August 21, 2010 archive

Aug 21 2010

Original v. Cover — #39 in a Series

serve your country, see the world, shoot college students Pictures, Images and Photos

Have you ever heard a song that so completely captures an earlier moment in your life that hearing it again immediately transports you back to that time?  Sometimes a powerful catalyzing event seizes the collective attention of a nation, creating a sudden vaccuum, waiting only to be filled by a universal means of expression that can clearly and articulately capture those powerful thoughts and emotions, duly recording the essence of a nation’s collective conscience in a manner understandable to the rest of the world, and perhaps more importantly, to posterity.  

Some, perhaps many of us were around in 1970 to witness such an event, one that rocked a nation already reeling from escalating racial tensions and an ever widening divide between those who staunchly supported and those who opposed the United States’ unprovoked aggression and ongoing occupation of Southeast Asia.  

Aug 21 2010

Popular Culture 20100820: TeeVee Adverts

I have written about adverts on the TeeVee before, but there are a whole new crop of them now.  I am not against advertising; as a matter of fact I strongly support it in concept.  However, some of them are just offensive, at least to me, and others are very well received, again at least for me.

Tonight I will pick out my most favorite ones, my most disliked ones, and the genres that I personally like and dislike.  Like all forms of art, adverts are extremely subjective and I do not expect that everyone will agree with me.  That actually makes the topic more interesting.

Aug 21 2010

GULF COAST, New Agenda

   As usual, I`m back on Fridays to post my coral reef images & to lend my small support to all the people from the gulf, & for all the plants & animals, above & belowthe surface.

I fear the damage will affect more the denizens of the deep, than the more visible surface land inhabitants.

  As I`m sure you`ll all concur, I believe this was by design, … to minimize the visible surface  damage, at the much greater expense of the out-of-sight underwater damage.

I`m encouraged, albeit minimally, of the renewed pushback against the mantra of “the oil is gone”, a magical feat, (read, pack of lies) akin to the  (mushroom cloud from WMD`S in Iraq).

BP

DSCN9914

Aug 21 2010

The Green Party: Part 1, Local Leadership

Liberals and the progressive left have long been slandered, ridiculed, and misrepresented by the rightwing. Fox News and the radicals on talk radio have made careers for themselves distorting what liberals believe. As political parties go, the Green Party is the third largest party in the country. However, rarely do we see Green Party representatives or prominent members of the so called “professional left” on the air waves. This three part series on the Green Party will look at the 10 Key Values of the party and interview current elected Green Party government office holders. In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a member of the Green Party for twenty years.

Aug 21 2010

Nobody Tortured Omar, Judge says

So sorry to harsh anybody’s Friday night buzz but here’s a doozey of a buzzkill for ya.  My apologies. I’m just sick and in tears … This ruling was official a couple of weeks ago but only made publicly available [9 page PDF] this morning, and of course Carol Rosenberg is on it.

An Army interrogator’s tale of gang rape in an American prison didn’t coerce Canadian captive Omar Khadr to confess to anything while he was held as a teen terror suspect in Afghanistan, a military commissions judge said in a Guantánamo war court ruling made public Friday.

Army Col. Patrick Parrish, the judge, also found “no credible evidence” of torture in the U.S. military’s interrogations of the Toronto-born Khadr, who was nearly dead when captured in a Special Forces raid on a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

“While the accused was 15 years old at the time he was captured, he was not immature for his age,” Parrish wrote in a nine-page ruling dated Tuesday.

In it, the judge rejected a defense request to exclude Khadr’s confessions to U.S. interrogators from his war crimes trial on grounds of coercion and torture.

snip



“There is no credible evidence that the accused was ever tortured,” the judge wrote, “even using a liberal interpretation considering the accused’s age.”

BY CAROL ROSENBERG (Miami Herald)

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/201…

EDIT: Just saw that emptywheel has a fresh piece up at FDL

So the guy running the Kangaroo Court for this child soldier has decided that rape threats do not constitute a threat of severe pain or suffering.

Aug 21 2010

Julia Williams for Congress, Green independent for Michigan 12 — Reflections

I’m very far from being okay.  There is very little satisfaction in watching the collapse of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  The joys of “I told you so” are vastly over-rated.

Does anyone remember — or want to remember — the insane amount of energy spent for months on end for that piece of shit known as healthcare reform?  Hour-by-hour, vote-by-vote, blunder-by-blunder, broken promise-by-broken promise?  The desperate hope that some pathetic fragment of a public option would make it into the final bill?  The obscene celebration at the signing?

Does anyone remember — or can remember — that Obama & Co. wanted to get healthcare done with because the big issue on everyone’s minds was jobs?  The obscene unemployment rate?  Do we remember that it was only a few weeks ago that they passed one more extension — one that completely ignored those who had exhausted their 99 weeks of benefits?  That cut benefits by $25?  And expires in November?

Aug 21 2010

There’s More To Being An Elder Than Being Old

It takes more than being old to be an Elder.  Not every senior citizen can be an Elder.  Or wants to be one. And it doesn’t depend on whether you’re healthy.  Or “spry” as younger people would put it.  It depends on something far more elusive.  It depends on whether one actually occupies the role of being an Elder.   And how.

What does it mean to be an Elder?  I’m going to be 64 in October.  I imagine that I should be assuming the role of an Elder, and that I would like to do that.  Am I ready to do this or do I need more time?  Am I ready to be a beginning Elder?  A novice Elder?  Am I ready to  start paying my dues to Elderhood?

Aug 21 2010

Friday Philosophy: Transwomen and AIDS



Helena Bushong was diagnosed with AIDS in 2002.  She probably had been HIV+ since 1985.  She also has Hepatitis C and is a survivor of spinal cancer.

But she has one hell of a strong backbone.

This past week she was interviewed about being transgender, black and poz.  Do yourself a favor and go see what she has to say for herself.  The video is not embeddable.

I felt comfortable in my own skin for the first time in my 56 years.

–Helena Bushong, about going on homone therapy

But y’all come back, y’hear!

And there is more…

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