April 2008 archive

Apr 29 2008

Skeptical about Skeptics? Check this out …

Being skeptical about Global Warming skeptics’ arguments has proven, to date, to be a healthy and sensible way to deal with their truthiness claims and arguments.  The Heartland Institute‘s distribution of a list of scientist supposedly doubting Global Warming yet again verifies the value of being skeptical about Global Warming skeptics.

DeSmogBlog decided to take a look at Heartland‘s list: emailing the scientists to ask them about the situation. From 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares:

  • The Heartland “article purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that human-induced climate change is endangering the world as we know it.”
  • “DeSmogBlog … emailed 122 of the scientists … calling their attention to the list.”
  • “in less than 24 hours – three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, denying that their research supports Avery’s conclusions and demanding that their names be removed.”

Hmmm, maybe Heartland should change the title from 500 scientists to 464 scientists maybe have documented doubts of man-made global warming scares until, of course, they are asked whether they agree with this article’s assertion.

Apr 29 2008

All Coming Together To All Fall Apart: Climate Crisis

(Notice: This will not be a pleasant essay to read, and please click the links)

Global Warming, Climate Crisis, Climaticide, whatever you want to call it, is not some future calamity waiting to happen. It is happening even as we speak. It is happening now. Its devastating effects may some day be dramatic enough to be worthy of a Hollywood movie….which is how we are conditioned to think of disaster these days, if it doesn’t have explosions or tidal waves, it is not REALLY a disaster….. But that is not how it works.

That is not the form that this disaster takes. It takes the form of a slow, rolling, building crisis, unnoticed at first, then easily explained away, then easily dismissed as someone else’s problem. Until it is too late. Starting with the worlds poorest people and gradually working it’s way up “the food chain.” The food chain of all of human society, every nation, every state, every city every village, every human. Until the ‘elite’ are finally affected and alarmed…which will be too late.

Oh, there will be explosions…in fact there are explosions right now, as the first of the resource wars rages in Iraq, (please read LithiumCola’s essay) resource wars will be the dramatic face of Climate Crisis. Resource wars started by the very ‘people’ who are denying that there is a crisis now. Denying it in order to ‘steal a march’ on the rest of the world that they are purposefully attempting to keep in ignorance of the future they are creating. All for their advantage. For their profit. In the mistaken belief that somehow this will save them. They know what is happening, and have known for years, their response has been to try to profit off of this knowledge, instead of working to stop the damage. Resource wars will be the dramatic face.

But the face of a starving child will be the real face of Climate Crisis.

Apr 29 2008

Sanctioning Iran: Foreign Policy 101

Philip Agee died on 9 January of this year in Havana, Cuba. He was 72.

ageeAgee joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1957 and worked as a case officer in several Latin American countries. He later claimed: “My eyes began to open little by little down there as I began to realize more and more that all of the things that I and my colleagues were doing in the CIA had one goal which was that we were supporting the traditional power structures in Latin America. These power structures had been in place for centuries, wherein a relative few families were able to control the wealth and income and power of the state and the economy, to the exclusion of the majority of the population in many countries. The only glue that kept this system together was political repression. I was involved in this. Eventually I decided I didn’t want anything more to do with that.”

Source

Agee resigned in 1969. His book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, was an instant best-seller and was eventually published in over thirty languages. An Agee interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now is available here.

One very important term often used by our government, military and corporate leaders is one which is almost never clealy defined. It hints at noble ideals. As a naive schoolboy in the ’50s or as an indoctrinated enlisted Marine in the late ’60s concepts such as spreading freedom and democracy, and freeing the world of injustice might have come to mind. The term is “US strategic interests”, or simply “our national interests”.

Apr 29 2008

FOX News flunkie gets pwned by Rev. Wright’s friend

Crossposted at Big Orange.

This is a good video…. albeit it’s from April 3. Did any of you catch this? Here’s an unedited exchange between a FOX News producer flunkie Porter Berry and Father Pfleger, friend of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Enjoy.

Apr 29 2008

Why Jeremiah Wright is justified in taking Barack Obama to task.

Last night MSNBC (including Keith Olbermann) was all over Jeremiah Wright for going on a book tour and – gasp! – daring to criticize Barack Obama.  Reading today’s hate-fueled rant on the web site, you’d think he had done something wrong.  Why?  Why shouldn’t the man who was publicly tossed overboard by his former parishioner return the favor?

Reading Kevin Alexander Gray’s assessment of the speech in which the Democratic candidate for president distanced himself from the man who presided over his marriage and baptized his children, I couldn’t help but conclude that Wright had been thrown under the proverbial speeding bus by Obama – who apparently decided long ago to adopt Bill Cosby’s out-of-touch, blame-the-victim rhetoric (an observation echoed by Adolph Reed, Jr., in the May issue of The Progressive).

“His political repertoire,” writes Reed, “has always included the repugnant stratagem of using connection with Black audiences in exactly the same way Bill Clinton did – i.e., getting props for both emoting with the Black crowd and talking through them to affirm a victim-blaming, ‘tough love’ message that focuses on alleged behavioral pathologies in poor Black communities.”  Reed blasts Obama for going “beyond Clinton and rehears[ing] the scurrilous and ridiculous sort of narrative Bill Cosby has made famous.”

Gray pointed out in his April 2, 2008 Progressive online column:

Until the controversy broke about his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama himself frequently played the race card – on black people.

Shortly before the Texas and Ohio primaries, Obama was speaking to a mostly black audience and said, “I know some of ya’ll, you got that cold Popeye’s out for breakfast. I know. That’s why ya’ll laughing. … You can’t do that. Children have to have proper nutrition.”

In South Carolina, he told the state Legislative Black Caucus that a good economic development plan in the black community would be “cleaning up the garbage.”

Now, if white politicians had said these things they would have been pummeled.

And even in his much-heralded speech, Obama went out of his way to criticize welfare, decry “the erosion of black families” and stress the need for black fathers to spend more time with their kids.

This Bill Cosby routine goes down well with white voters, but it further stigmatizes blacks.

Obama managed to weasel his way out of trouble a month ago by dissing his former pastor as a bitter relic of a bygone era.  So who can blame Jeremiah Wright when he goes on the talk circuit to defend himself and retaliate against his betrayer?  For truly, did Obama not merely use his former pastor’s church as a means of establishing ties to a community whose political backing he wanted to strengthen his career (writers at Black Agenda Report and The New Republic certainly seem to think so)?

The point here is not to criticize Barack Obama so much as it is to defend Jeremiah Wright as he gives back what he received.  The danger of dismissing him as an angry, bitter old man whose message is equally ignorable lies in continuing the cycle of racism in this country, and the suppression of very real issues pertaining to U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

The fact is that not only was Wright betrayed, so too was the whole of the Black community, and the legitimate criticisms of imperialist policy that have wrought suffering and devastation upon others.  We may disagree with the reverend’s delivery, but we cannot deny that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were a direct consequence of our country’s meddling in Middle Eastern affairs that resulted in mass death and political oppression in the region.  Nor can we deny that our nation was built on the backs of African slaves, and the genocide of the aboriginal peoples of this continent.  The indignation over Jeremiah Wright’s fiery rhetoric clouds the truths contained in his diatribes.

So let’s cut the man some slack.  He may not be the sort of person we’d prefer to point out these truths, his method of delivery far too blunt for our comfort.  But sometimes we need that in order to face up to unpleasant facts about ourselves and our nation’s history.  We should consider that Mr. Wright may be justified in going public with his side of the story, with his criticisms.

If that happens to hurt Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, whose fault is that?

Apr 29 2008

Nine Days – Still No Resignations or Apologies

One of many questions that Chris Wallace failed to ask Barack Obama during his 45-minute interview on Foxaganda Sunday was what the Senator thought about David Barstow’s devastating exposé in The New York Times the previous weekend.

No surprise. What would be the percentage in replacing one of the plethora of Jeremiah Wright questions with an inquiry about the megamedia’s hiring of retired military officers who sexed up the case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and then exaggerated, distorted and lied about what was happening when the war and subsequent occupation got underway? Would that help the bottom line? Nah. Hence, none of Wallace’s pals at Foxaganda are talking about this. Indeed, mum’s been the word on Barstow’s bombshell throughout the megamedia. The talking point – or perhaps the memo from on high – seems to be: Don’t talk.

Don’t tell viewers that retired generals and colonels and majors engaged in a war-drumming, flag-waving perversion of patriotism. Or that those in the Pentagon who ordered special briefings for these analysts as part of a domestic propaganda campaign ought to get their mail deliveries slipped between the bars at Leavenworth for the next few years. Avoid the subject and maybe it will go away like so many other stories which have been disappeared as if they were dissidents in some backwater military dictatorship.

Apr 29 2008

Did you hear?

.

Forest Gump died.

When he arrived at the pearly gates St. Peter met him and said

“Well Forest, because of the wars and all, there has been a huge increase in the number of souls arriving. We came up with one last test, just to make certain sure that all are worthy of being here.”

“Um, okay.” says Forest.

“It’s three questions, and you don’t have to give your answers immediately. You can go think about it and come back later.”

“Um, okay.” says Forest.

Apr 29 2008

My Son.

My 3 year-old son has these moments.

He wants something.

A toy that his sister is playing with or some fragile item he sees in a store or maybe to ride his tricycle around the block when he suddenly wakes up at three o’clock in the morning.

And we have to say, “no”.

That’s when the meltdown hits…

Apr 29 2008

Pony Party….this-n-that

Some days there’s nothing i feel like putting in the pony.  Ok, that’s a lie.  Some days im particularly sensitive to the amount of sports content i put in the morning pony ;), but have nothing of substance to say.  On those days i generally hunt for a news story or some other item on the web i can present for discussion.  But on Monday when i am typing this (like with time travel in the douglas adams books, we need new verb tenses to discuss what we’re typing that wont have published until some time before youre reading it but after im typing it…but we’ll save that topic for another day) i’m horrifically unfocused…the Flyers are playing, and, at the risk of sounding whiny..i just dont feel like it…

So here are some finds from my horribly unfocused web travels…

From the “news you can use” category, is it any wonder that this Yahoo!News article caught my attention???



Chocolate may reduce pregnancy complication risk

Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, is rich in a chemical called theobromine, which stimulates the heart, relaxes smooth muscle and dilates blood vessels, and has been used to treat chest pain, high blood pressure, and hardening of the arteries, Dr. Elizabeth W. Triche of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and colleagues

Apparently after polling new mothers and testing cord blood, researchers found a possible link between higher chocolate consumption and fewer occurrences of preeclampsia.  So I guess all those Peppermint Patties I ate in 1993 were a good idea…  😉  

Apr 29 2008

Docudharma Times Tuesday April 29



And the thought occurred to me

How come that everything you see

Is so bad

So bad

Tuesday’s Headlines: From Chief Prosecutor To Critic at Guantanamo: An Irascible Firebrand, Finally Quieted by Term Limits: Tariq Aziz due on trial in Iraq: Is an Iranian general the most powerful man in Iraq?: China jails 17 over Tibet protests: Drugs for guns: how the Afghan heroin trade is fuelling the Taliban insurgency: Mozambique police ‘kill at will’: Zimbabwe health minister accused as terror campaign reaches hospital wards: A port without shelter: Clandestine migrants stuck in ‘jungle’ by Calais: Supermarket sweep poses threat to French high streets: Cuba walks tightrope of reforms  

Cheney lawyer claims Congress has no authority over vice-president

The lawyer for US vice-president Dick Cheney claimed today that the Congress lacks any authority to examine his behaviour on the job.

The exception claimed by Cheney’s counsel came in response to requests from congressional Democrats that David Addington, the vice-president’s chief of staff, testify about his involvement in the approval of interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay.

Ruling out voluntary cooperation by Addington, Cheney lawyer Kathryn Wheelbarger said Cheney’s conduct is “not within the [congressional] committee’s power of inquiry”.

“Congress lacks the constitutional power to regulate by law what a vice-president communicates in the performance of the vice president’s official duties, or what a vice president recommends that a president communicate,” Wheelbarger wrote to senior aides on Capitol Hill.

Apr 29 2008

Muse in the Morning


Sun

Reflections

New dawns

have come and gone

The years assembled

Decades folded

upon themselves

Time dwindles

Could once

just once

before I…

just once

while I…

one precious time

could such a dawn

bring forth

a better day,

one not ending

in horror

Could there be

some glorious light

before darkness

falls again

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–February 5, 2008

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

Apr 29 2008

The Stars Hollow Gazette

I’m pretty angry tonight.  People are being stupider than usual and if you know my general attitude toward humanity you know that’s saying something.  The source of my discontent this evening is, of course, the incestuous Beltway Bendover for Ass Access Butt Sniffing Feces Flinging Media and their Hollywood for the Ugly Uncle Brother Wife Sisters in the institutional political class.  

Reverend Wright IS Right!

Never heard a preacher like Reverend Wright before?  Did you sanctimonious morons ever GO to Church or are you Christmas/Easter Christians?  Can’t remember the last time?  You’re going to burn in hellfire for eternity you GOD DAMN SINNERS!

YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUR OWN GOD DAMNED RELIGION!

NOBODY is worthy to sit at the feet of the Lord your God.  You were “conceived in sin (disobedience)” which is why SEX IS EVIL!  There is not a one among that doesn’t offend the sight (not to say smell, for you stink of death and corruption) of your vengeful jealous GOD who doesn’t care whether it’s a Golden Calf or Mammon that you put before him, and thinks that coveting and killing and lying and stealing ARE EVIL!  Who would demand the sacrifice of your first born son and punish you (to say nothing of your innocent kin- wives, children, servants, livestock, whatever) ON A BET!

Wrath of God?

But he loves you.  Nope, really.

In addition to smiting your enemies for real estate, he loves you enough that he incarnated some part and yet all of himself into a fully HUMAN being who lived his whole life without sinning at all, Jesus Christ our Saviour.

If you believe in some carefully selected texts of dubious historical provenance called The Gospel (and I know you believe that they’re the inerrant Word Of God) Jesus was a teacher with at least 2 strong messages; one of which I’m going to characterize as temporal and social, and the other of which I’m going to characterize as spiritual and to hell with parallelism.

Jesus’ Social message was that there are things God can do for you other than smiting your enemies.

He can make you kinder and more compassionate.  He doesn’t much care for the greedy and sanctimonious.  He’s not that into violence toward others even when provoked.

Jesus’ Spiritual message was unmerited favor by grace.

By believing that he was the incarnation of God sent here to spread God’s message of love and forgiveness of sin, you can spare yourself the torment of an eternity of existence after death separated from God’s presence.  The proof is that Jesus died and was raised from the dead (plus assorted other miracles).

Some Christians think that outward prosperity is an indicator of God’s grace.  Some Christians think that sacrifice guarantees prosperity.  Some Christians think that avoidance of sin through conformist behavior is sufficient, but they are mistaken because the OMNIPOTENT GOD who sees the fall of every sparrow can look straight into your heart and mind and knows your EVERY unworthy motivation and secret.  Every lazy self indulgent moment of your stinking existence for which there is not enough incense for the nostrils of GOD!

When was the last time you washed the wounds of a leper?

But even the mildest of Christians contend that evidence of acceptance of the teaching of Jesus is that you strive to emulate his actions.  Heal the sick.  Help the poor.  Turn the other cheek.  Love your neighbor as yourself and forgive them their trespasses.

Little stuff.

Some people are not Christians.  People like me for instance who don’t believe in God at all and follow teachers who have something to say about the human condition in practical terms and find other excuses for altruism than fear of punishment.

Can deathbed acceptance forgive a life of sin?  Are you repentant enough?

God Knows!

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