who's stopped the rain?

news craps

Bureau Proposes Opening Up Utah Wilderness to Drilling
http://www.truthout.org/103108EA
Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post: "The federal Bureau of Land Management is reviving plans to sell oil and gas leases in pristine wilderness areas in eastern Utah that have long been protected from development, according to a notice posted this week on the agency's Web site."

Anna Clark | The Ambition Condition: Women, Writing, and the Problem of Success
http://www.truthout.org/103108WA
Anna Clark, Bitch Magazine: "Perhaps you know about Emily Gould's cover story, 'Exposed,' in The New York Times Magazine last May. Even if you didn't take in all 8,002 words on the former Gawker editor's gains and losses from blogging about her personal life, it would be hard to miss the criticism of the piece elsewhere. From The Huffington Post to the Philadelphia Weekly to an untold number of blogs and listservs, the backlash challenged the magazine for peddling narcissistic Dear-Diary diatribes as a worthy journalistic cover story."

Starbucks Blues
http://www.truthout.org/103108LA
Liza Feathersone, The Big Money: "Fall is pumpkin-latte season for those who can still afford to indulge, but for Starbucks workers, it's been a season of discontent. The coffee giant has recently responded to hard times with scheduling changes that are likely to inflict misery on its employees."

Marcia Mitchell | Who Watches While the US Invades - Again
http://www.truthout.org/110108A
Marcia Mitchell, Truthout: "Has anyone in Washington noticed? The new US raids into Pakistan and Syria are, as was the invasion of Iraq, in blatant violation of international law. But who's keeping track of this sort of thing? Certainly not senior US officials, who apparently have weighed the negative consequences of illegal military operations against their perceived benefits and opted in favor of the latter."

Heather Wylie | Floating to Save the LA River
http://www.truthout.org/110108D
Heather Wylie, The Los Angeles Times: "A kayak trip I took this summer may cost me my job. I am a civilian biologist working for the Army Corps of Engineers. On my personal time, I joined a trip down the Los Angeles River to protest actions by my own agency to undermine the Clean Water Act."

Le Monde | The American Firm
http://www.truthout.org/110108E
Le Monde's editorial writer muses, "Oligarchy: a political regime in which sovereignty belongs to a small group of people, a restricted and privileged class. The word became fashionable again to define the Cossack capitalism that has plundered Russia for the last several years. But, in the end, weren't Vladimir Putin's friends directly inspired by the American model?"

William Greider | Paulson's Swindle Revealed
http://www.truthout.org/110208D
William Greider, The Nation: "The swindle of American taxpayers is proceeding more or less in broad daylight, as the unwitting voters are preoccupied with the national election. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson agreed to invest $125 billion in the nine largest banks, including $10 billion for Goldman Sachs, his old firm. But, if you look more closely at Paulson's transaction, the taxpayers were taken for a ride - a very expensive ride. They paid $125 billion for bank stock that a private investor could purchase for $62.5 billion. That means half of the public's money was a straight-out gift to Wall Street, for which taxpayers got nothing in return."

Cases Against Detainees Have Thinned
http://www.truthout.org/110208E
Del Quentin Wilber, The Washington Post: "The six Algerians were scooped up in Bosnia and shuttled to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in early 2002. Days later, President Bush proclaimed in his State of the Union address that the men had been plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo."

near-joke

real joke

Judgment!

Three Native women died and were brought before the Great Spirit for judgment. . .

The Great Spirit said, "I will let you into paradise if the beliefs you lived by were proper. Tell me what you believed when you were alive."

The Cree woman said, "I have always believed in the Grand Fathers and the Generations, and that is how I lived my life." "Fine, " said the Great Spirit. "You may enter paradise and sit on my left."

And what did you believe? " he asked the Cheyenne woman. "I have always believed in Goodness, and I have tried to live my life in a good way" "Fine! You may also enter paradise and sit on my right."

Then he turned to the third woman , a Lakota. "And what do you believe?" The Lakota woman said, "I believe you're sitting in my chair!"