Syrian security forces shot funeral marchers

Already a few members of parliament resigns following the violence, but this is going to be a turning point in Syria. The death toll is now at least 120 in the last two days as Assad has clearly signaled he will not tolerate any dissent. This is brutal.

Syrian security forces fired at tens of thousands of people joining funeral processions Saturday after the bloodiest day of the monthlong uprising against President Bashar Assad, bringing the death toll from two days of violence to more than 120 and prompting two lawmakers and a local religious leader to resign in disgust over the killings.

The resignations were a possible sign of cracks developing in the regime's base in a nation where nearly all opposition figures have been either jailed or exiled during the 40-year dynasty of the Assad family.

"I cannot tolerate the blood of our innocent sons and children being shed," Sheikh Rizq Abdul-Rahim Abazeid told The Associated Press after stepping down from his post as the mufti of the Daraa region in southern Syria.

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Michigan is "ground zero of American politics right now"

This is a striking report. It's about a remarkable inner-city school in Detroit named Catherine Ferguson Academy — and the Michigan Republican power-grab that's being referred to as "financial martial law." Watch:



Rachel's right; this really is the next big move in what I've been calling the Movement Conservative Coup, the cadre coup of modern American government and institutions (for example, the Southern Baptist Church and the group that determines textbooks for the state of Texas).

While there were many minor steps along the way (victories for their side, defeats for the other), there are probably three major moves in recent years, three great leaps forward, to borrow a Maoist phrase.

▪ The birthing room has to be Bush v. Gore, the corrupt and judicially indefensible handing of the U.S. presidency to the Movement Conservative candidate by Movement Conservative judges on the Supreme Court. The broader coup has been a work in progress for decades, but the current on-steroids phase starts here.

▪ After that comes the U.S. Patriot Act, Bush II's response to the 9/11 attack.

▪ Then comes Citizens United, the gift that keeps on taking. We've just started seeing those effects. That by itself almost guarantees that the Coup's owners and chief beneficiaries will own us for a generation.

▪ And now Michigan and its "financial martial law" — a test bed for near-dictatorial control of local government by state governors.

Michigan is just the start; these Teabag-enabled Republicans want it all, and if Michigan isn't rolled back, these laws will roll out in every Republican-controlled state.

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Inhofe says fracking doesn't cause contamination, day after contamination

How do people like this even get elected in the first place? ThinkProgress has the incredible story:

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is perhaps Congress’ most reliable defender of dirty energy and evangelizer against the “hoax” of global warming. This morning, he took his message to Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show, where he extolled the virtues of hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas known widely as “fracking.” Fracking is a relatively new and untested technique, but Inhofe insisted that there’s nothing to worry about, as he claimed fracking has “never poisoned anyone” nor ever contaminated groundwater:

INHOFE: [There's] never been one case — documented case — of groundwater contamination in the history of the thousands and thousands of hydraulic fracturing. [...]

KILMEADE: Senator, has it ever poisoned anybody?

INHOFE: It’s never poisoned anyone.

While fracking has the potential to create vast new American energy supplies, Inhofe’s claim that it is completely without risk is either stunningly ignorant or intentionally dishonest. Just yesterday, a blowout at a Pennsylvania natural gas well engaged in fracking spilled thousands of gallons of toxic chemical-laced water, “contaminating a stream and forcing the evacuation of seven families who live nearby as crews struggled to stop the gusher,” the AP reported. Inhofe referenced the Pennsylvania spill in his interview, but said that it has “nothing to do with fracking” because it was a stream, not groundwater that was contaminated.

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Report: BP received $13 billion tax break for Gulf disaster "losses"

BP is refusing to say whether or not they are paying any taxes at all for 2010. This group initially thought that BP was getting a $10 billion tax break but then concluded, it was actually $13 billion. Anyone else think the tax code is ever so slightly wrong?

Responding to BP's monumental catastrophe cost a massive amount of resources from local, state and federal governments. Now, BP is dealing another massive blow to our nation's tax revenue.

The $10 billion savings comes after BP wrote-off the $32.2 billion it set aside to cover clean-up costs, fines, and a $20 billion victim compensation fund (which has been notoriously slow and stingy in responding to claims, paying out less than 4 billion so far.3)

But there is an excellent precedent that says BP did not have to deduct these costs for tax advantages. Last year, Goldman Sachs waived a tax deduction it could have claimed as a result of paying $500 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission for giving bad information to mortgage investors.

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Man finds 650 year old jewels while digging pond in back yard

Click through for the photos because they're pretty impressive. Sounds like he will soon be able to afford a larger pond in his garden.

A man turning dirt in his back yard stumbled onto buried treasure — hundreds of pieces of centuries-old jewelry and other precious objects that Austrian authorities described Friday as a fairy-tale find.

Austria's department in charge of national antiquities said the trove consists of more than 200 rings, brooches, ornate belt buckles, gold-plated silver plates and other pieces or fragments, many encrusted with pearls, fossilized coral and other ornaments. It says the objects are about 650 years old and are being evaluated for their provenance and worth.

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Mubarak detained for an additional 15 days

It's almost a surprise that he was detained in the first place so an extension is an even bigger surprise. Al Jazeera:

Mubarak, who was forced to resign in February after mass protests, was first remanded into preventive custody for 15 days on April 13 on suspicion of involvement in a deadly crackdown on protesters and corruption.

The former president is being detained in a hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Red Sea resort town where he has lived since his ouster.

The report said that prosecutors went to the resort on Friday to further interrogate Mubarak.

Judicial sources said that they had questioned Mubarak about his possible role in the killings of protesters and also on details of a controversial deal to supply natural gas to Israel at a low price.

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Baloji -Independence cha-cha

I read about Baloji in the Eurostar magazine during a recent trip and was keen to check out his music. He lives in Belgium though was born in the Congo, where he recorded this great song and video.

More sunshine over here. The warm week helped push my rhododendron along so a few of the buds are opening up. Looks like we will have a lot more flowers this year than last. Read the rest of this post...

Greenpeace occupies oil rig bound for Arctic

Imagine how easy it will be in an emergency in the distant Arctic when something goes wrong. Greenpeace:

Activists are demanding an end to reckless deepwater oil drilling and taking bold action to stop the oil rig Leiv Eiriksson as it departs Turkey to the Arctic waters of Greenland to begin drilling.

In the early hours of the morning activists began their mission to intercept the oil rig as it attempted to leave Besiktas port near Istanbul and head to the Arctic to start exploratory drilling. Eleven activists scaled the 53,000 tonne rig to impede its progress and are prepared for a sustained occupation, with sufficient supplies to last for days.

The Leiv Eiriksson is operated by Cairn Energy and is the only rig in the world currently set to begin new deep sea drilling in the Arctic – making it a clear and present danger to the pristine arctic environment. Sound familiar? If it does it is because we’ve told you about Cairn energy and their quest for Arctic drilling before. Read about how activists stopped Cairn energy from drilling last year.

Extreme arctic weather conditions mean that Cairn has a very short window to drill four new exploratory wells at staggering depths of around 1500m – these are similar depths to the ill-fated BP Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. Freezing temperatures, severe weather and a highly remote location pose unprecedented challenges to any oil spill response in the Arctic and mean a spill would be impossible to contain and clean up.

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Hertz taking on Zipcar

Zipcar is a pretty amazing thing.  For something like 50 bucks a year, I can rent a car whenever I want, pick it up half a block from my home, and pay $8 to $11 an hour for it, gas and insurance included, no extra fees, for as long or short as I wish.  It's really nice.  And Hertz apparently has figured out that it's really nice.  I suppose competition isn't a bad thing, so long as Hertz isn't able to kill Zipcar in the process. Read the rest of this post...