morphizm

[Greg Palast, Guardian UK]
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, is urging MPs to back a bill banning vulture funds from using British courts to prey on poor countries when it comes to a vote on Friday. Liberia lost a $20m (£13m) case in London last year against two so-called vultures. Such funds buy up [...]

Sure, it’s a hyperbolic title, but the sentiment is real enough. As I reported for AlterNet today, cities across not just America but the world are shortening yellow lights in order to create more ticket revenue from suckered drivers running gamed red lights.

The simple civic problem is that those cities are creating more lethal [...]

[Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation]
Amid the general incoherence of the Tea Party rebels and the failure of progressives to recognize the structural changes underway in a peak oil world, lies a deadly swamp of paradox where all parties may drown in the quicksand of their own muddled intentions.

[Amy Bass, Morphizm]
I don’t care what Tiger had to say. Indeed, sitting here in Vancouver at the Winter Olympic Games, I barely listened. I was more concerned about what Bode Miller’s next fantastic move was going to be, partially because I adore Bode Miller and partially because I did not want to hear [...]

How much do I dig Stephen Colbert’s viral hyperreality? Enough to write about him every chance I get. So when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs actually comes out and admits that our president, the gifted political orator Barack Obama, probably couldn’t hold his own against Stephen Colbert? Well, that’s gold, baby. Pure gold.

[Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation]
An Olympian game of musical chairs in global finance heads for a climax in the days ahead as so many eyes are diverted to alternate festivities in British Columbia, where grown men compete for gold by riding things that look like cafeteria trays down icy mountainsides — is this the moment that [...]

I wrote about the Students for Free Culture’s conference Free Culture X, taking place on Saturday and Sunday in D.C., recently for Wired.com. But for those still unclear on why open networks, copyright rethinks and more are mandatory to save the internet from monopoly, here’s further insight from Elizabeth Stark, founder of the Harvard University [...]