facetious (or British: same thing) because everything is 18 hours by train and the people are very mean indeed. Billy was a local mafia type from a remote Siberian town that had no police and little regulation, save him and his boys. At the first camp we found, the North Korean guards threatened us and tried to throw us out. Later, when we were deep in the forest, we came upon cadres of North Korean workers. Later, we had lunch by an old woodpile—spam, hard bread, paprika chips, vodka, beer, and, for dessert, vodka with juice. Shane Smith A North Korean performs a little routine maintenance on a Russian truck in the heart of the labor camp.
100 Things You Can Say To Irritate A Republican Addicting Info does it again. Last time they came up with If you hate taxes, here are 102 things NOT to do. Even though they graciously gave us permission to cross-post, I'd rather tease you and then send you to their place to give them some well-deserved traffic. This time around, they came up with 100 Things You Can Say To Irritate A Republican. If you want to enrage a conservative, I suggest saying the following:1.
GlobalResearch.ca - Centre for Research on Globalization Private Prison Corporation Offers Cash In Exchange For State Prisons As state governments wrestle with massive budget shortfalls, a Wall Street giant is offering a solution: cash in exchange for state property. Prisons, to be exact. Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for "challenging corrections budgets." In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post. The move reflects a significant shift in strategy for the private prison industry, which until now has expanded by building prisons of its own or managing state-controlled prisons. Corrections Corporation has been a swiftly growing business, with revenues expanding more than fivefold since the mid-1990s. A series of studies has also cast doubt on the private prison industry's main selling point: efficiency.
The Inside Story on Climate Scientists Under Siege | Wired Science It is almost possible to dismiss Michael Mann’s account of a vast conspiracy by the fossil fuel industry to harass scientists and befuddle the public. His story of that campaign, and his own journey from naive computer geek to battle-hardened climate ninja, seems overwrought, maybe even paranoid. But now comes the unauthorized release of documents showing how a libertarian thinktank, the Heartland Institute, which has in the past been supported by Exxon, spent millions on lavish conferences attacking scientists and concocting projects to counter science teaching for kindergarteners. Mann’s story of what he calls the climate wars, the fight by powerful entrenched interests to undermine and twist the science meant to guide government policy, starts to seem pretty much on the money. He’s telling it in a book out on March 6, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines. It’s a brilliantly sunny day, and the light snowfall of the evening before is rapidly melting.
Leaked docs: Heartland Institute think tank pays climate contrarians very well (updated) Update: The Heartland Institute has acknowledged that some of the documents were theirs, but claims that a strategy document is fraudulent. Although other sources indicate that the Heartland is preparing an educational program, none speak to the motivation behind this program. The scientific findings relevant to climate change generally appear in journals that the public will never look at. Instead, the public battle over the science and its policy implications often boils down to a battle between scientific societies like the AAAS and National Academies of Science and think tanks like the Cato Institute and Heartland Institute, which contest the scientific consensus. The Heartland has even set up a contrarian counterpart to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, called the NIPCC (for "nongovernmental" and "international," naturally). Yesterday, a series of documents that allegedly originated form the Heartland were leaked to a prominent climate blog.
President, Senate, House Updated Daily Gingrich Way Ahead in Iowa Permalink In the past 2 days, six different polls have been released for the Iowa caucuses. They are notoriously difficult to poll because turnout is always so low. Having Gingrich clearly leading the field in Iowa is certainly unexpected. Romney's strategy has to be to win Iowa, thus snuffing out Gingrich's candidacy before it really gets started. While news stories about election results are winner take all, delegates are not. Obama Gives Fiery Speech Attacking the Republicans Permalink President Obama finally did what many of his supporters have been calling for since the beginning of his term: a frontal attack on the Republicans and their economic program. The significance of this is that Obama is apparently planning to run on a campaign that the Republicans will label as class warfare. Pelosi Backtracks on Releasing Dirt Permalink If you like this Website, tell your friends. -- The Votemaster
Bringing 'political intelligence' out of the shadows - Feb. 17 The House and Senate passed diverging versions of a bill to ban insider trading by members of Congress earlier this month. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It should be a no-brainer: a popular bill with bipartisan support that bans insider trading by members of Congress. The legislation is known as the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or the Stock Act. Now, however, the bill is stuck in part due to a disagreement over a provision that requires so-called "political intelligence" professionals to register with the government and disclose their activities in the same way that lobbyists do. The disagreement puts the spotlight on an industry that has previously escaped the notice of most Americans. Political intelligence professionals get paid big bucks to gather information about government policy and pending legislation, often through lawmakers or other public officials. Amazingly, there are no clear prohibitions on these kinds of insider tips at the moment. Rep.
Jonathan Chait on Liberal Disappointment If we trace liberal disappointment with President Obama to its origins, to try to pinpoint the moment when his crestfallen supporters realized that this was Not Change They Could Believe In, the souring probably began on December 17, 2008, when Obama announced that conservative Evangelical pastor Rick Warren would speak at his inauguration. “Abominable,” fumed John Aravosis on AmericaBlog. “Obama’s ‘inclusiveness’ mantra always seems to head only in one direction—an excuse to scorn progressives and embrace the Right,” seethed Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow rode the story almost nightly: “I think the problem is getting larger for Barack Obama.” Since then, the liberal gloom has only deepened, as Obama compromise alternated with Obama failure. “We are all incredibly frustrated,” Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s executive director, told the Washington Post in September. The cultural enthusiasm sparked by Obama’s candidacy drained away almost immediately after his election.
Copyright kings are judge, jury and executioner on YouTube On Friday, a YouTube user named eeplox posted a question to the support forums, regarding a copyright complaint on one of his videos. YouTube’s automated Content ID system flagged a video of him foraging a salad in a field, claiming the background music matched a composition licensed by Rumblefish, a music licensing firm in Portland, Oregon. The only problem? There is no music in the video; only bird calls and other sounds of nature. Naturally, he filed a dispute, explaining that the audio couldn’t possibly be copyrighted. The next day, amazingly, his claim was rejected. Back at YouTube, eeplox found himself at a dead end. Whether caused by a mistake or malice, Rumblefish was granted full control over eeplox’s video. Content ID Used and Abused On Sunday night, Reddit took notice. His argument: One of Rumblefish’s Content ID reps made a mistake by denying the dispute, and they released the claim on Sunday night. Content ID’s monetization was a huge boon for copyright holders. A Simple Plan
Mark Twain's Radical Liberalism - Jeffrey A. Tucker "Biographers and critics have had difficulty figuring out how the same person could champion the interests of Newport capitalist class while founding the Anti-Imperialist League." Part of the difficulty of understanding Mark Twain's political outlook is due to terminology and the tendency of politics to corrupt the meaning of everything. As often as you see him called a liberal, he is called a conservative, and sometimes both in the same breath. Critics puzzle about how one person could be champion of workers, owners, and the capitalist rich, while holding views that are antigovernment on domestic matters, antislavery, and antiwar. They often conclude that his politics are incoherent. Part of the reason for the confusion has to do with the changed meaning of liberalism as an ideology and the incapacity of modern critics to understand its 19th-century implications. Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, when the meaning of liberalism was less ambiguous. Tom says to Huck,
A new role for the 1% Douglas Rushkoff says the richest people tend to make money from financeHe says historically, aristocracy took control from peasants of currency and its valueOver time, they learned how to extract value and forgot how to create it, he saysRushkoff : The 1% could play a key role in new ways of creating value Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff writes a regular column for CNN.com. He is a media theorist and the author of "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take it Back." (CNN) -- A whole lot of us are stuck with credit-card debt that goes up each month, mortgages worth more than our homes and student loans that extend into infinity. So it's only natural that we look at the debt crisis from the bottom up: from the perspective of the 99% who are getting screwed. In fact, as I have come to see it, short of civilization-ending revolution, solving the debt crisis might actually mean saving the 1%.
Uganda Welcomes Oil, but Fears Graft It Attracts Despite Ugandans’ dreams of industrialization, the country’s most lucrative export is coffee, and fish is second. Nearly 40 percent of the population survives on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank. But when oil starts pumping within the next several years, the expected revenue of up to $2 billion a year could propel Uganda into the strata of middle-income countries, where few sub-Saharan African countries rank. A refinery will be built; infrastructure is promised. Yet there are growing worries that the oil may prove to be more of a curse than a gift, similar to the fates of other countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have joined the petroleum bonanza. The web of scandals may delay the much-anticipated starting date of oil production, adding to the already volatile politics in Uganda, which has recently been the scene of one of the most active protest movements in sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. “I have never let Uganda down,” Mr.
The Vice Guide to Congo | VICE News By Jason Mojica Photos by Tim Freccia A member of the Mai Mai militia patrols his camp. Legend has it that the Mai Mai are shape-shifters who can fly and that bullets pass through them as if their bodies are made of water. Walking through the jungle in the dead of night with a group of Rwandan rebels best known for their expertise at rape and murder wasn’t exactly what we had planned for our first trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. All we wanted was to make a little film about the controversy surrounding the so-called conflict minerals that make our cell phones work, drop a couple Conrad references, and drink a Primus. A week earlier, our team landed at N’Djili International Airport in the capital of Kinshasa, formerly Leopoldville. We’d come to Congo to try to find out more about the developed world’s thirst for coltan, cassiterite, and the other colorfully named minerals that make the electronics industry go round. In Africa, you have to be careful what you ask for.