Starbucks Union

Declassified U.S. government documents show that while Saddam Hussein was gassing Iraqi Kurds, the U.S. opposed punishing Iraq with a trade embargo because it was cultivating Iraq as an ally against Iran and as a market for U.S. farm exports. According to Peter Galbraith, then an idealistic Senate staffer determined to stop Hussein from committing [...]

Copper thieves, sometimes acting as “organized groups,” are threatening what the FBI said is “critical” U.S. infrastructure, from electrical sub-stations, cellular towers, telephone land lines to railroads and crops, the agency said in an unclassified report unveiled Wednesday. The report, Copper Thefts Threaten US Critical Infrastructure, said bandits are taking advantage of unprecedented high prices for [...]

What’s the solution to America’s crisis in science education? More comic books. In December comes The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA, a remarkably thorough explanation of the science of genetics, from Mendel to Venter, with a strand of social urgency spliced in. “If there was ever a time that we [...]

A State Department division that runs public diplomacy programs overseas could prove to be a model to its peers with its use of business intelligence software, popular with the private sector, to demonstrate the return on investment of its expenditures. Its latest project is a pilot program to develop algorithms that better show correlations between [...]

Following a flurry of arguably unwarranted media attention, Apple has removed an online help document that advised customers to use multiple antivirus products to keep their computers secure. However, a company spokesman still sees value in antivirus software for the Mac. “We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate,” an Apple spokesman [...]

Last week, Danish Computerworld awarded IT Factory, a provider of CRM, HRM and Business Intelligence add-on solutions based on a SaaS delivery model, with the prestigious “Denmark’s Best IT-company 2008?. This week, the company has been declared bankrupt and its managing director Stein Bagger went missing in Dubai while under scrutiny by the police. The remarkable [...]

I don’t really believe in “The People”, only people. My view of the polity owes as much to taoism and discordianism as it does to marxism, anarchism or whatever. When I talk about mobilization, I don’t mean some nebulous mass of people. I mean finding the people who are inclined in the same general direction I [...]

The reason I opened this with the Nick Douglas joke — aside from the fact I thought it was funny — is the fact that all of the best content from the Superstruct project grew outside the original petri dish. Most of the best brainfood wound up growing on the Tumblr platform, which makes sense…I [...]

South Korean firm Daewoo has unveiled plans to plant corn on one million acres of land in Madagascar, to sharply cut its reliance on US imports. Daewoo is leasing the vast tract of land - half the size of Belgium - for 99 years and hopes to produce 5 million tonnes of corn a year by [...]

Justice Department attorney Carl Nichols didn’t get through his first full sentence defending the constitutionality of retroactive immunity for spying telecom carriers before U.S. district judge Vaughn Walker interrupted to ask about President-elect Barack Obama. “We are going to have new attorney general,” Walker interjected in Tuesday morning’s hearing in a San Francisco courthouse. “Why shouldn’t [...]

Apple has always claimed that “Mac OS X isn’t plagued by constant attacks from viruses and malware” because its operating system was “designed with security in mind.”But about two weeks ago, Apple posted a note on its support Web site advising its customers to use more than one antivirus application to make their computers more [...]

It was the ultimate hack. He was looking at an error coded into the heart of the Internet’s infrastructure. This was not a security hole in Windows or a software bug in a Cisco router. This would allow him to reassign any Web address, reroute anyone’s email, take over banking sites, or simply scramble the [...]

During a terrorist attack — during any crisis situation, actually — the one thing people can do is exchange information. It helps people, calms people, and actually reduces the thing the terrorists are trying to achieve: terror. Yes, there are specific movie-plot scenarios where certain public pronouncements might help the terrorists, but those are rare. [...]

A small explosion in Kosovo is quickly growing into a much bigger incident after the authorities in the capital, Pristina, arrested three Germans, alleged to be intelligence operatives, in connection with an attack on the building that houses the European Union’s special representative there. A judge in Kosovo remanded the three men - who media outlets [...]

Remember the arrogance of that Obama turnaround on FISA? Well, the answer is, under the current Daily Kos construction, we have no where else to turn. What else can we do? “Where else can you dirty fucking internet beatnik hippies go? Just give me some more money and shut the fuck up,” Obama might as [...]

Spree killers like Andrew Cunanan or John Muhammed ”the DC Sniper” riveted the attention of an entire nation or acheived international news coverge. Cunanan, while on the run from a national manhunt for earlier murders managed to assassinate celebrity designer, Gianni Versace before committing suicide; Muhammed and his junior partner managed to murder ten [...]

Today, around 500 protesters rioted at the Kai Da toy factory in Dongguan in the Pearl River delta, flipping over a police car and trashing computers in a dispute over payoffs to 80 fired workers. Tens of thousands of factories across the region have already shut their gates. Yin Weimin, China’s Social Security minister, has revealed [...]

Italian bloggers are up in arms at a court ruling early this year that suggests almost all Italian blogs are illegal. This month, a senior Italian politician went one step further, warning that most web activity is likely to be against the law. The story begins back in May, when a judge in Modica (in Sicily) [...]

Krugman: Obama's Centrist Economic Appointments "Unavoidable" (tags: politics economics obama) Text Messages Prove a South African HIV Lifeline (tags: africa activism mobiletech tech global development)

Just in time for the holidays, I’m joining the ailing retail business with my online store, the Swift Fox. The Swift Fox sells accessories for urban mobility - laptop bags, iPod cases, etc. We’re just getting started, expect more soon. The Swift Fox (featured above: Axio Tekno hardshell backpack) And if you’d prefer to buy hand [...]