January 2009 archive

After the big scare this might be an appropriate time for me to let everyone know I’m not planning on going anywhere.

I like DocuDharma, I like all you guys, and I enjoy our time together more than I can easily express.

I’m constantly bragging about you to my friends and relations who uniformly tell me that they much prefer the content of this site to any of the others I post at.

During the last few months I’ve been involved in some heavy lifting projects in other places and in real life also, so I haven’t been able to be as active as I would want.  These projects involve changes to my schedule which will take some getting used to, at least for me.

I want to thank you for your patients and tolerance and I’m hoping that conditions will soon stabilize so you can expect more regularity from my performance.

Why is the title of this America’s West Bank? (BIA tribal authorities say (Pauline Whitesinger’s traditional earth lodge) is illegal because Pauline has never signed any kind of agreements with the Feds in regards to the 1974 relocation law)

Pauline: Plans and schedules were important and are made in advance. However, such disruption that we had earlier are unexpected and those kinds of events take away the time delegated for priorities and goals. But here, at Big Mountain, we live with a lot of threats from the police and guns of the United States. And unfortunately, we just saw that this morning and you yourself have seen it personally.

Relocation Law, what Relocation
Law?

Yes, “Pauline Whitesinger, was served a notice to halt “new” construction of an earth lodge commonly known as a Hogan” is current.

Original article, by Neil Faulkner, via Socialistworker.org (UK):

The economic crisis that swept the globe in 2008 provoked debate about whether individual states or trade blocs could insulate themselves from the international turmoil through “protectionist” economic measures.

Originally posted at AlterNet, and reposted here with additional links and some minor format changes

In early September 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense, reeling from at least a dozen investigations into detainee abuse by interrogators, released Directive 2310.01E. This directive was advertised as an overhaul and improvement on earlier detainee operations and included a newly rewritten Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations (FM-2-22-3). This guidebook for interrogators was meant to set a humane standard for U.S. interrogators worldwide, a standard that was respectful of the Geneva Conventions and other U.S. and international laws concerning treatment of prisoners.

While George W. Bush was signing a presidential directive allowing the CIA to conduct other, secret “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which may or may not have included waterboarding, the new AFM was sold to the public as a return to civilized norms, in regards to interrogation.

1. Five former Blackwater mercenaries plead not guilty in the Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007 reports the Washington Post. The men are charged with “14 counts of voluntary manslaughter, 20 counts of attempting to commit manslaughter and one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. They will face a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years if convicted of the firearms charge.” A sixth former Blackwater mercenary “pleaded guilty last month to voluntary manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter and is cooperating with the government”.

   Also, the Seattle Times reports of another Blackwater mercenary to be charged with Iraqi bodyguard killing. The Department of Justice plans to charge former Blackwater mercenary Andrew Moonen for fatally shooting Raheem Khalif, the bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, outside the vice president’s quarters after a drunken Christmas party in Baghdad’s secure “Green Zone” in 2006.

2. The Washington Post reports Military judge’s order could keep public from hearing details of 9/11 trials.

   The protective order, which was signed on Dec. 18 by Judge Stephen R. Henley, an Army colonel, not only protects documents and information that have been classified by intelligence agencies, it also presumptively classifies any information “referring” to a host of agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the State Department. The order also allows the court in certain circumstances to classify information already in the public domain and presumptively classifies “any statements made by the accused.”

   The ruling will, for example, prevent public scrutiny of the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Four at Four continues with nearly $2 trillion U.S. budget deficit and eating gray squirrels in Britain.

Irony

(from the Ancient Greek ???????? eironeía, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does and what one means or what is generally understood. Irony is a mode of expression that calls attention to discrepancy between two levels of knowledge.

Yesterday was a marvelous day, on many levels, with some great people newly sworn into Congress, on both the Senate and House sides.  …

The irony …

Of watching Dick Cheney administer the oath of office to the Senators of the 111th Congress.