In 1997 Kevin Costner directed and starred in The Postman, a epic post apocalyptic movie that bombed at the box office.
The film begins with this voice-over narration:
The last of the great cities died when my father was a child. Another victim of yet another war. The plagues followed. And the terrors. The living hid themselves away in tiny hamlets in hopes of surviving whatever new madness conspired to rob them of the little that remained. The Earth itself had fallen prey to chaos. For three years a dirty snow fell that even summer could not erase. The ocean was barren. Poisoned. Near death. Sixteen long years passed before the great lungs started working again. My father said it was as if the ocean breathed a great sigh of relief...
A lone wanderer, leading a mule, treks across a barren landscape. The year is 2013.
Bob Alexander: Forward ... Into the Past
18 Major US Corporations Use Tax Havens to Skirt $92 Billion In U.S. Taxes: CTJ
Apple is not alone. Dell, Microsoft and Fifteen Other Fortune-500 Corporations’ Financial Reports Indicate Their Offshore Profits Are In Tax Havens; Hundreds More Likely Do the Same
Recent Congressional hearings on the international tax-avoidance strategies pursued by the Apple corporation documented the company’s strategy of shifting U.S. profits to offshore tax havens. But Apple is hardly the only major corporation that appears to be engaging in offshore-tax sheltering: seventeen other Fortune 500 corporations disclose information, in their financial reports, that strongly suggests they have paid little or no tax on their offshore holdings. It’s likely that hundreds of other Fortune 500 companies are also engaging in similar strategies to take advantage of the rule allowing U.S. companies to “defer” paying U.S. taxes on their offshore income.
House GOP defense bill blocks Guantanamo closing
Rebuffing President Barack Obama's latest plea, House Republicans on Monday proposed keeping open the military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by barring the administration from transferring its terror suspects to the United States or a foreign country such as Yemen.
The provisions dealing with the fate of the remaining 166 prisoners are part of a defense policy bill drafted by Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif. The chairman released the bill Monday, two days before Republicans and Democrats on the committee will vote on it.
Judge orders Google to give customer data to FBI
FBI counter-terrorism agents began issuing the secret letters, which don't require a judge's approval, after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Oregon man claims FBI present at his torture in UAE
A former Oregon businessman is suing the U.S. government and two FBI agents he says had him tortured in the Middle East after he refused to become an informant.
Yonas Fikre, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Eritrean descent, says the agents were present when he was imprisoned and tortured in the Gulf nation for 106 days, The Oregonian reported Thursday.
European Union urges testing of U.S. wheat imports for unapproved Monsanto strain
The European Union advised member states Friday to test certain wheat shipments from the United States, and South Korea joined Japan in suspending some U.S. wheat imports in response to the recent discovery of unapproved genetically modified wheat in an 80-acre field in Oregon.
The E.U. consumer protection office said in a statement that it was “following carefully the presence of this non-authorized GM [genetically modified] wheat in Oregon in order to ensure that European consumers are protected from any unauthorized GM presence and make sure that the E.U. zero tolerance for such GM events is implemented.”
Guantánamo Bay hunger strike worsens
A long-running hunger strike by detainees at Guantánamo has worsened since Barack Obama promised action to close the controversial prison camp in a landmark speech last Thursday.
On the eve of Obama's address, there were 103 prisoners on hunger strike, with 31 being force-fed by military authorities and one in hospital. Since then, not a single prisoner has stopped their strike, and now 36 of the detainees are being force-fed to keep them alive, with five of them being hospitalised.
USDA says unapproved genetically engineered wheat discovered in Oregon field
Field workers at an Eastern Oregon wheat farm were clearing acres for the bare offseason when they came across a patch of wheat that didn’t belong.
The workers sprayed it and sprayed it, but the wheat wouldn’t die. Their confused boss grabbed a few stalks and sent it to a university lab in early May.
A few weeks later, Oregon State wheat scientists made a startling discovery: The wheat was genetically modified, in clear violation of U.S. law, although there’s no evidence that modified wheat entered the marketplace.
Prarier2: A Place Upstream, if you can find it
A large sink hole opened in a DC street only blocks from the White House, it turned out to be a washed out sewer line from an improvement project done back in '96, that's 1896. This is not an unusual situation for American cities that are dependent on drainage projects done during during the Progressive Era, or at best during the New Deal. As little as possible has been done to make America work since the Reagan Revolution defined 'government as the problem, not the solution'.
The estimated $3 trillion shortfall in maintenance is just public infrastructure like the thousands of bridges waiting to collapse, but doesn't include privately held assets like high pressure natural gas lines that are nothing but ticking time bombs.
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