Medium – by Dan Sanchez

What happens when a dynamic company, started by a couple of idealistic friends in grad school, succeeds so wildly that it becomes a mega-corporation that pervades the lives of hundreds of millions? In imperial America, it would seem, it eventually becomes corrupted, even captured. Tragically, that seems to be the unfolding story of Google.

By being the first dot-com to really get the search engine right, Google unlocked the nascent power of the internet, greatly liberating the individual. It is easy to take for granted and forget how revolutionary the advent of “Just Google it” was for the life of the mind. Suddenly, specific, useful knowledge could be had on most any topic in seconds with just a quick flurry of fingers on a keyboard.

This was a tremendous boost for alternative voices on the internet. It made it extremely easy to bypass the establishment gatekeepers of ideas and information. For example, I remember in the mid-2000s using Google to satisfy my curiosity about this “libertarianism” thing I had heard about, since the newspapers and magazines I was reading were quite useless for this purpose. In 2007, by then an avid libertarian, I remember walking through the campus of my former school UC Berkeley, seeing “Google Ron Paul” written in chalk on the ground, and rejoicing to think that hundreds of Cal students were doing just that. A big part of why today’s anti-war movement is more than a handful of Code Pink types, and the libertarian movement is more than a handful of zine subscribers, is that millions “Googled Ron Paul.”

Continue reading “Don’t See Evil”

Press TV

Press TV has managed to obtain new photographs that show the Israeli regime providing treatment for Takfiri terrorists operating in Syria.

In the controversial photos which are indicative of Israel’s support for al-Qaeda-linked militants of the al-Nusra Front extremist group, Israeli soldiers could be seen transferring a wounded terrorist in the occupied Golan Heights to a hospital.   Continue reading “Press TV photos show Israel treating Syria militants”

Screen Shot 2015-03-20 at 1.08.51 PMLiberty Blitzkrieg – by Michael Krieger

Between 2009 and 2013, including when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, according to that foundation, which is based in Kiev, Ukraine. It was created by Mr. Pinchuk, whose fortune stems from a pipe-making company. He served two terms as an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament and is a proponent of closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union.   Continue reading “Clinton Foundation’s Deep Financial Ties to Ukrainian Oligarch Who Pushed for Closer Ties to EU Revealed”

Shabaz managed to escaped from his room at University Hospital in Newark Monday. (Photo: Newark PD)PIX 11

NEWARK, N.J. (AP/PIX11) — A Newark hospital was in lockdown after a prisoner under police guard escaped from his room.

A spokeswoman for University Hospital says police guards noticed Elijah Shabazz was not in his room shortly after 11 a.m. Monday. He had been admitted to the hospital Friday for inpatient treatment under police guard.   Continue reading “Newark police seek prisoner who escaped from hospital room”

Reuters/Eric VidalRT

A major study of men’s sperm found that those who ate regular quantities of fruit and vegetables that had pesticide residue on them had half the sperm count of men who ate less, a new study showed.

The Harvard University study, the first of its kind on the issue, analyzed sperm samples from 155 men who attended a fertility clinic during 2007-2012, Reuters reported. The men involved were attending a fertility clinic because they and their partners were unable to conceive, and were asked about the food they ate, including how often they ate fruit and vegetables like apples, avocados or cantaloupe.   Continue reading “Pesticides on fruits and vegetables could account for 49 percent loss in sperm”

YEMENMail.com

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Saudi-led airstrikes pounded Yemen’s Shiite rebels for the sixth day Tuesday, destroying missiles and weapons depots controlled by the rebels as international aid organizations expressed alarm over the high civilian casualties from the strikes and the violence roiling the country.

The airstrikes’ campaign by Sunni Arab states, which began last Thursday, is meant to halt the advance by the Shiite rebels known as Houthis who have overrun the country with the help of the deposed president’s loyalists and forced Yemen’s current president to flee abroad.   Continue reading “UN, Red Cross alarmed over Yemen casualties in airstrikes”

Wossen AssayeMail.com

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — One shot was fired early Tuesday as a guard wrestled with a prisoner, who then fled a northern Virginia hospital with a gun setting off an hours-long lockdown and search, police said.

A shot was fired during the struggle around 3 a.m. Tuesday at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Fairfax County Police Chief Ed Roessler said. The prisoner, identified as Wossen Assaye, fled with a gun, wearing only a hospital gown, Roessler said. Assaye was being held on a federal bank robbery charge, he said.   Continue reading “Police search for armed prisoner after hospital escape”

Image from wikipedia.orgSent to us by a reader.

RT

The residents of about a dozen US states received a scare when an ominous message rolled across their TV screens announcing an ‘emergency alert’ with the names of their states – without any explanation or further information.

A test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) began shortly before noon on Monday and was seen by millions of television viewers in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, DC, Infowars reported.   Continue reading “‘Emergency alert’ sparks panic among TV viewers across US”

Rush Limbaugh Has A Theory About Harry Reid’s ‘Exercise’ AccidentChicks on the Right – by Red Dawn

I have to admit it. I totally bought his whole, “I was injured exercising” excuse before. But his face is still jacked up. And his vision is all wacked out. And he freaking had to wear sunglasses on the Senate floor. And he did all that damage with an “elastic exercise band.”

Mmmmkay.

Rush Limbaugh thinks he got beat up.   Continue reading “Rush Limbaugh Has A Theory About Harry Reid’s ‘Exercise’ Accident”

The Free Thought Project – by Cassandra Fairbanks

Berkeley, CA– Two homeless men, Nathan Swor, 23, and James Cockereese, 29, were charged with several crimes each and ultimately pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery after an incident on March 19 involving two hospitality advisers for the city of Berkeley.  After the men had accepted plea deals for probation however, a video surfaced showing that these men were actually the victims of the vicious assault themselves.   Continue reading ““Hospitality Ambassador” Beats Homeless Man On Video- His Victim Charged With Battery”

159003595The Des Moines Register – by Grant Rodgers

Does protecting America’s lucrative genetically modified seed corn industry warrant the use of national security laws intended to fight terrorists and government spies?

The FBI says yes, and it has invoked the broader powers afforded by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, to surreptitiously gather evidence against two Chinese siblings accused of plotting to steal patented seed from Iowa cornfields, according to court records.   Continue reading “FBI: Plot to steal seed corn a national security threat”

states and feds conceptPersonal Liberty – by Michael Boldin

The Internal Revenue Service gives subsidies when it wants. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Environmental Protection Agency redefine words on a whim in an effort to give themselves more power and more control over your life. “Legislating from the bench” has been superseded by this even more dangerous “lawmaking” by unelected, unaccountable federal agencies.

As Chapman law professor Ronald Rotunda noted recently, we “have come a long way towards governance by bureaucrats.” Some states, however, are taking positive steps in 2015 to thwart the effects of these unilateral — and wildly unconstitutional — acts.   Continue reading “States tell Feds to pound sand”

WSVN 7 News

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (WSVN) — A Florida student and her parents say she received an unfair punishment for doing the right thing.

Eleven-year-old Brianna Cooper, a fifth-grader at Fort Pierce Elementary School, said her teacher had been mean to students in the past and she wanted to prove it. Inside her classroom, Brianna recorded the instructor saying to a classmate, “Don’t let the size fool you. I will drop you.”   Continue reading “Fort Pierce 5th-grader suspended after recording teacher’s taunting remarks”

1-Bundy-Bill-AB40821st Century Wire – by Patrick Henningsen

CARSON CITY, NV – Tomorrow the Nevada state legislature will be hearing a bill which could potentially transform the land use across the southwest.

Nevadan’s Resource Rights Bill AB408 would effectively open the door for residents to develop land resources in traditionally key sectors in the state including farming, ranching, mining and recreation. Presently, the US Federal Department of Interior and its subsidiaries claim ‘managerial control’ and ownership over nearly 90% of the state of Nevada’s public lands.   Continue reading “Nevada Residents: ‘Public Land Belongs to the People, Not DC’”

Channel News Asia

BEIJING: China’s Defence Ministry said on Tuesday its warships had completed an evacuation of Chinese nationals from Yemen, with more than 570 people safely transported across the Red Sea to Djibouti, from where they will be flown home.

The Chinese were evacuated in two batches, one from Aden and the other, much larger group from Hodeidah, the ministry said in a statement on its website.   Continue reading “China completes evacuation of its nationals from Yemen”

Truthdig – by Alison Rose Levy

In the 1976 film “Network,” a news anchor, played by the late actor Peter Finch, urges his television audience to open their windows and shout the infamous phrase, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

According to people I’ve talked to on the ground in Oregon, that may be something close to what many residents there are feeling right now. But instead of shouting out the window, Oregonians are petitioning and phoning their senator, Ron Wyden, to ask him to oppose granting so-called fast-track authority to President Obama.   Continue reading “Oregonians Are ‘Mad as Hell’ About Trade Deals That Threaten Their Food Supply”