Expert vs Expert by Jonathan Cole – Italian

ae911truth

Published on Feb 7, 2015

Perchè gli esperti non dicono il vero?

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Launch Set for Satellite to Monitor Solar Storms

The Film Archives

Published on Feb 7, 2015

Black lists his comedic influences as George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Bill Hicks, Bob Newhart and Shelley Berman.

In 1998, Black starred in his first comedy special on the series Comedy Central Presents. He starred in two additional episodes of the series in 2000 and 2002. He starred in another special for the network in 2002, titled Taxed Beyond Belief.

Since 2003, Black has hosted the World Stupidity Awards ceremony at Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival for the three years the awards were presented.

In 2004, he had an HBO stand-up special titled Black on Broadway. Black hosted Comedy Central’s Last Laugh ’07, which aired on December 2, 2007 along with Dave Attell and D.L. Hughley.

In 2006, Black performed at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC for an HBO special, Red, White, and Screwed. It aired in June and a DVD was released in October. When explaining his choice of venue, Black said that “some asshole” was paid to count the number of times the word “fuck” was said from his previous HBO special, Black On Broadway, and that the original location, the Kennedy Center, wanted him to cut back on its use. Black was told the number was 42, when actually it was approximately 78.

Black received a 2007 Grammy award for “Best Comedy Album” for his album The Carnegie Hall Performance.

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Green Conversations: Jon A. Krosnick

Green Conversations:  Jon Krosnick
April 6, 2011 – What Americans and Massachusetts Residents Think About Climate Change – Attitude Formation and Change in Response to a Raging Scientific Controversy

Jon A. Krosnick, Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences; Professor of Communication, Political Science and Pyschology, Stanford University

Dr. Jon Krosnick, the Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences, and Professor of Communication, Political Science and Pyschology at Stanford, is a social psychologist who does research on attitude formation, change, and effects; the psychology of political behavior; and survey research methods.

During the past two decades, many scientific experts have been frustrated by the American public’s apparent indifference to climate change and the threats it may pose. And even during the two years, headlines on newspapers across the country have proclaimed: “Scientists and the American Public Disagree Sharply Over Global Warming” and “Public Concern About Climate Waning.” Is it really true? Do Americans really not accept the opinions of scientific experts on climate change? In this presentation, Professor Jon Krosnick will describe findings from a series of national surveys that he has designed and conducted since 1996, as well as and a recent survey of Massachusetts residents, tracking what people do and do not believe on this issue and what they do and do not want to have done about it. Surprising results challenge many widely-held presumptions about public opinion, illuminate the increasing politicization of the issue, and provide a context for watching and understanding future efforts to pass (and block) legislation on climate change.

Discussants:
Stephen Ansolabehere
Professor, Harvard Department of Government

Andrew Hoffman
Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan; MIT Visiting Professor of Management

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Open Letter | URGENT: Fossil Fuel Divestment

We’re sending this important letter to the big banks, signed by 4630 inspiring people

Dear Mr Clyne, Ms Kelly, Mr Narev and Mr Smith,

We write to urge you to adopt a critical change to your banks’ investment policies.

Australia stands on the verge of a fossil fuel expansion that would jeopardise the possibility of containing global warming to below 2˚C above pre-industrial levels – a key marker for the prospects of a safe climate for future generations to enjoy.

As Australia’s four largest banks and heaviest lenders to coal and gas projects, you have a vital role in determining the fate of proposed new fossil fuel projects. You will be met with requests to provide finance and other forms of investment for these projects. For the sake of a safe climate, these requests must be denied.

…(read more).

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ColdType – Writing Worth Reading From Around The World

COLDTYPE was launched eight years ago to counter a belief – which still continues – that the best way for newspapers to solve the problem of declining readership is to tinker with the design without too much thought to the quality – or quantity – of content. The result of this shortsightedness, as I pointed out in my first editor’s note, “is the production of newspapers that are often bland and lifeless . . . and that is not good journalism. An attractive package is desirable, but we should pay as much – or more – attention to the grey stuff as we do to its packaging.” 

Things haven’t changed much over the past eight years; in fact the speed of redesigns has heated up while circulations fall at a concurrent rate.

ColdType, revived after a hiatus of five years – it took nearly four years to persuade my former bosses at Thomson Newspapers to give me the title and another 15 months to decide what to do with it – will continue with its original mission: to reprint examples of excellent writing from around the world in a format that emphasises how a neat and unobtrusive design can enhance, without subsuming, the power of The Word.

That’s the mission, but the point is much simpler: Great writing should be available to as many people as possible – and preferably free of charge. Hence our new pdf format and internet distribution. I hope you find this new issue interesting, informative and amusing. If you do (or if you don’t), contact me at editor@coldtype.net. Your feedback is important.

TONY SUTTON, Editor

 

• If you’d like to receive our e-mail alert when additions are made to this site, please e-mail editor@coldtype.net with the message ‘Subscribe’ in the Subject line.

• The downloads on this web site have all been saved in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). If you don’t have a PDF Reader, download one from the Adobe web site (click on icon below)

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Danny Schechter – Originally aired: 12-17-12

Harold Channer

Uploaded on Jan 12, 2012

Television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes and speaks about media issues. He is the author of “Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception” (Prometheus), “Media Wars: News after 9-11” (Roman & Littlefield), “Falun Gong’s Challenge to China” (Akashic Books), “The More You Watch, The Less You Know”

(Seven Stories Press) and “News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics” (Electron Press/ Akashic Books). He is the executive editor of the Mediachannel.org, the world’s largest online media issues network. He has produced and directed many TV specials and films, including “We are Family” (2002), “Counting On Democracy” (2002) “Falun Gong’s Challenge to China” (2000); A Hero for All: Nelson Mandela’s Farewell (l999); Sowing Seeds/Reeping Peace: The World of Seeds of Peace (1996); Prisoners of Hope:Robben Island Reunion (1995, co-directed by Barbara Kopple); Countdown to Freedom: Ten Days that Changed South Africa (1994), narrated by James Earl Jones and Alfre Woodard; Sarajevo Ground Zero (1993); The Living Canvas (1992), narrated by Billy Dee Williams; Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy (1992), co-directed with Barbara Kopple; Give Peace a Chance (1991); Mandela in America (1990), The Making of Sun City (1987); and Student Power

(1968). Schechter is co-founder and executive producer of Globalvision, a New York-based television and film production company now in its 13th year, where he produced 156 editions of the award-winning series South Africa Now, co-produced Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television with Charlayne Hunter-Gault. His most recent human rights special, “Globalization and Human Rights was co produced with Rory O’Connor and shown nationally on PBS. A Cornell University graduate, he received his Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and an honorary doctorate from Fitchburg College. He was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard, where he also taught in 1969. After college, he was a full time civil rights worker and then communications director of the Northern Student Movement, worked as a community organizer in a Saul Alinsky-style War on Poverty program, and, moving from the streets to the suites, served as an assistant to the Mayor of Detroit in 1966 on a Ford Foundation grant. Schechter’s professional journalism

Career began in 1970, when he was named news director, principal newscaster, and “News Dissector” at WBCN-FM in Boston, where he was hailed as a radio innovator and won many industry honors, including two Major Armstrong Awards. His television producing career was launched with the syndicated Joe Oteri Show, which won the New England Emmy and a NAPTE IRIS award in 1979. In l980, he created and produced the nation’s first live late-night entertainment-oriented TV show, Five All Night, Live All Night at WCVB in Boston. Schechter left Boston to join the staff at CNN as a producer based in Atlanta. He then moved to ABC as a producer for 20/20, where during his eight years he won two National News Emmys. Schechter has reported from 47 countries and lectured at many schools and universities. He was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Schechter’s writing has appeared in leading newspapers and magazines including the The Nation, Newsday, Boston Globe, Columbia Journalism Review, Media Studies Journal, Detroit Free Press, Village Voice, Tikkun, Z, and many others.

See:  http://www.coldtype.net/

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EPA: Keystone XL to Emit 1 Billion Extra Tons of GHGs

By Bobby Magill Published: February 3rd, 2015
The energy it will take to process Canadian tar sands oil and pipe it through the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline is so great that it will lead to about 1.3 billion more tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the pipeline’s 50-year lifespan than if the pipeline were carrying conventional crude.

That’s the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion in its Feb. 2 comments to the U.S. State Department, which gave federal agencies until Monday to comment about whether Keystone XL is in the natural interest. If built, the pipeline would send about 800,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands oil per day to refineries in Texas.

Tar sands crude oil is thick, mucky stuff, and it takes more energy to transport and refine it than conventional crude oil, leading to the burning of more greenhouse gas emissions.

The additional emissions, measured in carbon dioxide equivalents, that would be released by the Keystone XL Pipeline are roughly equivalent to what would be released by 5.7 million passenger vehicles or 7.8 coal-fired power plants annually, according to the EPA.

Keystone XL opponents, including top climate scientists, are concerned that fully developing the tar sands would open up a vast reservoir of carbon to be released into the atmosphere, making it increasingly difficult to meet the international goal of preventing the globe from warming more than 2°C, or 3.6°F.

Keystone XL is currently caught in a lengthy approval process being led by the U.S. State Department, which is in charge of permitting the pipeline because it crosses an international border.

RELATED	Four Things to Know About Keystone XL U.S. State Department Delays Keystone XL Decision For Canada, Tar Sands Are Bigger Than Keystone XL

The State Department’s own environmental analysis concluded that emissions from tar sands crude oil are 17 percent greater than conventional crude when measured from the time of extraction to the point of being burned as vehicle fuel.

The State Department concluded the Keystone would have a negligible impact on climate change because the pipeline’s demise would simply force energy companies to find other ways to fully develop Canada’s tar sands. In other words, the department concluded that it’s nearly inevitable the carbon locked up in the tar sands today will be emitted into the atmosphere no matter the fate of Keystone XL because the tar sands will have other routes to market.

But the EPA said the State Department should account for highly fluctuating oil prices in its final Keystone XL decision. In its analysis, the State Department assumed that high oil prices would be ample encouragement for energy companies to develop alternatives to Keystone XL.

Canadian energy companies are already planning those alternatives, with several pipelines in the works that would send tar sands oil to be refined on both of Canada’s coasts.

Without saying explicitly that the Keystone XL Pipeline would exacerbate climate change, the EPA affirmed that the pipeline’s climate impacts could be enormous if built.

“Until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread, the Final (State Department environmental analysis) makes clear that, compared to reference crudes, development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” the EPA said in its comments.

A 2014 study published in Nature Climate Change suggested that building Keystone XL would actually increase demand for crude oil, possibly quadrupling the maximum estimated greenhouse gas emissions expected to come from fully developing the tar sands.

…(read more).

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Western Spy Agencies Secretly Rely on Hackers for Intel and Expertise

By Glenn Greenwald

The U.S., U.K. and Canadian governments characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents.

In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. “Hackers are stealing the emails of some of our targets… by collecting the hackers’ ‘take,’ we . . . get access to the emails themselves,” reads one top secret 2010 National Security Agency document.

These and other revelations about the intelligence agencies’ reliance on hackers are contained in documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents—which come from the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters agency and NSA—shed new light on the various means used by intelligence agencies to exploit hackers’ successes and learn from their skills, while also raising questions about whether governments have overstated the threat posed by some hackers.

By looking out for hacking conducted “both by state-sponsored and freelance hackers” and riding on the coattails of hackers, Western intelligence agencies have gathered what they regard asvaluable content:

Recently, Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) and Menwith Hill Station (MHS) discovered and began exploiting a target-rich data set being stolen by hackers. The hackers’ sophisticated email-stealing intrusion set is known as INTOLERANT. Of the traffic observed, nearly half contains category hits because the attackers are targeting email accounts of interest to the Intelligence Community. Although a relatively new data source, [Target Offices of Primary
Interest] have already written multiple reports based on INTOLERANT collect.

The hackers targeted a wide range of diplomatic corps, human rights and democracy activists and even journalists:

INTOLERANT traffic is very organized. Each event is labeled to identify and categorize victims. Cyber attacks commonly apply descriptors to each victim – it helps herd victims and track which attacks succeed and which fail. Victim categories make INTOLERANT interesting:

A = Indian Diplomatic & Indian Navy
B = Central Asian diplomatic
C = Chinese Human Rights Defenders
D = Tibetan Pro-Democracy Personalities
E = Uighur Activists
F = European Special Rep to Afghanistan and Indian photo-journalism
G = Tibetan Government in Exile

In those cases, the NSA and its partner agencies in the United Kingdom and Canada were unable to determine the identity of the hackers who collected the data, but suspect a state sponsor “based on the level of sophistication and the victim set.”

… (read more).

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Sen. Bernie Sanders on Why Voter Turnout is so Low…

thomhartmann

Published on Feb 6, 2015
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) explains why he feels voter turnout has dropped in the United States.

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Bernie Sanders: Trickle Down Economics has Failed!

thomhartmann

Published on Feb 6, 2015

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) tells Thom Hartmann its time for an alternative to Reaganomics to save the middle class.

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