Moral Support
June 20, 2009 archive
Jun 20 2009
Late Night Karaoke
Jun 20 2009
Random Japan
By the numbers
The health ministry announced that Japan’s population stands at 127.6 million.The country’s fertility rate increased for the third consecutive year, and is now 1.37 children per woman.
However, there were 51,300 more deaths than births in Japan in 2008, which means that the overall population shrank.
It is estimated that a quarter of Japanese people will be over age 65 by 2015, and that the population will shrink by a third within 50 years, according to Reuters.
A Cabinet Office survey revealed that 45.4 percent of Japanese people give more priority to their careers than their private lives, even though just 1.6 percent want to do so.
The survey also found that 58.7 percent “want more rest.”
Despite this, 55.8 percent of respondents said they were “satisfied with their current family lives.”
The National Police Agency announced that the number of articles turning up at lost and found centers around the country increased a whopping 36.3 percent in 2008.
A total of 17.34 million items were turned in, of which 6.17 million were eventually retrieved by their owners.
The amount of cash turned in fell 2.2 percent, to ¥14.2 billion. Of this, ¥9.7 billion was returned and ¥3.8 billion given to the finders, according to Kyodo.
The NPA says the rise in turned-in articles is due, in part, to a new system where people can search for lost items on the internet.
Jun 20 2009
Friday Distractions
I do have to thank all of you who have been so generous with your compliments, comments & additions, that I post on Fridays, to try & distract you for all the important work you do.
These images are to reinvigorate you in our common cause.
I`ll start off with a dark flower, that nonetheless, is a miracle of nature as are all the flowers I`m privileged to have growing in my yards here in Malibu.
BLACK SUCCULENT
Jun 20 2009
When does Obama become the war criminal?
Article 129
The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention defined in the following Article.
Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case.
Each High Contracting Party shall take measures necessary for the suppression of all acts contrary to the provisions of the present Convention other than the grave breaches defined in the following Article.
In all circumstances, the accused persons shall benefit by safeguards of proper trial and defence, which shall not be less favourable than those provided by Article 105 and those following of the present Convention.
Article 130
Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention.
Article 131
No High Contracting Party shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other High Contracting Party of any liability incurred by itself or by another High Contracting Party in respect of breaches referred to in the preceding Article.
I interpret this as meaning that nobody gets to pick and choose which articles they will or will not follow. There is either the rule of law applied equally to all, or there is lawlessness.
This goes for EVERYONE, including the Obama Administration.
After the Geneva Convention was ratified by the United States of America it became American law. An American Law that the Bush/Cheney Administration broke. An American law that the Obama Administration has not broken yet, but that day is quickly approaching.
There are 1311 days until the next inauguration ceremony in 2012. President Obama has until the day before then to bring Bush/Cheney to justice. If he gets re-elected the clock gets set back and he will have until 2017 to do so. Each day that passes by is another day closer to complicity.
Is it really worth protecting the Bush Administration for Obama?
Better yet, should the new phrase be It Doesn’t Count When Obama Does It?
I did not vote for more War Crimes or more violations of the Geneva Convention, among other things.
On this one I will not give up on President Obama or his Administration. Still, my patience has limits. Right now, there are 1311 days of my patience left.
How much more patience should I have?
Jun 20 2009
Iran: Let There Be Peace, Let There Be Freedom
| . |
Let There Be Peace In Iran, Let There Be Freedom “Some day it’s going to come, Take me home again.” Let There Be Peace In Tehran, Let There Be Freedom.
Let There Be Peace Throughout the World, Let There Be Freedom. Let us hold in our prayers* and thoughts that those who are expressing themselves in Iran are safe, that they are happy, that they are well, and that they live in peace. cross posted from The Dream Antilles |
Jun 20 2009
Torture Architects Mitchell & Jessen on the Road to Maui
Originally posted at Firedoglake
James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, the ex-military psychologists identified as primary architects of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogations techniques” torture program, apparently did not spend all their time on the battlefield. As the Bush administration-approved coercive interrogation techniques spread from Guantanamo and Afghanistan to the new war in Iraq, Mitchell and Jessen were cashing in on their new-found influence.
According to a news blurb in October 2003, from conservative columnist John McCaslin, Mitchell and Jessen, along with fellow survival instructor David Dose (of whose Fort Sherman Academy in Idaho, more in a minute), were speakers at a “‘Homeland Security Training Seminar,’ billed as an ‘intense three-day experiential training seminar. . . for avoiding and surviving hostage detention.'” The hoity-toity affair, for which federal and state officials were to receive a governmental per diem, was held at the Ritz Carlton resort on Maui.
Jun 20 2009
Friday Night at 8: Well, Well
How can it be described, the feeling of a trail freshly blazed and taking that first walk upon it?
A path you created for yourself with all the wonders of the world at your disposal!
I call that Liberation and Freedom.
Casting off the shackles of conditioning that have oppressed every generation since human beings learned they could oppress each other.
Casting off the shackles is exhilirating in itself because the load feels so light!
Whoo, those fucking shackles were very heavy!
And then for the first time, moving around without the fucking shackles. Wowzville.
Free.
(Phoenix Rising from Elfen Harmonics)
First time moving as a free human being. That first step a big rush of pure direct experience, removed from words and concepts and thoughts in the totality of being, the reality of liberation.
Jun 20 2009
No such thing as opaque democracy.
Tom Paine argued that legitimate government arose only from a compact between inherently sovereign individuals in The Rights of Man:
We have now to review the governments which arise out of society, in contradistinction to those which arose out of superstition and conquest.
It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.
The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin. In doing this we shall easily discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people or over the people.
Clearly, this sort of agreement between sovereign individuals was precisely the sort of legitimate government envisioned in our Constitution.
A ruling elite governing through coercion or superstition, that is, arbitrarily without accountability to the inherent sovereigns, is by definition illegitimate.
Jun 20 2009
Three Small Towns In Provence (A Photo Blog)
Carpentras dates at least to Roman times.
Jun 20 2009
Good News on the LGBT front! (and what you need to do to help)
Once more to the well.
Without rehashing the last weeks’ debates over President Obama’s relationship with the LGBT rights movement, I wanted to outline a list of legislation that is currently in play, along with recommendations about what we can do to help speed the processes along. There’s nothing worse than the feeling that we have no say in the political process, but here are four opportunities to get vocal in a concrete, direct way:
1. the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligation Act
2. the Employment Non-Discrimination Act
3. the Matthew Shepard Act
4. the Military Readiness Enhancement Act
And the best part is, you really can help. All four of these bills are before Congress (or about to be introduced), and your representatives are waiting to hear from you.
Jun 20 2009
Friday Philosophy: love, hate and in between
Sometimes there are bad weeks, weeks in which the steps backward, away from cohesion and community formation…and the dream of inclusion…are so extremely painful. This has been one of them.
Yes, there has been negative news (and a few positive notes, to be sure), for GLBT people. But at least for me, nothing has torn at my heart as much as the divisiveness which has resulted from this community’s reaction to that news.
I’d hope that people could understand where each other are coming from as we try to keep the lines of communication open. The intention of this piece is to try to generate some of that understanding.
For all I know, however, I may fail big time, and if I do, the pain will surely intensify.
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