March 20, 2009 archive

Friday Philosophy: Greed, Cynicism and Hope

On Tuesday I attended our annual Cyrus H. Holley Lecture on applied ethics.  The speaker was a retired colleague, Professor Emeritus of History Steve Golin, a well-known labor historian (see The Fragile Bridge:  Paterson Silk Strike, 1913 and The Newark Teacher Strikes:  Hopes on the Line), who lectured on History, Cynicism and Hope.

Therein lie the roots of this riff.

And hereafter will lie a little history (or something simulating history), a little cynicism, and…with any luck…some hope.  And maybe I need something to tie them loosely together.

Greed.

Four at Four

  1. The LA Times reports President Obama’s overture elicits cautious response from Iran. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a ranking advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “responded cautiously today to President Obama’s Persian New Year overture for a new beginning in relations, saying Tehran wants to see discernible changes in U.S. Middle East policies before it agrees to rapprochement with Washington.”

    If Obama “shows goodwill and goes beyond words to take practical measures, the state and nation of Iran will not turn its back” on him, Javanfekr said. “We welcome the wish of the U.S. president to put away past differences… Our logic is peace, justice fraternity and mutual respect and love of mankind.”

    According to the NY Times, “Obama’s video outreach is currently the lead story on the English-language Web site of Press TV, Iran’s state-sponsored satellite broadcaster. In an interesting sign of connection via the Web, the report on the Iranian site links directly to the video on the White House Web site.”

  2. The LA Times reports a Pioneering ecologist is confirmed to head NOAA. The Senate voted unanimously to confirm Oregon State ecologist Jane Lubchenco as the first woman and first marine scientist to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    Lubchenco said she was eager to get started because of pressing burdens on the economy and the environment, including global warming, polluted coastal waters and severely depleted fish populations.

    “We really don’t have a choice,” she said… “We have to move rapidly ahead because of chronic problems that need immediate solutions.” …

    Her immediate agenda includes pushing for a National Climate Service to coordinate federal research into greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and shifting climatic patterns.

Four at Four continues with the coming North Korea ‘missile’ launch, nuclear talks with Russia, and Obama’s Afghan strategy.

Baptized by Fire: Killer Blue {into the 7th yr.}

We’ve now entered the seventh year in Iraq and still way over one hundred thousand military troops occupy, a country that never should have been invaded, while we are led to believe that most of the country is quite, as Iraqi’s and Soldiers still die and are maimed!

WWL Radio Week 11, Tonight, 6 Eastern: Econo-Crush Edition.

Its on your minds, in your wallets and curdling your stomachs!

Today we use the full hour to talk about the economy, shred the bastards who created this mess, hang the rat-fuckers that are enabling it still, and make predictions for the final fall out.

Want real information slathered in righteous indignation?

Call in and Rant with us!!!!

The call in number is 646-929-1264

Listen to The Wild Wild Left on internet talk radio

The live chat link will be active after 5:30-ish.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/h…

Ion Beam Deposition Rates

Went into the fire.  Yup, that’s right in 22 years worth of R&D career one just accumulates lots of stuff.  Its too much for a shredder so a backyard fire pit will have to do.  Spectrometer calibrations sheets, meeting minutes from 1993,symposium pamphlets,travel permission slips yet most annoying of all those corporate performance measurement plans of varied schemes each saying how the company “valued” my contributions.  Valued, ha, see my two middle fingers straight up.

Downsizing for the move.

Uber Lesson of AIG: Citizen Anger WORKS!

Works so well in fact that it got congress to scramble out of its normally glacial speed to swiftly pass an unconstitutional bill! Funny how when they felt the citizenry…and Steven Colbert…reaching for the pitchforks the normally arrogant and unresponsive Know-Better Do-Nothings turned into Do-Better Know-Nothings!

Of course….they did still get it wrong, waste time, miss the point and totally screw up by passing an ex post facto bill of attainder to tax the chump change of the AIG bonuses….but they did it because they were SCARED OF US….the little darlings!

Aren’t they positively cute when they are frightened into action by the righteous wrath of their employers!

Now all we have to do to get some MEANINGFUL changes…like investigating massive corporate fraud, War Crimes, and heck, maybe even their own corrupt asses… is harness that same wrath, agree on what needs to be done and KICK SOME KEESTER.

Of course it is that middle part that is tricky. The harnessing and deciding part. We seem to have a bit of a problem with that, historically speaking.

What with all the wedge issues, distractions, pork centered bribes and …..oh wait! Most of that shit was and is perpetrated by Republicans, or was the result of Dems being more scared of Republicans than they are scared of US!

And of course, the Republicans have lied cheated, sex scandaled and hypocritized themselves into a quivering, directionless pile of goo that ….deliciously and ironically….is small enough to fit in a bathtub and drown!

So now…getting back to that pesky harnessing and deciding and directing part. We now know that Citizen Power works. All we need now is to figure out how to a) keep it going. b) concentrate it on the areas and issues that need to be fixed or attended to…which unfortunately after Bush is, to put it mildly,  fucking everything, and c) communicate that to Congress.

In NO uncertain terms.

Obama has Health Care and a probably weak ass but the best we can do Climate Crisis bill covered. Energy is next on his list. The War Machine is still too powerful to be meaningfully challenged but at least Barack has them moving in a better direction, so that leaves….

MASSIVE INVESTIGATIONS.

Of just about everything.

(btw, when has it ever been so hard before to get politicians to grandstand for investigations?)

If we play our cards right, which is by no means an easy task mind you, this IS the time when we could use Citizen power to do a real, and long overdue House Cleaning. From Wall St. to the Abramoff tentacles….right up to the War Crimes of the previous occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

So fellow Citizens of a possibly once again democratic nation instead of an aristocratic plutocracy….

Who wants to play cards?

Happy Ostara!



Friday Constitutional 20 – Amendments 24 And 25

Crossposted on Square State

Happy Friday and welcome to the penultimate Friday Constitutional! This is the Dog’s series looking at the United States Constitution from a layman’s perspective. For those who like to have access to the entire series, all of the previous installments in this series can be found at the following links:  

The Abyss

Economic freefall, environmental melt-down and political ponerology.



Photobucket

Come along for the ride. It’s free.

The Supreme International Crime: Pre Iraq Invasion Intelligence Was Clear: Saddam Posed No Threat

Crossposted from Antemedius

Wikipedia defines a war of aggression as a military conflict waged absent the justification of self-defense. Waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law. It is generally agreed by scholars in international law that the military actions of the Nazi regime in World War II in its search for so-called “Lebensraum” are characteristic of a war of aggression.

San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson School of Law Professor and president of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohn in a 2004 Truthout article contextualized a little more bluntly with:

Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war “essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Former UK diplomat Carne Ross, who was Britain’s leading expert on Iraq at the United Nations for four years before the war and had quit his job after giving secret evidence to the UK’s 2004 Butler inquiry into the use of intelligence, is now urging a full inquiry into the legality  of the 2003 US led invasion according to UK newspapers yesterday and this morning.

From BBC News Thursday:

A full public inquiry into the decision to invade Iraq is needed because “a lot of facts still have to come to light”, a former diplomat has told MPs.

Carne Ross said it was “disgraceful” of ministers to “pretend” the Butler and Hutton inquiries told the full story.



“A lot of decision-making, a lot of facts have still to come to light in the run up to this war, which should come to light, which the public deserves to know.”

Asked what this information was, he said he was “happy” to let his evidence to the Butler inquiry “stand as my view”.

The Guardian corroborates the story Friday morning with:

A former diplomat at the centre of events in the run-up to the Iraq war revealed yesterday that the government has a “paper trail” that could reveal new information about the legality of the invasion.

Carne Ross, who was a first secretary at the United Nations in New York for the Foreign Office until 2004, told MPs: “A lot of facts about the run-up to this war have yet to come to light which should come to light and which the public deserves to know.” There were also assessments by the joint intelligence committee which had not been disclosed, Ross told the Commons public administration select committee.

He told the inquiry that the intelligence made it “very clear” that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant threat to the UK, as was being claimed at the time by ministers, and that tougher enforcement of sanctions could have brought his regime down.

The Supreme International Crime: Pre Iraq Invasion Intelligence Was Clear: Saddam Posed No Threat

Crossposted from Antemedius

Wikipedia defines a war of aggression as a military conflict waged absent the justification of self-defense. Waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law. It is generally agreed by scholars in international law that the military actions of the Nazi regime in World War II in its search for so-called “Lebensraum” are characteristic of a war of aggression.

San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson School of Law Professor and president of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohn in a 2004 Truthout article contextualized a little more bluntly with:

Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war “essentially an evil thing . . . to initiate a war of aggression . . . is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Former UK diplomat Carne Ross, who was Britain’s leading expert on Iraq at the United Nations for four years before the war,  and who had quit his job after giving secret evidence to the  UK’s 2004 Butler inquiry into the use of intelligence, and is now urging a full inquiry into the legality  of the 2003 US led invasion according to UK newspapers yesterday and this morning.

From BBC News Thursday:

A full public inquiry into the decision to invade Iraq is needed because “a lot of facts still have to come to light”, a former diplomat has told MPs.

Carne Ross said it was “disgraceful” of ministers to “pretend” the Butler and Hutton inquiries told the full story.



“A lot of decision-making, a lot of facts have still to come to light in the run up to this war, which should come to light, which the public deserves to know.”

Asked what this information was, he said he was “happy” to let his evidence to the Butler inquiry “stand as my view”.

The Guardian corroborates the story Friday morning with:

A former diplomat at the centre of events in the run-up to the Iraq war revealed yesterday that the government has a “paper trail” that could reveal new information about the legality of the invasion.

Carne Ross, who was a first secretary at the United Nations in New York for the Foreign Office until 2004, told MPs: “A lot of facts about the run-up to this war have yet to come to light which should come to light and which the public deserves to know.” There were also assessments by the joint intelligence committee which had not been disclosed, Ross told the Commons public administration select committee.

He told the inquiry that the intelligence made it “very clear” that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant threat to the UK, as was being claimed at the time by ministers, and that tougher enforcement of sanctions could have brought his regime down.

Docudharma Times Friday March 20

Republican Hypocrisy

They Were Against It Before?

They Were For It

   




Friday’s Headlines:

In New Dilemma, Banks Cite Two Paths to Disaster

Call to prosecute officials after Iranian blogger dies in prison

Collapse in Iraqi oil price shatters hope of recovery

Gordon Brown’s plan for recovery rejected by Germany

The march of Mussolini into Italy’s mainstream

China ends naval stand-off and credits Barack Obama

Suicide case highlights stresses in Japan’s Self-Defense Forces

In Cameroon, Pope Deplores Violence

Rio hopes small fixes will yield big drop in crime rate

Barack Obama issues surprise video offering ‘new beginning’ to Iran



From Times Online

March 20, 2009


Anne Barrowclough

President Barack Obama issued an unprecedented video appeal to Iran today offering a ‘new beginning’ of diplomatic engagement to reverse decades of distrust and animosity between the two nations.

In an extraordinary videotape, which was aired early today on selected networks in the Middle East, Mr Obama said Washington was committed to pursuing “constructive ties” with Iran. He promised that Tehran could take its ‘rightful place’ in the world if it renounced terror and embraced peace.

“My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community,” Mr Obama said in the message marking the start of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, which is planned to appeal direct to the Iranian people.

Israeli soldiers report abuses in Gaza

Some rights groups have claimed Israel violated the rules of war in its recent killing of Palestinians. Now accounts from Israel’s own ranks seem to support the claims. An investigation is ordered.

By Richard Boudreaux

March 20, 2009


Reporting from Jerusalem — Two months after ending its assault on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army was confronted Thursday by the first public allegations from within its ranks of unwarranted killings and other abuses of Palestinian civilians.

The reports in a military institute’s newsletter resembled accounts given by many Palestinians during and after the winter offensive. In gripping language cited by two Israeli newspapers, they appeared to support contentions by some human rights groups that Israel had violated the laws of war.

One squad leader said he argued with his commander over rules of engagement that allowed the army to clear out houses by shooting the residents without warning.

“When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up story by story,” he was quoted as saying. “Each story, if we identify a person, we shoot them. I asked myself: ‘How is this reasonable?’ “

Bag a polar bear for $35,000: the new threat to the species

The latest challenge for fans of extreme hunting is an expedition to the Arctic Circle. Jerome Taylor reports

Friday, 20 March 2009

Boyd Warner treasures the memory of killing his first polar bear. It was 2003. For days he had stalked his prey on the frozen wastelands north of Pond Inlet, one of Canada’s most isolated Inuit communities deep inside the Arctic Circle. His dog team picked up the scent of an eight-foot adult male and they hurtled over the ice: the hunt was on.

“It was one of those beautiful Arctic days,” recalled Mr Warner. “We’d had about 14 hours of sunlight and were completely surrounded by nature. The moment of death comes quickly for the bear. You might track one for days through the ice but a single shot to the heart kills it instantly.”

For wealthy modern-day trophy hunters, bagging a polar bear is the ultimate kill. Fourteen days in harsh conditions, requiring dog-sleds, Inuit guides and a heated tent camp, does not come cheap: the minimum bill comes to $35,000 (£24,000).

USA

Scorn Trails A.I.G. Executives, Even in Their Driveways



By JAMES BARRON and RUSS BUETTNER

Published: March 19, 2009

The A.I.G. executive who was nicknamed “Jackpot Jimmy” by a New York tabloid walked up the driveway toward his bay-windowed house in Fairfield, Conn., on Thursday afternoon. “How do I feel?” said the executive, James Haas, repeating the question he had just been asked. “I feel horrible. This has been a complete invasion of privacy.”

Mr. Haas walked on, his pink shirt a burst of color on a slate-gray afternoon. The words came haltingly. “You have to understand,” he said, “there are kids involved, there have been death threats. …” His voice trailed off. It looked as if he was fighting back tears.

“I didn’t have anything to do with those credit problems,” said Mr. Haas, 47. “I told Mr. Liddy” – Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G., the insurance giant – “I would rescind my retention contract.”

He ended the conversation with a request: “Leave my neighbors alone.”

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