University Prof Bill Wickersham Calls for Congressional UFO Hearing

Congress has a full plate of hearings coming up. Everything from medical liability reform, creating and promoting jobs and investigating Internet child pornography to assessing China's behavior and making immigration work for American minorities.

Do you think the House or Senate will have any extra time to discuss UFOs? While it sometimes might seem as though our lawmakers are from outer space, this hasn't stopped one college professor from urging Congress to take a serious look at unidentified flying objects.

Citing findings from a 12-year-old groundbreaking French UFO study, University of Missouri-Columbia psychologist and adjunct professor of peace studies Bill Wickersham has issued a call for congressional leaders to boldly go where their predecessors wouldn't.In 1999, a special 13-member committee in France, made up of retired generals, scientists and space experts, created the COMETA Report, a study of 500 worldwide UFO sightings. The investigation narrowed down the reports to those that included radar and visual cases and previously undisclosed accounts from commercial and military pilots.

In a letter written in the Columbia Missourian, a news organization staffed by the Missouri School of Journalism, Wickersham cited the fact that the COMETA Report considered some UFO cases as possibly having an otherworldly source.

Even 12 years after that report, Wickersham, co-author of "Confronting Nuclear War: The Role of Education, Religion and the Community" (CreateSpace), feels it's important enough to warrant Congress' opening new, secrecy-free hearings into UFOs. ...

... does Wickersham think there's a real chance that a new congressional hearing on UFOs might actually come to pass in the current political climate?

"Not right now," he said. "And what's more, look at what happened to [2008 Ohio Democratic presidential candidate] Dennis Kucinich. The giggle factor, the ridicule, the ignorance, the apathy, denial -- all these things that surround this issue. It takes a lot of guts for a politician [to speak out on UFOs]. Most politicians run from it." ...

via University Prof Bill Wickersham Calls for Congressional UFO Hearing.

Professor notices Abe Lincoln's signature on a picture hanging in his office

When Western Illinois University's University Television (UTV) Associate Director Roger Kent looked a bit closer at a picture that had been hanging in his office for a few years, he noticed what looked like a signature belonging to the nation's 16th president. Curiosity got the better of him, so he contacted a Lincoln authority: the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.

And Kent's hunch proved to be right: the framed portrait included a piece of paper signed by Abe Lincoln.

Many years ago, when the University Union Lincoln Room changed its decor, UTV acquired a number of Lincoln artifacts to be used as props for set design. One of the framed portraits was stored in the prop room for three years until Kent "rescued" it to decorate his Memorial Hall office.

"This piece has been hanging on my office wall for two years, and one day, something just made me really look at it. That's when I noticed a handwritten note bearing the Lincoln signature in a small window in the portrait," Kent said. "I sent a message with a scanned image to Library Curator Dr. James Cornelius, who at first glance said the note appeared to be authentic."

Last month, Kent drove 90 miles to Springfield for Cornelius to examine the note in person. It was there that Cornelius and other archivists verified that the note was authentic, with an estimated value of $15,000-$20,000. Cornelius' staff created a high resolution scan to include in their official database, but turned the note back over to Kent. ...

via Professor notices Abe Lincoln's signature on a picture hanging in his office.

Oil Crisis Just Got Real: Sinopec (Read China) Cuts Off Oil Exports

As if a dollar in freefall was not enough, surging oil is about to hit the turbo boost, decimating what is left of the US (and global) consumer. Xinhua, via Energy Daily, brings this stunner: " Chinese oil giant Sinopec has stopped exporting oil products to maintain domestic supplies amid disruption concerns caused by Middle East unrest and Japan's earthquake, a report said Wednesday. The state-run Xinhua news agency did not say how long the suspension would last but it reported that the firm had said it also would take steps to step up output "to maintain domestic market supplies of refined oil products". Oh but don't worry, those good Saudi folks are seeing a massive drop in demand... for their Kool aid perhaps. "Sinopec would ensure supplies met the "basic needs" of the southern Chinese special regions of Hong Kong and Macao, but they also should expect an unspecified drop in supply, Xinhua quoted an unnamed company official as saying." ...

via Oil Crisis Just Got Real: Sinopec (Read China) Cuts Off Oil Exports | zero hedge.

US deploys armed drones over Libya

Armed US Predator drones are carrying out missions over Libya, Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.

Mr Gates said their use had been authorised by President Barack Obama and would give "precision capability" to the military operation.

US drones are already used to target militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Libyan rebels have been battling Col Gaddafi's troops since February but have recently made little headway.

"President Obama has said that where we have some unique capabilities, he is willing to use those," Mr Gates told a news conference.

He said two armed, unmanned Predators were being made available to Nato as needed, and marked a "modest contribution" to the military operations.

Mr Gates denied that the drone deployment was evidence of "mission creep" in Libya and said there were still no plans to put US "boots on the ground" in Libya.

"There's no wiggle room in that," he said.

via BBC News - US deploys armed drones over Libya.

1866 Letter: Honest Abe Lincoln was not a Christian

He won the Civil War, ended slavery, had his bust carved into Mount Rushmore and now beams from five dollar bills. But the God-fearing patriots of Middle America are about to receive a reminder that Abraham Lincoln had a strained relationship with one of their most respected institutions: organised religion.

A three-page letter highlighting the 16th president's unconventional relationship with the Almighty has just been put on sale. It offers a possible insight into why he was never baptised, did not attend a church and, in defiance of political protocol of the era, would refuse to publicly discuss his spiritual beliefs. Such was his reluctance to embrace piety that, if he were standing for office today, there is a good chance he would be unelectable.

The letter was written by William Herndon, a legal partner and close friend of "Honest Abe" in 1866, a year after Lincoln had been assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. And while the letter is at pains to stress that Lincoln did believe in "a God" at the time of his death, it reveals that he took a long time getting to that point. "Mr Lincoln's religion is too well known to me to allow even a shadow of a doubt; he is, or was, a Theist and a Rationalist, denying all extraordinary, supernatural inspiration or revelation," it reads, before detailing the president's spiritual evolution in the years after Herndon met him in Springfield, Illinois, in the 1840s.

"At one time in his life, to say the least, he was an elevated Pantheist, doubting the immortality of the soul as the Christian world understands that term. He believed that the soul lost its identity and was immortal as a force. Subsequent to this, he rose to the belief of a God, and this is all the change he ever underwent. I speak knowing what I say. He was a noble man – a good great man for all this."

Historians have long debated Lincoln's religious views, and how they affected his political career. He was born into a humble Kentucky family in 1809 and raised as a Baptist, but became sceptical and rejected organised religion. He never joined a church in his adult life. ...

A couple of decades after Lincoln's death, several biographers attempted to portray him as a Christian. They were helped by the fact that he often quoted the Bible during speeches.

In today's political environment, it is almost unthinkable that someone could be elected president without being a member of a congregation. Barack Obama, who cites Lincoln as a political hero, regularly attends churches in Chicago and Washington, even if roughly a half of Republican voters (according to several polls) believe he is a Muslim – despite the fact that he smokes, occasionally drinks, and eats pork....

via 'Pantheist' Lincoln would be unelectable today - Americas, World - The Independent.

Explanation of the Court Trial Against Me

I have to tell the world right now, there is a story going around that I am going to be in jail, which is a complete misunderstanding.

Last year, we were taking bids from different companies to run a book store inside the Egyptian Museum. There is a person, who was renting a bookstore inside the Museum. He wanted to stop the bidding process, because he thought he should keep his contract. This person filed a case with the Misdemeanor Court in Agouza, Cairo, in order to stop the bidding process. This case was filed against the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), not against me personally, but against the role I was holding at that time.

However, before the case came to trial, the bidding process ended at the end of May 2010, and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (now the Ministry of State for Antiquities) chose a company, the Egyptian Sound and Light Company, to run the bookstore. Shortly after this decision was made, the court trial happened, at the beginning of June, so the SCA representatives did not have time to present evidence that the bidding had finished. Therefore, the court made a ruling that the bidding should stop. However, it was too late to do anything.

He still wanted to get his way, so this person continued to bring action against me in the court. In November 2010, the court made a ruling, that I was innocent, because as the Secretary General of the SCA, I was not in charge of legal affairs at the SCA, this was under the control of the Ministry of Culture at that time. But this was not enough for this person, he brought the case to the court again, claiming he had evidence that I was in fact in charge of legal affairs, and this time, the SCA did not have a legal representative present at the court. The court made the current ruling that I, as head of the SCA, was sentenced to a year in jail. This is how the court in Egypt works, and this is not an uncommon thing that the head of an organization gets sentenced like this. When a ruling like this is made, the defendant (in this case myself as Secretary General of the SCA at that time) has a certain amount of time to appeal the decision of the court.

Tomorrow, the head of the Legal Affairs Department at the Ministry of Antiquities will go to the court to file our appeal. He will present evidence that the bid for the bookstore contract was finished before the original court ruling, so therefore we could not follow the ruling to stop the bidding. We already had completed the bidding! I have every confidence that this matter will be cleared up very soon, so I want to tell everyone not to worry. I respect the laws of my country very highly, and the rulings of our courts. I intend to handle this matter entirely within our legal system. Nothing will cause me to lose focus from my goal of protecting the sites of Egypt.

via Explanation of the Court Trial Against Me | drhawass.com - Zahi Hawass.

I've liked him ever since I got the chance to talk to him in person about carbon dating the great pyramid. I think I caught him off guard by asking for a specific detail about the dating process he used, but he answered and gave me some advice I could use as well. I do hope he gets this resolved soon and, obviously, that he doesn't have to go to jail. His statement is very clear.

Web creator's net neutrality fear

The inventor of the web has said that governments must act to preserve the principle of net neutrality.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that legislation may be needed if self-regulation failed.

He been asked by the UK government to negotiate an agreement on an open internet between service providers and content firms like the BBC and Skype.

Sir Tim would prefer self-regulation by the internet industry, but progress has been slow.

"If it fails the government has to be absolutely ready to legislate," he said.

"It may be that the openness of the internet, we should just put into law."

Net neutrality, the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally, has been a controversial issue in the United States and is now moving up the political agenda in the UK.

Two tier

Internet Service Providers have claimed that they need to be able to control the growing traffic online, and content creators fear that the result could be a two-speed internet.

Sir Tim said that he understands the need for traffic management but any move to discriminate between different content businesses would be a step too far.

"What you lose when you do that is you lose the open market," he said.

"What the companies gain is that they get complete control of you."

But Professor William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute warned that enshrining net neutrality in law had its dangers.

"Once you allow the state in, you open the door to all sorts of regulation of the internet controls on content creation," he said.

Sir Tim, who was speaking at the opening of the World Wide Web Consortium's UK offices in Oxford, said that internet access was now becoming a human right.

At the same time it was also a very powerful tool for either a government or a large company to get to control of.

He warned that this could lead to users being blocked from visiting sites that were not politically correct, or religiously correct, or commercially correct. ...

via BBC News - Web creator's net neutrality fear.

The JFK-UFO Connection?

... While researching materials for his new book, "A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier" (Wasteland Press), Atlanta, Ga., history teacher William Lester used the Freedom of Information Act to get some previously classified documents.

Two of them were written by Kennedy on the same date, Nov. 12, 1963 -- 10 days before his assassination. One was to the CIA director, asking for UFO files; the other was to the NASA administrator, with Kennedy expressing a desire for cooperation with the former Soviet Union on mutual outer space activities."One of his concerns was that a lot of these UFOs were being seen over the Soviet Union and he was very concerned that the Soviets might misinterpret these UFOs as U.S. aggression, believing that it was some of our technology," Lester told AOL News.

"I think this is one of the reasons why he wanted to get his hands on this information and get it away from the jurisdiction of NASA so he could say to the Soviets, 'Look, that's not us, we're not doing it, we're not being provocative. In fact, just to show you that it's not us, what do you think about us working together on the exploration of space?'" Lester added.

Also in his book, Lester reprints an intriguing letter written by Maxwell W. Hunter of the National Aeronautics and Space Council (from the executive office of the president) to Robert F. Packard of the Office of International Scientific Affairs. ...

via The JFK-UFO Connection: Bogus Documents or Unanswered Questions?.

Found on Rense:

"Citizens of this Earth, we are not alone."

With those dramatic words, President John F. Kennedy intended to inform the American public and the world at large that the U.S. government had made contact with aliens from deep space.

But before he could deliver the speech on November 22, 1963, the beloved leader was cut down by an assassin's bullets.

That is the astonishing claim of JFK researcher Professor Lawrence Merrick, author of an upcoming blockbuster book Killing the Messenger: The Death of JFK.

No telling what we was going to reveal, or if it was the reason he was killed on November 22, 1963, or if his revealing something to Marilyn Monroe (who sang him happy birthday on May 19, 1962) got her killed on August 5, 1962. 

Minister: About 1,000 relics stolen during Egyptian uprising

Thieves stole around 1,000 relics from museums and archeological sites across Egypt since protests against the government broke out in January, Egypt's minister for antiquities Zahi Hawass said Sunday in a newspaper interview.

"We are investigating all the incidents to find the items. Up until now we have identified many culprits, criminals who were looking for gold or mummies and who lacked knowledge of the value of the items they stole," he told Spanish daily El Mundo.

"They were not organized, they lived near the archeological sites where the objects were kept. They would take advantage of the night to enter the archeological sites and pillage," he added.

"About 1,000 objects were stolen, none of them major items. There is an inventory of everything and it will be difficult for the items to leave the country."

The inventory of all the items that were stolen during the uprising and the weeks of unrest that followed will be given to UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, Hawass said.

The tomb of Hetep-ka at Saqqara and the tomb of Em-pi at Giza as well as the Egyptian museum in Cairo, which houses most of the King Tutankhamen collection, were among the places targeted by thieves, he added. ...

via Minister: About 1,000 relics stolen during Egyptian uprising | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt.

Royal Wedding ‘to serve as rehearsal for Queen’s funeral’

The Royal Wedding marks the beginning of a new generation of British royals, but sources are reporting the occasion will also serve as a rehearsal for a more sombre task: Queen Elizabeth II's funeral.

Senior palace officials will take full advantage of the presence of dignitaries and Commonwealth leaders to go through rehearsals necessary for the monarch’s funeral, the Sunday Express reports.

The 29 April wedding procession will use the same route as the sovereign's cortege, when a gun carriage will escort her coffin from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall.

According to the Express, the operation has discreetly been codenamed London Bridge.

"Obviously we all hope such a sad event will be a long way off - HM may be 84 but she's in very good health - yet we need to rehearse the logistics and timings for what will be a huge ceremony," The newspaper quoted a royal aide as saying.

"It may seem odd to think about his grandmother's demise at the same time as William's wedding but having all these diplomats and VIPs in London on 29 April makes it sensible to run through the procedures and things like seating plans.

"The Queen, who is very pragmatic about this sort of thing, knows about the dry run. The arrangements are reviewed annually and any significant changes have to be approved by her. There's no sentimentality involved on her part; she actually takes rather a keen interest in the details."

via Royal Wedding ‘to serve as rehearsal for Queen’s funeral’.

Democratic senator wants Internet sales taxes

A Democratic senator is preparing to introduce legislation that aims to end the golden era of tax-free Internet shopping.

The proposal--expected to be made public soon after Tax Day--would rewrite the ground rules for Internet and mail order sales by eliminating the ability of Americans to shop at Web sites like Amazon.com and Overstock.com without paying state sales taxes.

Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second most senior Senate Democrat, will introduce the bill after the Easter recess, a Democratic aide told CNET.

"Why should out-of-state companies that sell their products online have an unfair advantage over Main Street bricks-and-mortar businesses?" Durbin said in a speech in Collinsville, Ill., in February. "Out-of-state companies that aren't paying their fair share of taxes are sticking Illinois residents and businesses with the tab."

At the moment, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors aren't always required to pay sales taxes at the time of purchase. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan's B&H Photo, for example, won't pay the sales taxes at checkout time that they would if shopping at a local mall--which is what Durbin means by giving online retailers an "unfair advantage."

On the other hand, there are some 7,500 different taxing jurisdictions in the United States, each with a set of very precise rules describing what can and can't be taxed and at what rate. That makes it challenging terrain for retailers to navigate.  ...

via Democratic senator wants Internet sales taxes | Privacy Inc. - CNET News.

Oh hell no. Let this be the last straw.  Politicians have taken our money and they have squandered it. Year after year they have wasted billions in useless brutal overseas oil and opium wars. They've bailed out big banks on the backs of the broke, just to create another bubble. Enough! No more taxes! Get your light saber and rise up, goddamnit!

Unpaid Blogger Hits ‘Slave Owner’ Huffington With $105M Class Action Lawsuit

Arianna Huffington is like a “slave owner on a plantation of bloggers,” according to the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit that seeks more than $100 million in damages on behalf of 9,000 unpaid bloggers who, he argues, should be paid for helping build the Huffington Post into the valuable media property AOL bought for $315 million.

The lawsuit, led by well-known New York labor activist and Huffington Post blogger Jonathan Tasini, alleges that thousands of writers and other contributors have been wrongly denied any compensation for the value they created for the Huffington Post.

While not an unprecedented legal action, the scale of the alleged infractions — and the high profile of both Huffington and AOL — means that the outcome of this case could set an important standard about the rights of freelancers in the internet age.

“This is about justice,” Tasini told Wired.com by phone Tuesday. “Arianna Huffington is like a slave owner on a plantation of bloggers. The truth is, without the bloggers there was no Huffington Post and there would be no sale to AOL. She has decided to rob all these bloggers of a fair share of this profit-making venture.”

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York federal court (.pdf), seeks at least $105 million in damages on behalf of the Huffington Post’s unpaid writers and other contributors. It names AOL, TheHuffingtonPost.com, Arianna Huffington, and Ken Lerer, the wealthy New York investor who co-founded the website with her, as defendants. They have 21 days to respond to the lawsuit.

In a statement e-mailed to Wired.com, Huffington Post spokesperson Mario Ruiz dismissed the complaint as “wholly without merit.” The lawsuit was first reported by Jeff Bercovici at Forbes.com.

“As we’ve said before, our bloggers use our platform — as well as other unpaid group blogs across the web — to connect and help their work be seen by as many people as possible,” Ruiz said. “It’s the same reason people go on TV shows: to promote their views and ideas. HuffPost bloggers can cross-post their work on other sites, including their own. Aside from our group blog, to which thousands of people from around the world contribute, we operate a journalistic enterprise with hundreds of paid staff editors, writers and reporters.”

AOL and Huffington have laid off more than 200 editorial staffers and freelancers over the last month, including some veteran journalists.

Tasini and his lawyers are pursuing a two-pronged legal strategy, with two separate legal claims. The first is “unjust enrichment” under federal law, and the second is a New York state statutory claim for “deceptive business practices.”

via Unpaid Blogger Hits ‘Slave Owner’ Huffington With $105M Class Action Lawsuit | Epicenter | Wired.com.

Word slaves? I don't understand the part where bloggers have to write for the HuffPost or else... or else what?

Pakistan Tells CIA to Halt Drone Strikes

Pakistan has privately demanded the Central Intelligence Agency suspend drone strikes against militants on its territory, one of the U.S.'s most effective weapons against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, officials said.

Pakistan has also asked the U.S. to reduce the number of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations personnel in the country, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

The U.S. strategy in the war in Afghanistan hinges on going after militants taking refuge in Pakistan. The breakdown in intelligence cooperation has cast a pall over U.S.-Pakistani relations, with some officials in both countries saying intelligence ties are at their lowest point since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks spurred the alliance.

Beyond the Afghan battlefield, officials believe that without a robust counterterrorism relationship with Pakistan, al Qaeda and other groups can operate with far greater impunity when planning attacks on the U.S. and Europe. The vast majority of attacks against the West in the last decade originated in Pakistan.

Relations have been under heightened strain since Pakistan's arrest in January of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who was jailed after killing two armed Pakistani men in Lahore on Jan. 27. Mr. Davis was released last month, but the case fueled Pakistani resentment over the presence of U.S. operatives in their country.

Pakistani officials complained that Mr. Davis and potentially dozens of other CIA operatives were working without Islamabad's full knowledge.

Drone strikes are opposed by an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, and are widely seen as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. ...

via Pakistan Tells CIA to Halt Drone Strikes - WSJ.com.

Sarah Palin 'Appreciates' Donald Trump's 'Birther' Questions

Sarah Palin said today she "appreciates" Donald Trump's repeated questioning of where President Obama was born, saying that though she believes he was born in Hawaii, "there is something there that the president doesn't want people to see on that birth certificate."

Palin's remarks on the "Judge Jeanine" show on Fox News came as the Hawaiian state health official that reviewed Obama's birth certificate denounced conspiracy theorists as "silly."

"It's kind of ludicrous at this point," Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii's Department of Health said in an interview with NBC, adding that "birthers," or those who have been questioning where the president was born, will never be satisfied.

"They're going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated," Fukino said. "The whole thing is silly."

Fukino said she has inspected Obama's "long form" birth certificate twice -- once in the run up to the 2008 presidential election and again in July of 2009. Both times Fukino made public statements indicating that she had inspected the certificate and that it was in fact accurate.

"It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that," Fukino said. ...

via Sarah Palin 'Appreciates' Donald Trump's 'Birther' Questions - ABC News.

It is hard to believe that an actual one time US candidate for president uses the word 'birther'. The word gives me the creeps. It reminds me of a particular  X-files episode ("Home").

Cuba anger at US Posada Carriles verdict

Cuba and Venezuela have condemned a US court's decision to acquit a veteran anti-communist militant and former CIA agent, Luis Posada Carriles.

A Cuban official called the outcome a "shameful farce"; Venezuela said the US was protecting a known terrorist.

Mr Posada Carriles was cleared of US immigration charges on Friday.

Cuba and Venezuela accuse him of staging bomb attacks and plotting to kill Fidel Castro, and have demanded his extradition.

Mr Posada Carriles, 83, spent decades fighting to overthrow the communist government in Cuba and stop the spread of left-wing influence throughout Latin America.

He was on trial in Texas on charges of lying to immigration officials about how he entered the US and about his alleged involvement in bomb attacks in Havana in 1997 in which an Italian tourist was killed.

But a jury found him not guilty, ending a four-year effort by US federal prosecutors to convict him.

The head of Cuba's parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, told the Associated Press the federal judge in Texas had prevented jurors from seeing evidence that would have convinced them of his guilt.

"The US government is as much a liar as he is because it converted a killer who has been sought for decades into a simple old liar," he said.

The Venezuelan government expressed "indignation" at "an act of theatre" designed to "protect the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles".

It said it would renew its request to have Mr Posada Carriles extradited for his alleged role in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1973, which killed 73 people.

The US has previously refused to send Mr Posada Carriles to Cuba or Venezuela, saying he might face torture. ...

via BBC News - Cuba anger at US Posada Carriles verdict.

Why Glenn Beck lost it

On Wednesday, Fox News announced that it was ending Glenn Beck’s daily cable-TV show. ...

Beck’s angry broadcasts about the nation’s imminent doom perfectly rode the wave of fear that had washed across the nation, and the relatively unknown entertainer suddenly had 3 million viewers a night — and tens of thousands answering his call to rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

But as the recession began to ease, Beck’s apocalyptic forecasts and ominous conspiracies became less persuasive, and his audience began to drift away. Beck responded with a doubling-down that ultimately brought about his demise on Fox.

He pushed further into dark conspiracies, urging his viewers to hoard food in their homes and to buy freeze-dried meals for sustenance when civilization breaks down. He spun a conspiracy theory in which the American left was in cahoots with an emerging caliphate in the Middle East. And, most ominously, he began to traffic regularly in anti-Semitic themes.

This vile turn for Beck reached its logical extreme two weeks ago, when he devoted his entire show to a conspiracy theory about various bankers, including the Rothschilds, to create the Federal Reserve. To make this case, Beck hosted the conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who has publicly argued that the anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” “accurately describes much of what is happening in our world today.”

Griffin’s Web site dabbles in a variety of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including his view that “present-day political Zionists are promoting the New World Order.”

A month earlier, Beck, on his radio program, had described Reform rabbis as “generally political in nature,” adding: “It’s almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way.”

A few months before that, he had attacked the Jewish billionaire George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, as a “puppet master” and read descriptions of him as an “unscrupulous profiteer” who “sucks the blood from people.” Beck falsely called Soros “a collaborator” with Nazis who “saw people into the gas chambers.”

Fox deserves credit for finally putting an end to this. Its joint statement with Beck’s production company, claiming that they will “work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects,” is almost certainly window-dressing; you can be confident Fox won’t have Beck reopening what his Fox News colleague Shepard Smith dubbed the “fear chamber.”

In banishing Beck, about whom I wrote a critical book last year, Fox has made an important distinction: It’s one thing to promote partisan journalism, but it’s entirely different to engage in race baiting and fringe conspiracy claims. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity may have their excesses, but their mainstream conservatism is in an entirely different category from Beck.

Fox has rightly, if belatedly, declared that there is no place for Beck’s messages on its airwaves, and Beck will return to the fringes, where such ideas have always existed. Because his end-of-the-world themes will no longer be broadcast by a mainstream outlet, there will be less of a chance for him to inspire off-balance characters to violence. ...

via Why Glenn Beck lost it - The Washington Post.

A two-week old report by the Washington Post is only now gaining traction in the tech section. It appears that Apple has boycotted Fox News based on Glenn Beck and his ludicrous statements, including calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a "cancer."

"More than 200 companies have joined a boycott of Beck's program, making it difficult for Fox to sell ads," the Washington Post reports. "The time has instead been sold to smaller firms offering such products as Kaopectate, Carbonite, 1-800-PetMeds and Goldline International. A handful of advertisers, such as Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether. Network executives say they believe they could charge higher rates if the host were more widely acceptable to advertisers."

Given that Fox has the largest cable news viewership in the US, Apple's decision to boycott them was no small decision, especially with the impending launch of the iPad. Then again, Apple doesn't have a problem garnering media attention; it'll probably still penetrate a majority of the mindshare market without running a single iPad ad.

via Tuaw

Glenn Beck, go to heck.  There is some truth in many conspiracy theories but it takes research and careful consideration to reach that truth. It is easy and stupid to jump to sensational conclusions without solid evidence.

Some People's Climate Beliefs Shift With Weather

Social scientists are struggling with a perplexing earth-science question: as the power of evidence showing manmade global warming is rising, why do opinion polls suggest public belief in the findings is wavering? Part of the answer may be that some people are too easily swayed by the easiest, most irrational piece of evidence at hand: their own estimation of the day’s temperature.

In three separate studies, researchers affiliated with Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) surveyed about 1,200 people in the United States and Australia, and found that those who thought the current day was warmer than usual were more likely to believe in and feel concern about global warming than those who thought the day was unusually cold. A new paper describing the studies appears in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science.

“Global warming is so complex, it appears some people are ready to be persuaded by whether their own day is warmer or cooler than usual, rather than think about whether the entire world is becoming warmer or cooler,” said lead author Ye Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the Columbia Business School’s Center for Decision Sciences, which is aligned with CRED. “It is striking that society has spent so much money, time and effort educating people about this issue, yet people are still so easily influenced.” The study says that “these results join a growing body of work show that irrelevant environmental information, such as the current weather, can affect judgments. … By way of analogy, when asked about the state of the national economy, someone might look at the amount of money in his or her wallet, a factor with only trivial relevance.”...

via Some People's Climate Beliefs Shift With Weather - The Earth Institute, Columbia University.

Indiana prosecutor told Wisconsin governor to stage ‘false flag’ operation

An Indiana prosecutor and Republican activist has resigned after emails show he suggested Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stage a fake attack on himself to discredit unions protesting his budget repair bill.

The Republican governor signed a bill on March 11 that eliminates most union rights for public employees.

In an email from February 19, Indiana deputy prosecutor Carlos F. Lam told Walker the situation presented "a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation."

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism discovered the email among tens of thousands released to the public last week following a lawsuit by the Isthmus and the Associated Press.

"If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions," Lam said in his email.

"Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest," he continued. "Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions."

Lam resigned from his position after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism published an article about his email. ...

via Indiana prosecutor told Wisconsin governor to stage ‘false flag’ operation | The Raw Story.

Do politicians stage fake attacks for profit? Yes. There are many examples.

Cellphones Track Your Every Move, and You May Not Even Know

A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game.

But as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not.

Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts.

 

The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin.

Mr. Spitz has provided a rare glimpse — an unprecedented one, privacy experts say — of what is being collected as we walk around with our phones. Unlike many online services and Web sites that must send “cookies” to a user’s computer to try to link its traffic to a specific person, cellphone companies simply have to sit back and hit “record.”

“We are all walking around with little tags, and our tag has a phone number associated with it, who we called and what we do with the phone,” said Sarah E. Williams, an expert on graphic information at Columbia University’s architecture school. “We don’t even know we are giving up that data.”

Tracking a customer’s whereabouts is part and parcel of what phone companies do for a living. Every seven seconds or so, the phone company of someone with a working cellphone is determining the nearest tower, so as to most efficiently route calls. And for billing reasons, they track where the call is coming from and how long it has lasted.

“At any given instant, a cell company has to know where you are; it is constantly registering with the tower with the strongest signal,” said Matthew Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania who has testified before Congress on the issue.

Mr. Spitz’s information, Mr. Blaze pointed out, was not based on those frequent updates, but on how often Mr. Spitz checked his e-mail. ...

Mr. Spitz, a privacy advocate, decided to be extremely open with his personal information. Late last month, he released all the location information in a publicly accessible Google Document, and worked with Zeit Online, a sister publication of a prominent German newspaper, Die Zeit, to map those coordinates over time.

“This is really the most compelling visualization in a public forum I have ever seen,” said Mr. Blaze, adding that it “shows how strong a picture even a fairly low-resolution location can give.”

In an interview from Berlin, Mr. Spitz explained his reasons: “It was an important point to show this is not some kind of a game. I thought about it, if it is a good idea to publish all the data — I also could say, O.K., I will only publish it for five, 10 days maybe. But then I said no, I really want to publish the whole six months.”

In the United States, telecommunication companies do not have to report precisely what material they collect, said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who specializes in privacy. He added that based on court cases he could say that “they store more of it and it is becoming more precise.”

“Phones have become a necessary part of modern life,” he said, objecting to the idea that “you have to hand over your personal privacy to be part of the 21st century.”

In the United States, there are law enforcement and safety reasons for cellphone companies being encouraged to keep track of its customers. Both the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration have used cellphone records to identify suspects and make arrests.

If the information is valuable to law enforcement, it could be lucrative for marketers. The major American cellphone providers declined to explain what exactly they collect and what they use it for. ...

via Cellphones Track Your Every Move, and You May Not Even Know - NYTimes.com.

Yemen's President Saleh 'negotiating' departure

Agreement is close on a transfer of power from Yemen's veteran President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, a government minister says.

After six weeks of protests, Mr Saleh has said he is willing to step down this year.

But the demonstrators want him to go immediately.

This is the first time the government has confirmed that President Saleh is negotiating the terms of his departure, observers say.

They add that amid the growing pressure, many see the statement by Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi - a close ally of the president - as a clear sign that Mr Saleh's resignation is now a matter of time.

It comes a day after tens of thousands people attended rival mass rallies in the capital Sanaa.

Last week some 50 people were shot dead at an anti-government protest.

In recent weeks, Mr Saleh's power base has been hit by top military figures and tribal leaders joining the opposition. ...

via BBC News - Yemen's President Saleh 'negotiating' departure.