Global
Citing a wide range of ailments from leukemia to blindness to birth defects, 79 American veterans of 2011’s earthquake/tsunami relief Operation Tomadachi (“Friendship”) have filed a new $1 billion class action lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power.
The suit includes an infant born with a genetic condition to a sailor who served on the USS Ronald Reagan as radiation poured over it during the Fukushima melt-downs, and an American teenager living near the stricken site. It has also been left open for “up to 70,000 U.S. citizens [who were] potentially affected by the radiation and will be able to join the class action suit.”
Now docked in San Diego, the USS Reagan’s on-going safety has become a political hot potato. The $6 billion carrier is at the core of the U.S. Naval presence in the Pacific. Critics say it’s too radioactive to operate or to scrap, and that it should be sunk, as were a number of U.S. ships contaminated by atmospheric Bomb tests in the South Pacific.
The suit includes an infant born with a genetic condition to a sailor who served on the USS Ronald Reagan as radiation poured over it during the Fukushima melt-downs, and an American teenager living near the stricken site. It has also been left open for “up to 70,000 U.S. citizens [who were] potentially affected by the radiation and will be able to join the class action suit.”
Now docked in San Diego, the USS Reagan’s on-going safety has become a political hot potato. The $6 billion carrier is at the core of the U.S. Naval presence in the Pacific. Critics say it’s too radioactive to operate or to scrap, and that it should be sunk, as were a number of U.S. ships contaminated by atmospheric Bomb tests in the South Pacific.
From the Associated Press:
"An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year."
Notice those words: "legally" and "policy." No longer does U.S. media make a distinction between the two.
Under George W. Bush, detention without trial, torture, murder, warrantless spying, and secret missile strikes were illegal. Under Obama they are policy. And policy makes them "legal" under the modified Nixonian understanding that if the President does it as a policy then it is legal.
"An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year."
Notice those words: "legally" and "policy." No longer does U.S. media make a distinction between the two.
Under George W. Bush, detention without trial, torture, murder, warrantless spying, and secret missile strikes were illegal. Under Obama they are policy. And policy makes them "legal" under the modified Nixonian understanding that if the President does it as a policy then it is legal.
This Tuesday, February 11th, is The Day We Fight Back (against mass surveillance) -- and we need your help to make it as impactful as it can be.
This will be BIG. This will be the biggest day of action against dragnet NSA surveillance in history. This will be The Day We Fight Back.
Do you remember two years ago when the Internet went dark to fight toxic legislation in Congress that would have crippled freedom on the Internet—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—and we won?
Click here to learn more and to sign up to take part.
We understand the United States to be a democracy, founded upon a Constitution that affords us critical rights, and governed by the rule of law.
Yet for years, the NSA has exploited secret legal interpretations to undermine our privacy rights -- thus chilling speech and activism, and thereby threatening to subvert the very underpinnings of our democracy itself.
This Tuesday, February 11th, thousands of websites and organizations are joining together to demand an end to mass spying.
This will be BIG. This will be the biggest day of action against dragnet NSA surveillance in history. This will be The Day We Fight Back.
Do you remember two years ago when the Internet went dark to fight toxic legislation in Congress that would have crippled freedom on the Internet—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—and we won?
Click here to learn more and to sign up to take part.
We understand the United States to be a democracy, founded upon a Constitution that affords us critical rights, and governed by the rule of law.
Yet for years, the NSA has exploited secret legal interpretations to undermine our privacy rights -- thus chilling speech and activism, and thereby threatening to subvert the very underpinnings of our democracy itself.
This Tuesday, February 11th, thousands of websites and organizations are joining together to demand an end to mass spying.
Image
Unlike most of her classmates at Thomas Worthington High School, senior Julia Valentine wasn’t exactly overjoyed when she found out school was canceled Jan. 28 and 29.
Sure, she loved the chance to stay home from school but as a swimmer, she knows there’s a hefty price tag for each time the Cardinals can’t practice.
“Usually we’ll get that text (saying the morning practices have been canceled) at 4 or 4:30 a.m.,” says Valentine, whose team plays host to a sectional meet on Feb. 8. “It’s kind of nice to sleep in but at the same time, we know if we’re not staying in the water, it is eventually going to affect our performance at the sectional, district and state meets.”
The arctic blast that rolled through Columbus last week threw a gigantic snowball into athletic teams’ planned events. By January, several area high schools have used all five days of the state allotted school cancellations. The time off this year is nearly equal to the total days missed from the past two years.
Even college teams aren’t immune to the winter weather. The Capital University women's basketball team postponed their game at Baldwin Wallace on Jan. 25.
Image
Sometimes it’s not easy for a great athlete to make the transition from the playing field to coaching ranks. Magic Johnson (5-11 in his brief stint with the Los Angeles Lakers), Elgin Baylor (86-135 with the New Orleans Jazz), Isiah Thomas (56-108 in two seasons with the Knicks) and Wayne Gretzky (143-161-24 with the Phoenix Coyotes) are among the graveyard of great players who struggled to transfer their skills to the coaching field.
John Smith believes his sister Katie has the right stuff to become a great coach. The legendary point guard/small forward will be making her debut as an assistant coach for the New York Liberty in the WNBA this spring.
“Katie’s always been a student of the game,” says John, a football coach at Bexley High School. “She has always understood not just what she’s supposed to be doing but what everyone is supposed to be doing around her. She’s almost been a coach her entire life.”
Katie, the all-time leading scorer in women’s professional basketball with 7,885 career points in 17 years of playing in the ABL and WNBA leagues, seems to be stepping right off the court and onto the bench with the Liberty.
Image
Cryptocurrency has become serious business. Since late last year the internet has been abuzz with stories of original cryptocurrency Bitcoin’s massive price spike, along with anecdotes about people buying Tesla and Lamborghini sports cars with the digital currency. After spiking up around $1,200 – that’s TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a single unit of digital money – it’s settled back around the $800 mark.
But where Bitcoin has notoriously become the payment method of choice for online drug dealers, hit men and deep-end Libertarians trying to avoid taxes, there are a lot of people interested in the technical side of cryptocurrency. Some of them have created alternatives to try to spread the idea of digital money not tied to a particular government or banking institution to a wider audience without the worrying associations Bitcoin has acquired. One of those alternatives is trying to be as un-serious business as possible while still remaining a viable currency: Dogecoin.
Created by Billy Markus of Portland, OR and Jackson Palmer of Sydney, Australia, Dogecoin’s identity is based on the popular “doge” meme.
On February 5, NBC published new documents leaked by Edward Snowden that reveal direct cyber attacks on the infrastructure of the hacktivist group Anonymous. The heavily redacted documents also gave insight to research already underway by the Free Press into a campaign of disinformation and harassment of the same group by private intelligence companies that received start up capital from the CIA. Both campaigns seemed to indiscriminately target members of the group engaged in lawful dissent and social welfare activities.
Thanks to a “Progressive,” a well-connected Democratic attorney and four lockstep election officials, the citizens of Columbus remain stuck paying off four rich Columbus families for the Nationwide Arena debt and Columbus City elections will not be as open to independent candidates as it could be with public financing. At a Monday, February 3 hearing, the Franklin County Board of Elections voted 4-0 to keep two petitions off the ballot that could have rescinded the Arena bailout and provided publicly funded Columbus elections.
A century ago, the Progressive Era was coming to an end. But its legacy of citizen initiatives lived on for another century. In the period from 1901 to 1914 there was a tremendous push for municipal reform. At the heart of it were city and state charters that allowed people the right to vote on major public policy issues by initiating an ordinance, a law or a constitutional amendment.
In 1914, Columbus adopted a new charter that gave its citizens the right to initiate and legislate their own policies and take on what were often corrupt municipal political machines.
A century ago, the Progressive Era was coming to an end. But its legacy of citizen initiatives lived on for another century. In the period from 1901 to 1914 there was a tremendous push for municipal reform. At the heart of it were city and state charters that allowed people the right to vote on major public policy issues by initiating an ordinance, a law or a constitutional amendment.
In 1914, Columbus adopted a new charter that gave its citizens the right to initiate and legislate their own policies and take on what were often corrupt municipal political machines.
Fukushima’s missing melted cores and radioactive gushers continue to fester in secret.
Japan’s harsh dictatorial censorship has been matched by a global corporate media blackout aimed—successfully—at keeping Fukushima out of the public eye.
But that doesn’t keep the actual radiation out of our ecosystem, our markets … or our bodies.
Speculation on the ultimate impact ranges from the utterly harmless to the intensely apocalyptic.
But the basic reality is simple: for seven decades, government Bomb factories and privately-owned reactors have spewed massive quantities of unmonitored radiation into the biosphere.
The impacts of these emissions on human and ecological health are unknown primarily because the nuclear industry has resolutely refused to study them.
Indeed, the official presumption has always been that showing proof of damage from nuclear Bomb tests and commercial reactors falls to the victims, not the perpetrators.
And that in any case, the industry will be held virtually harmless.
Japan’s harsh dictatorial censorship has been matched by a global corporate media blackout aimed—successfully—at keeping Fukushima out of the public eye.
But that doesn’t keep the actual radiation out of our ecosystem, our markets … or our bodies.
Speculation on the ultimate impact ranges from the utterly harmless to the intensely apocalyptic.
But the basic reality is simple: for seven decades, government Bomb factories and privately-owned reactors have spewed massive quantities of unmonitored radiation into the biosphere.
The impacts of these emissions on human and ecological health are unknown primarily because the nuclear industry has resolutely refused to study them.
Indeed, the official presumption has always been that showing proof of damage from nuclear Bomb tests and commercial reactors falls to the victims, not the perpetrators.
And that in any case, the industry will be held virtually harmless.