Sep 28 2009
So my fiction rewrites have now begun in earnest (sorry, but I wanted a summer break), and there’s proving to be much less and much more of it than I thought. For those who don’t know, from Jan ’08 to Jun ’09, budhy was nice enough to let me blog a “novel” here, and a few people were nice enough to comment and make suggestions/edits/whatever. Probably only those people will be interested in this, so my non-update updates are below the fold.
Sep 28 2009
Crossposted at Daily Kos
“Death Panels” ain’t got nothing on this!
How can you be for the Death Penalty and be against the “Corporate Death Penalty”?
ACORN was smeared to death, and that sucks. So, how do we make the best of it?
If ACORN must go, the rest of all the Bush Era Crooked Contractors you know and loathe will just have to go too.
On Friday (Spet 25th), Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) inserted into the “legislative history” language spelling out that including all fraudulent organizations was, in fact, the intent of the Congress.
~snip~
“The bill imposes, and is intended to impose, a corporate death penalty on contractors who fall within the scope of its prohibitions.”
Bold and Italics added by diarist
What’s good for the goose, or, in this case, nut.
More political judo below the fold.
Sep 28 2009
NYCCAN’s March for Answers yesterday was to raise public awareness to the fact that despite 80,000 validated NYC resident signatures on their petition to put a vote for a new 9/11 investigation on November’s ballot, the City is moving to quash this effort. On Friday, Referee Louis Crespo issued his “report and recommendations” and recommended that the Court rule in favor of the City, which does not want to include this request on the ballot.
The march, organized in Battery Park, first came to Ground Zero to observe a moment of silence.
A decision on the matter is expected this week. NYCCAN marched yesterday to protest this attempt to silence the concerns of tens of thousands of New Yorkers as well as those of the watching world. The march gathered in Foley Square/Federal Plaza, where the decision will be made. Ironically it is the same place I was standing eight years ago when I saw the towers fall.
Yesterday I was one of the speakers for NYCCAN at City Hall. As a former member of the US military as well as the third generation of my family to serve the US military intelligence community, I feel strongly that the official story the Bush administration has propagated is a lie and that a new investigation is necessary. I am seen here speaking with Bob McIlvaine (left) and Manny Badillo (right), both of whom lost family members on 9/11.
Video of the speeches at City Hall.
This morning WBAI’s Esther Armah interviewed myself and Bob McIlvaine about the reasons we believe a new 9/11 investigation is necessary. The interview segment runs from 37:05 to 46:19.
More pictures of the march here.
Please continue to support NYCCAN. If you haven’t signed the petition and are a resident of NYC, please do so. Survivors, first responders and those who lost family and friends can also sign a petition of support.
Sep 28 2009
Gates: Mistake to set Afghan withdrawal date
Defense secretary says a defeat in Afghanistan would be disastrous for U.S.
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Robert Gates is pushing back against liberal calls for withdrawal timelines from Afghanistan, saying it’s a mistake to set a deadline to end U.S. military action and a defeat would be disastrous for the U.S.In a stern warning to critics of a continued troop presence in Afghanistan, Gates said the Islamic extremist Taliban and al-Qaida would perceive an early pullout as a victory over the United States as similar to the Soviet Union’s humiliating withdrawal in 1989 after a 10-year war.
2 Brothers’ Grim Tale Of Loyalty And Limbo
To Leave Guantanamo Means Abandoning Family
By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 28, 2009
Bahtiyar Mahnut, a detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, learned a few weeks ago that the Pacific island nation of Palau had invited him to settle there.
It should have been cause for celebration, especially for a man who desperately wants to be free. But, to the surprise of his attorneys, Bahtiyar has turned down the offer. He wishes to remain a prisoner, they say, so he can look after his older brother, a fellow detainee.
Sep 28 2009
 Muse in the Morning |
Art Link Obstacles
|
Sep 28 2009
Often when people including those in government and the mainstream media who should know better refer to the events of 8/29, it is merely as “Katrina” or “Hurricane Katrina”.
There were actually two catastrophes that happened that day: the storm, which passed to the east of New Orleans, devastating the Mississippi and eastern Louisiana Gulf Coasts, which was a NATURAL disaster, and the falling apart of New Orleans’ federally-built and maintained levees, which was a MANMADE disaster due to poor engineering.
While the use of Katrina as shorthand to cover the two events is easy (I’ve even done that at times) it’s misleading because of the implication that the flooding of New Orleans was a natural disaster. And this matters–more below the fold.
Sep 28 2009
You know what irks me? When people make statements that simply aren’t supported by facts.
Plutonium Page at Daily Kos writes about Iran’s nuclear enrichment. Everyone is going nuts over Iran’s nuclear plants.
They are simply WRONG…
Sep 28 2009
TED.com member (from his TED profile) and Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies morality and emotion in the context of culture. He asks: Why did humans evolve to have morals — and why did we all evolve to have such different morals, to the point that our moral differences may make us deadly enemies? It’s a question with deep repercussions in war and peace — and in modern politics, where reasoned discourse has been replaced by partisan anger and cries of “You just don’t get it!”
Haidt asks, “Can’t we all disagree more constructively?” He suggests we might build a more civil and productive discourse by understanding the moral psychology of those we disagree with, and committing to a more civil political process. He’s also active in the study of positive psychology and human flourishing.
Rather than me comment on it and perhaps skew responses or seed expectations, I’ll just let you watch and listen and take whichever pill you prefer.
This video is a TED talk Haidt gave last year. If you want hear more of his ideas and thinking, this year, posted today, Haidt spoke to the TED Blog about the moral psychology behind the healthcare debate in the United States.
Sep 28 2009
The single most important piece of scientific literature is, in my opinion, the periodic table. Those who understand what it means, and what it actually implies, have mastered more science than most professors ever will. This may sound like an exaggeration, but come with me and I think that I can prove it to you.
One thing that scientists like to do is to make order out of what seems to be a myriad of disjointed facts. The table does just this. The table did not just appear overnight; it is the product of contributions by hundreds of scientists over decades and finally took a form sort of like what we use today in 1869. That was the year in which Dmitrii Mendeleev published his table, but he was not alone by far.
Sep 28 2009
President Obama called NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly [yesterday] to thank him for “thwarting the terror plot that targeted the city’s subway system, police said.”
Obama expressed his “appreciation and admiration” for the NYPD’s effort in stopping the attack, sources said.
Except, there was no known plot to target the city’s subway system. The Feds have consistently said they have no evidence Nabijullah Zazi was planning an imminent attack, and if he was, where it was to take place, what he was targeting or when.
“Nothing in the bulletins references the current investigation,” a Federal Bureau of Investigation issued spokesman said Tuesday. Investigators still don’t have specific evidence indicating an imminent threat to particular targets in the alleged plot, federal officials said.
Hat Tip to Jeralyn at Talkleft for No Attack, No Problem: Just Make One Up
Sep 28 2009
Corporate Rights and Responsibilities: Restoring Legal Accountability
Dr Dan Plesch & Dr Stephanie Blankenburg
[pg 4]
Giant corporations have the rights of a person, but none of the responsibilities.Society needs successful businesses, but today business is taking over society.
– 51 of the world’s 100 largest economies are corporations
(Institute for Policy Studies, Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power, 2001).– 80% of the world’s industrial output is made by 1,000 corporations
(The Economist, 29 January 2000).
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/570… (pdf)
Staggering Stats! from nearly a decade ago!
If were not careful, metaphorically at least, that world of Terminator 2 may indeed come to pass … that day “When machines rise up rule the world”.
It may already be too late — despite the Human Face, we like to paint on our neighborhood global Corporate Entities …
