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The arts add vital jobs to the American economy

         The value of the arts to the economy has always been an elusive figure – until now. For the first time, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, part of the Commerce Department, has quantified art’s impact, finding in a study released Thursday that 3.2 percent – or $504 billion – of the…

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Revenge for prosecution of web activist

Anonymous hacks U.S. government site Revenge for prosecution of web activist Email   Aaron Swartz, seen here in 2008, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday. The Reddit co-founder was facing federal charges for allegedly stealing millions of scientific journals. (Noah Berger/Reuters)The FBI has launched an investigation after hacker-activist group Anonymous says it hijacked…

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Prohibition: The grotesque nightmare of cultural folly

Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of hypocrisy, incompetence, corruption and human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless. Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a…

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Secret Truths Embarrass U.S. Government

Wednesday, Jul 14, 2010 09:15 ET The motive behind whistle-blower prosecutions By Glenn Greenwald One of the more flamboyant aspects of the Bradley Manning arrest was the claim that he had leaked to WikiLeaks 250,000 pages of “diplomatic cables.”  Those were the documents which anonymous government officials pointed to when telling The Daily Beast‘s Philip Shenon that…

West Coast Wasteland

The state’s unemployment rate stands at more than 12 percent, and in some poorer counties it’s in the 25 percent range. In Los Angeles, that number is 12.2 percent. “It boggles the mind,” says LA’s mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. “Not since the Depression have we had numbers this bad.” To make matters worse, in an attempt…