(I’m not even going to link to these two stories.)
So I send the Times Argus good subscription money and in today’s edition on page three I find two stories:
1) Joe “the dumber” Plumber telling me god hasn’t called for him to run for political office yet, and
2) Bristol “poster child for birth control” Palin explaining how not to get pregnant.
Really? Is this what I thought I was getting for my money?
Despite a certain degree of exposure, cases such as Harman’s and Hastert’s, involving corruption of public officials, seem to meet the same dead-end. Criminal conduct, by powerful foreign entities, against our national interest, is given a pass, as was recently proven by the abandonment of the AIPAC spy case. The absence of real investigative journalism and the pattern of blackout by our mainstream media seem now to have been almost universally accepted as a fact of life.
Pursuit of cases such as mine, via cosmetically available channels, has been, and continues to be proven futile for whistleblowers.
Therefore, you may want to ask, why in the world am I writing this piece? Because more and more people — although not nearly enough — are coming to the realization that our system is rotten at it’s core; that in many cases we have been trying to deal with the symptoms rather than the cause.
I, like many others, believed that changing the Congressional majority in 2006 was going to bring about some of the needed changes; the pursuit of accountability being one. We were proven wrong. In 2008, many genuinely bought in to the promise of change, and thus far, they’ve been let down.
(SIBEL EDMONDS: In Congress We Trust…Not, The Brad Blog)
It’s been years since I interviewed Ms. Edmonds for internet and then national radio broadcast. Her claims have been consistent and well substantiated.
She is someone to pay attention to.
From On the Commons:
Vermont Law School, a burgeoning hub of commons-oriented legal thinking, has released a major report that should be of interest to natural-resource commoners. Recalibrating the Law of Humans with the Laws of Nature: Climate Change, Human Rights, and Intergenerational Justice explores a new frontier in law: the rights of future generations to inherit a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.. . .
These principles amount to an Intergenerational Golden Rule: When making decisions about our world, we should do unto our children as we wish our parents had done unto us.
The Vermont Law School paper can be found through this link. I’m still in the process of reading it … provocative and illuminating at the least.
(Thanks to a post at IBrattleboro for the pointer.)
A one-and-a-half-inch hole caused by corrosion allowed about 100,000 gallons of water to escape from the main system that keeps the [Indian Point 2] reactor cool immediately after any shutdown, according to nuclear experts. The leak was discovered on Feb. 16, according to the plant’s owner, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, a subsidiary of the Entergy Corporation.
(At the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, a Pipe Leak Raises Concerns, NY Times, 05/01/09)
Guess Entergy ain’t got the energy to maintain yet another geriatric reactor.
While experts at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in interviews that additional pipe leaks like the one found in February would not pose a big challenge to reactor operators, they acknowledged that it was something new.
“We were not aware of a problem before with underground pipe,” Mr. Gray said. “Now that we have one, it’s got our focused attention.”
(ibid)
The virus spreading around the world should not be called “swine flu” as it contains avian and human components and no pig has so far been found ill with the disease, the world animal health body said on Monday.
It would be more logical to call the virus “North American influenza”, a name based on its geographic origin like the Spanish influenza, a human flu pandemic with animal origin that killed more than 50 million people in 1918-1919.
(“Swine flu” name is wrong -world animal health body, Reuters, 04/27/09)
I wonder if public relations speak isn’t guiding our names on this? It does sound better blaming it on the swine rather than a geographical location that happens to be our backyard.
But it wouldn’t be the first time … the “Spanish Flu” might have begun here in North America too by some reports.
Although in 1918 influenza was not a nationally reportable disease and diagnostic criteria for influenza and pneumonia were vague, death rates from influenza and pneumonia in the United States had risen sharply in 1915 and 1916 because of a major respiratory disease epidemic beginning in December 1915 (22). Death rates then dipped slightly in 1917. The first pandemic influenza wave appeared in the spring of 1918, followed in rapid succession by much more fatal second and third waves in the fall and winter of 1918-1919, respectively (Figure 1). Is it possible that a poorly-adapted H1N1 virus was already beginning to spread in 1915, causing some serious illnesses but not yet sufficiently fit to initiate a pandemic? Data consistent with this possibility were reported at the time from European military camps (23), but a counter argument is that if a strain with a new hemagglutinin (HA) was causing enough illness to affect the US national death rates from pneumonia and influenza, it should have caused a pandemic sooner, and when it eventually did, in 1918, many people should have been immune or at least partially immunoprotected. “Herald” events in 1915, 1916, and possibly even in early 1918, if they occurred, would be difficult to identify.
(1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics, CDC)
The origins of this influenza variant is not precisely known. It is thought to have originated in China in a rare genetic shift of the influenza virus. The recombination of its surface proteins created a virus novel to almost everyone and a loss of herd immunity. Recently the virus has been reconstructed from the tissue of a dead soldier and is now being genetically characterized. The name of Spanish Flu came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain (BMJ,10/19/1918) where it allegedly killed 8 million in May (BMJ, 7/13/1918). However, a first wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in military camps throughout the US. Few noticed the epidemic in the midst of the war. Wilson had just given his 14 point address. There was virtually no response or acknowledgment to the epidemics in March and April in the military camps. It was unfortunate that no steps were taken to prepare for the usual recrudescence of the virulent influenza strain in the winter. The lack of action was later criticized when the epidemic could not be ignored in the winter of 1918 (BMJ, 1918). These first epidemics at training camps were a sign of what was coming in greater magnitude in the fall and winter of 1918 to the entire world.
First: FUCK YOU OBAMA!
You want to stand in the way of holding people responsible for subjecting tightly controlled people to torture?
FUCK YOU!
We don’t need our version of the good Nazi running loose in the CIA. The fact some people were willing to justify and authorize torture is in itself great reason for trial, but those without the decency or morality to realize torture is wrong … they need to be in the docks too.
These torturers and torture enablers are sick psychopaths who don’t care about you, you, me or nation … they literally get their thrills from exercising extraordinary control over others.
And what about those who’ve been getting some voyeuristic thrill over just knowing the above mentioned scumbags are drowning someone once much less 180 times in a month?
Sick psychopaths … without a shred of morality or decency.
And these are the kind of people Obama is going to bat for … our good Nazis.
FUCK YOU OBAMA!
Gov. James Douglas, at podium, announces awards totaling $2.57 million from the Clean Energy Development Fund during a ceremony Tuesday at Northern Power Systems in Barre. Northern Power, as one of the recipients, was awarded $130,000 for the Rock of Ages Wind Turbine Replacement Project.
(Douglas announces energy awards, Times Argus, 04/15/09)
There’s our man … fresh from giving a huge pay raise to one of his many paid tax payer funded spokes apologists/admirers/gushers … Governor “No Windmills In My Backyard” Douglas … getting a photo op at a factory that makes windmills.
Do tell!
According to the Wall Street Journal “The Obama administration is leaning toward keeping secret some graphic details of tactics allowed in Central Intelligence Agency interrogations”. (Obama Tilts to CIA on Memos, Wall Street Journal, 04/15/09)
Once again … why are we even debating this?
Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner’s head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos. Another approved tactic was waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
(ibid)
Apparently the “fears” (right … I’m concerned about the “fears” of torturers and torture enablers) focus around alienation of the CIA rank and file and the loss of credibility with foreign intelligence services.
This is one of those issues that could make me ignore a lot of potential good or overlook a lot of potential bad in Obama’s future decisions. Torture is that important in my opinion.
If Obama falls in line with the DC police state status quo on this issue, not only does the CIA lose any credibility with me (you know – a citizen of the United States … apparently second class to other nations’ spook organizations), but Obama does in a huge way too.
We need to clean ourselves of the torturers. They’re immoral and miserable scum.
I don’t see why we are debating this.
First, [the Obama Administration’s Justice Dept] argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue “would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.” As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence.
. . .
Sad as that is, it’s the Department Of Justice’s second argument that is the most pernicious. The [Obama Administration’s] DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying – that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes.
how even short news stories can rewrite history.
Tens of thousands of supporters of an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric rallied Thursday at a main downtown square in Baghdad to protest the U.S. military presence and mark the sixth anniversary of the fall of the Iraqi capital to American forces.
(Shiite rally marks anniversary of fall of Baghdad, Boston.com, 04/09/09)
Predictably enough this is an AP story calling Moqtada Al Sadr “anti-U.S.” although that phrase is tossed around with abandon by plenty of other so-called news sources.
The reality is Sadr is very much a pro-Iraq nationalists with his own political agenda and as such is adamantly opposed to occupation. We just happen to be the occupiers. (And did I mention that Sadr was given a lot of quiet credit by the US military for helping quell the violence in Baghdad?)
There has never been any indication that Sadr is opposed to the United States. But it sure makes reporting much easier … cookie cutters do that sort of thing.
But that’s not where the history rewriting ends: we’re not at the end of the faux news story yet!
The protest against the U.S. presence contrasted with the jubilation of six years ago, when crowds of Iraqis cheered as American Marines hauled down Saddam’s statue marking the collapse of his regime.
(ibid)
Yes … the AP is talking about this crowd:
(Photo credit Information Clearing House)
History can only be rewritten if we allow it. If we maintain memories and records and pass them on, those, like the AP, who have their own special version of history to support will not win.