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POPSTop 25 Censored Stories for 2009 # # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights # # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights # # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers # # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction # # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record # # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option # # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid # # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs # # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror # # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
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POPSThe Emperor's New Clothes? It was a branch of the French intelligence services that finally helped convince the U.S. government in 2004 that the bar codes were fake after they and the CIA commissioned another company to try to detect the messages and were unable to uncover anything. But by then Montgomery was already making headway with other software claims. His company got a contract with the Air Force to handle video shot by unmanned Predator drones. He claimed his program could recognize weapons in the surveillance video. In 2004 the U.S. Special Operations Command reportedly gave his company a $30 million no-bid contract for “compression” and “automatic target recognition” technology. Montgomery even got a security clearance. But a former worker told Playboy that he had helped fake some 40 demonstrations of the software.
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POPSHospital Cleaners More Valuable Than Bankers
Interesting article. More below: "The study, "A Bit Rich" from the New Economics Foundation looked at six different types of British employees in aggregate, and found that: For a salary of between ?50,000 and ?12 million, top advertising executives destroy ?11 of value for every pound in value they generate. # or every ?1 hospital cleaners are paid, over ?10 in social value is generated. # For a salary of between ?75,000 and ?200,000 tax accountants destroy ?47 of value for every pound in value they generate. # For every ?1 of spent on waste recycling workers' wages, ?12 of value will be generated. Contrary to what we might expect, given the vociferous defence of the importance of wholesale banking to the UK economy, the City of London contributes only around 3 per cent of value added every year. Claims have been made about the trickle down effects of wealthy City bankers' spending in the economy but there is little real evidence to back this up"
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POPSGeothermal could shake up the world On Dec. 11, U.S. firm AltaRock Energy shut down a California geothermal project known as the Geysers that was based on a similar design as Basel. The Energy Department – which supplied $6 million in funding – had been investigating the project's safety following reports by federal officials that the company had failed to supply sufficient information about the Basel quakes when applying for the go-ahead.
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POPSConstitutional rights may not apply. Within 100 miles of the U.S. border...and I mean all around the country, the safeguards against search and seizure may not apply. In fact, should you be deemed a terrorist threat you may never see a lawyer or the light of day.!
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POPSCarmax Carmax auto retailer reviews and reports at pissed consumer. The leading auto loan retailer in the US.
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POPSSaudi Billionaire Boasts of Manipulating Fox News The investment makes Al-Waleed the largest individual shareholder outside of the Murdoch family. This is not the first time that Al-waleed has made controversial statements. His $10 million contribution to a 9/11 fund was rejected when he blamed the terror attacks on U.S. Middle East policy. Fifteen of the 19 terrorist hijackers on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia.
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POPS9/11 Tragedy Pager Intercepts Released 8:53:44 AM "NYPD Ops Div" POSSIBLE EXPLOSION WORLD TRADE CENTER BUILDING. LEVEL 3 Conspiracy theorists are hoping that the messages will reveal a "smoking gun" showing that US intelligence agencies had advanced knowledge of the attacks, which left 3,000 people dead. To help sort through the mass of information, Wikileaks is encouraging readers to post any interesting discoveries on a specially-created page on the social news website Reddit. A preview of some of the most revealing messages trailed online included several moving eyewitness testimonies. Others messages reflect the panic and misinformation that swirled on the day of the attacks. "It’s reported that a US military helicopter circled the building then crashed into or next to the Pentagon – it’s not clear to whether it was the White House or the Pentagon – they are being evacuated," reads one. http://www.wikileaks.com/wiki/Wikileaks_publishes_500%2C000_pager_messages_sent_on_9/11
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POPSCanadian Amanda Lindhout freed in Somalia Lindhout said she was moved often during her kidnapping, held in about 11 different houses in different parts of the country. She said her kidnappers wanted $1 million from her family, something her family could not afford to pay.
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POPS The Sun Does a Flip Earth’s magnetic field also flips, but with less regularity. Consecutive reversals are spaced 5 thousand years to 50 million years apart. The last reversal happened 740,000 years ago. Some researchers think our planet is overdue for another one, but nobody knows exactly when the next reversal might occur..The Sun's magnetic poles will remain as they are now, with the north magnetic pole pointing through the Sun's southern hemisphere, until the year 2012 when they will reverse again. This transition happens, as far as we know, at the peak of every 11-year sunspot cycle -- like clockwork. Fear not 2012 !! It's a normal thing.
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POPSThe Climate Skeptics Party Launch 4 Television Ads in Australia
NOAA: new ocean database spans to 1800 19 11 2009 Bill Illis and Bob Tisdale will likely make use of this. h/t to WUWT reader Chris D. NOAA Releases Expanded World Ocean Database http://bit.ly/4T04zq NOAA today released the World Ocean Database 2009, the largest, most comprehensive collection of scientific information about the oceans with records dating as far back as 1800. This product is part of the climate services provided by NOAA. The 2009 database, updated from the 2005 edition, is significantly larger providing approximately 9.1 million temperature profiles and 3.5 million salinity reports. The 2009 database also captures 29 categories of scientific information from the oceans, including oxygen levels and chemical tracers, plus information on gases and isotopes that can be used to trace the movement of ocean currents. “There is now more data about the global oceans than ever before,” said Sydney Levitus, director of the World Data Center for Oceanog
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POPSReading between the lines of the Maya calendar From 1991 to 2001, about 815,000 acres of protected Petén rain forest were lost to unlawful settlers, drug traffickers and cattle ranchers. Since then, the rate of loss has accelerated, according to Edin Lopez, technical director of the government's National Council of Protected Areas in Petén. "We are not going to speak badly of cows," Chayax said. "But the ranchers have no heart."
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POPSFor Veterans Day — Real Troop Support "According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, nearly 42 million American men and women have served during wartime. Nearly 1.2 million died while serving. Nearly 1.5 million were wounded. Since 9/11, more than 5,200 have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 36,000 have been wounded — many have debilitating injuries that have changed their lives forever. We may debate the rightness or wrongness of various engagements, but we know that freedom comes at a steep price — and we honor those who have secured it for us."
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POPSArkansas Powerball Numbers The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery's sales numbers continue to rise like a lottery jackpot, and Arkansans are 30-million-dollars richer since it started just ...