Buzzfeed - An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.
..
The new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

words fail

ebaumsworld.com

Benedict Carey | Princeton, N.J. | May 18

NYT — The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, who turns 80 next week, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him.

He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark. His desk seemed impossibly far away; Dr. Spitzer suffers from Parkinson’s disease and has trouble walking, sitting, even holding his head upright.

The word he sometimes uses to describe these limitations — pathetic — is the same one that for decades he wielded like an ax to strike down dumb ideas, empty theorizing, and junk studies.

Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.
...
Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared.

“I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”

Peter Lee | May 18 | Asia Times

What's the standoff between China and the Philippines over an atoll in the South China Sea all about? Is it a matter of seafood and sovereignty ... or gas fields and gambling?

To an outside observer, the antics of China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia over conflicting territorial claims smack of farce auditioning for tragedy, and ridiculous claims abound.

May 18 | CBS

People in Honduras' predominantly Indian Mosquito coast region burned down government offices and demanded that U.S. drug agents leave the area, reacting angrily to an anti-drug operation in which a local mayor said police gunfire killed four innocent people, including two pregnant women.

Animosity is being aimed at both Honduran authorities and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which confirmed on Wednesday that some of its agents were on a U.S.-owned helicopter with Honduran police officers when the shooting happened Friday on the Patuca River in northeastern Honduras.

Honduran and U.S. officials said only the police officers on the anti-drug mission fired their weapons, and not until the helicopter was shot at first. The officials said the aircraft was chasing a small boat suspected of carrying drugs on the river.

Local officials said the two men and two pregnant women killed weren't drug smugglers. They said the victims were diving for lobster and shellfish.

** Protesters on rampage after drug agents shoot 4 dead
** Honduras prisoners riot at jail in San Pedro Sula
** Reverberations from drug raid felt in US, Honduras
** Murder of Honduran reporter blamed on drug gangs

TheDaily Beast | May 7

The nation’s most powerful anti-obesity groups are teaming up for a new HBO documentary—but it pushes the same tired advice. Gary Taubes on the research they're ignoring.

Michael Klare | May 10 | Tom Dispatch

The Energy Wars Heat Up: Six Recent Clashes and Conflicts on a Planet Heading Into Energy Overdrive

Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time. Major wars over oil have been fought every decade or so since World War I, and smaller engagements have erupted every few years; a flare-up or two in 2012, then, would be part of the normal scheme of things. Instead, what we are now seeing is a whole cluster of oil-related clashes stretching across the globe, involving a dozen or so countries, with more popping up all the time. Consider these flash-points as signals that we are entering an era of intensified conflict over energy.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, Argentina to the Philippines, here are the six areas of conflict -- all tied to energy supplies -- that have made news in just the first few months of 2012:

h/t Jack Cluth

Robert Krulwch | May 4 | NPR

So what happened? Why did guys stop wearing headgear in midcentury America?

The turning point, most people say, was John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Before Kennedy, all presidents wore top hats on their first day at work. Kennedy brought one, but hardly ever put it on. Fashionistas say Kennedy, one of our most charismatic presidents, made hats un-happen. And, chronologically speaking, after JFK, guys everywhere, even balding ones like astronaut John Glenn, went topless.

But I am the son of a hat designer. And my father, Allen S. Krulwich, had a different explanation. The president who de-hatted America, he thought, was Dwight Eisenhower.

Here's my dad's logic:

damn progress! ;)

2. Crocodiles for sale at Walmart:

Buzzfeed

When did the neoconservatives start giving a shit about Tibet?

Raw Story -George Lucas might be about to sue somebody.

A company called Wicked Lasers, which produces some of the most powerful consumer-level lasers available, began selling on Friday a special attachment for one of their latest creations that turns it into a “LaserSabre,” which looks suspiciously like the favorite weapon of Jedi knights in the “Star Wars” films.

The company already attracted the legal hackles of Lucasfilm in 2010 with its Spyder III Arctic laser, which already looked suspiciously like a lightsaber.

But since Lucasfilm didn’t pursue its order to cease and desist, now there’s this: an actual lightsaber, which the creators promise will let users harness “the power of the force.” more

tosh/comedy central

WaPo

TransCanada expected to reapply for Keystone pipeline permit as soon as Friday

“With Nebraska now on board and the application being re-filed, the president has lost his always-flimsy excuse for blocking this job-creating project,” the statement said. “With energy security at stake and jobs on the line, and he should listen to the American people, not just his political base, and approve it immediately.”(Boehner)

“The fundamental facts remain; Americans are being asked to put clean water at risk for an extreme form of energy that will add nothing to our energy security,” Kleeb wrote in an e-mail. “We are subsidizing this extreme form of energy to boot with over 1 billion of our tax payer dollars used to retrofit a Saudi-owned refinery for their tarsands headed straight to the export market. A transparent process will show TransCanada’s risky pipeline is not in our national interest.”

WaPo| Greg Miller| May 3

Newly released documents recovered from the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed show that al-Qaeda’s core leaders were divided over how to manage an emerging group of distant affiliates that showed little discipline or willingness to take direction.
* Bin Laden documents (PDF)

Gareth Porter:Finding Bin Laden: The Truth Behind the Official Story - Truthout has been able to reconstruct the real story of bin Laden's exile in Abbottabad, as well as how the CIA found him, thanks in large part to information gathered last year from Pakistani tribal and ISI sources by retired Pakistani Brig. Gen. Shaukat Qadir. But that information was confirmed, in essence, in remarks after the bin Laden raid by the same senior intelligence official cited above - remarks that have been ignored until now.

Sometime this month, an updated list of “evidence-based” teen pregnancy prevention programs was endorsed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and posted to the website of the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH).

No notice, not even a press release to announce the addition of three programs to the coveted list of 28 deemed effective and carrying the HHS seal of approval. Until now, this list was the holy grail of the Administration’s commitment to a science-based approach to teen pregnancy prevention and a directive for grantees of the President’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI).

So why the secrecy about the new additions? What does the Administration have to hide?

Because one of the "new" programs is actually an old, dis-proven and dangerous abstinence-only-until-marriage program.

We have been around long enough to expect politics as usual in Washington, D.C. The backroom deals and secrecy should not surprise us. The jettisoning of young people and their sexual health for political expediency is not new. But, this blatant hypocrisy needs to stop. This latest example is just too much.

Perhaps the Administration realized that the inclusion of Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education on this select list would call into question its commitment to young people and their sexual health. Once again, they have succumbed to the political pressure of social conservatives and allowed the ideology of the right to prevail over the health and well-being of the nation’s youth. The Obama Administration’s endorsement of this abstinence-only-until marriage program runs in direct contradiction to its stated commitment to the health and well-being of young people and, quite possibly, its promise to uphold science and evidence.

more with links at RH Reality Check

George Monbiot ~ A one-sided justice sees weaker states punished as rich nations and giant corporations project their power across the world

WaPo - Rupert Murdoch “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,” a British parliamentary committee said on Tuesday in a scathing report over News Corp.’s handling of the phone hacking scandal.

The report culminates months of investigation by a select committee and was far more damning toward the 81-year-old media titan than expected, saying that the chairman and chief executive of News Corp. had “turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness” over the widespread malpractice at his now-closed News of the World tabloid.

“This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International,” the report said.

The committee approved the report on a majority of six votes to four, with the four members from Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party staunchly objecting to the description of Murdoch as an unfit proprietor.

** Phone hacking: Full text of Commons culture select committee report

What is your favorite Willie song?

The Efficacy and Ethics of U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy

Remarks of John O. Brennan – As Prepared for Delivery
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Monday, April 30, 2012

Now, I want to be very clear. In the course of the war in Afghanistan and the fight against al-Qa’ida, I think the American people expect us to use advanced technologies, for example, to prevent attacks on U.S. forces and to remove terrorists from the battlefield. We do, and it has saved the lives of our men and women in uniform.

What has clearly captured the attention of many, however, is a different practice, beyond hot battlefields like Afghanistan—identifying specific members of al-Qa’ida and then targeting them with lethal force, often using aircraft remotely operated by pilots who can be hundreds if not thousands of miles away. This is what I want to focus on today

Burt Reynolds nude: 10 facts about the Cosmo centrefold

BBC - One World Trade Center has become New York's tallest building, overtaking the Empire State Building, after a steel column was lifted into place.

The installation of the girder on the 100th floor of the skyscraper makes the structure at the site of the 9/11 attacks 1,271ft (387m) high.

The building, construction of which began in April 2006, will be 1,776ft tall when completed.

The World Trade Center's twin towers were destroyed on 11 September 2001.

The skyscraper, dubbed Freedom Tower, became the tallest building in New York a day before the one-year anniversary of the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden.

I mean really, why?

Cracked.com has a surprisingly good article on avoiding the brain meltdown that
comes from reading political stories.

5 Ways to Spot a B.S. Political Story in Under 10 Seconds

Brian M Downing | Apr 30 | Asia Times

The withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan will put pressure on an Afghan National Army that's divided along ethnic lines and lackluster in the field. However, insurgents who view the foreign occupiers' exit as a final victory will also desert, suggesting that from district to district, traditional Afghan peacemaking will come to the fore.