19 Apr - Morning Articles

Image via Wikipedia

 Signs of the Times

Last U.S. Sardine Plant Shuts Down
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/206997-Last-US-sardine-plant-shuts-down

Noam Chomsky Has 'Never Seen Anything Like This'
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207095-Noam-Chomsky-Has-Never-Seen-Anything-Like-This-
His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of "brainwashing." And as our nation's most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.

"It is very similar to late Weimar Germany.The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over."
The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies."

"I listen to talk radio," Chomsky said. "I don't want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing."
Chomsky reserves his fiercest venom for the liberal elite in the press, the universities and the political system who serve as a smoke screen for the cruelty of unchecked capitalism and imperial war. He exposes their moral and intellectual posturing as a fraud. And this is why Chomsky is hated, and perhaps feared, more among liberal elites than among the right wing he also excoriates. When Christopher Hitchens decided to become a windup doll for the Bush administration after the attacks of 9/11, one of the first things he did was write a vicious article attacking Chomsky. Hitchens, unlike most of those he served, knew which intellectual in America mattered.

Chomsky's courage to speak on behalf of those, such as the Palestinians, whose suffering is often minimized or ignored in mass culture, holds up the possibility of the moral life. And, perhaps even more than his scholarship, his example of intellectual and moral independence sustains all who defy the cant of the crowd to speak the truth.

Marines Ignored Warnings of Tainted Water
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207081-Marines-Ignored-Warnings-of-Tainted-Water
For 30 years, thousands of Marines and their families at Camp Lejeune, N.C., drank, cooked with and bathed in water that was laced with dangerous chemicals.

But when outside contractors began raising questions about the toxic water, documents show, base officials rebuffed them and ignored the warnings or ordered more tests.

The worst-offending wells finally were shut down in November 1984, more than four years after the first warnings. In that time, more than 2,500 babies might have been carried in utero on the base or born in Camp Lejeune hospital, according to estimates by federal scientists.

Strung together, thousands of pages of documents tell the story of how the contamination was allowed to continue. They show that Camp Lejeune officials had been told consistently that something very foul flowed through the base's pipes.

ClimateProgress.org bans most reasoned dissent?
http://joeduck.com/2009/07/03/climateprogress-org-bans-most-reasoned-dissent/#comment-108611
As a long time blogger I’m going to start calling out other blogs for an outrageous practice that is becoming very common and very frustrating to any clear thinker:  banning comments simply because they don’t line up with a particular blog’s point of view and biases.     Blog authors have a lot of control and it’s increasingly abused in the name of groupthink.

Global Warming Solutions are NOT cost effective, so let’s do something that IS cost effective!
http://joeduck.com/2010/04/13/global-warming-solutions-are-not-cost-effective-so-lets-do-something-that-is-cost-effective/#comment-108494
I’d like to hear more from those concerned a lot about how Global Warming will harm humanity regarding their calculations.
It seems to me there are – broadly – three camps in the debate:

Gore takes cash for water campaign from chemical firm
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gore-takes-cash-for-water-campaign-from-chemical-firm-1947723.html
Dow Chemical, the US firm which now owns the leaking pesticides factory responsible for thousands of deaths in Bhopal, India, is sponsoring Life Earth events in 150 cities today.

Cyber-Warfare Chief's Deception - Ray McGovern
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18726
Gen. Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency since August 2005, is about to become what the Army describes as “dual hatted.” The Senate is about to confirm him to a new, highly sensitive leadership position requiring the utmost integrity and fidelity to the Constitution when he has shown neither.

 Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
http://www.alternet.org/authors/5591

Anti-Gov’t Protesters Use Cultural Taboo as Weapon - BANGKOK
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51088

Ancient Rights And Not-Rights, Part II.
http://new-worlds.org/blog/?p=5529&cpage=1#comment-582207

 FAQ : Zemanta

( Note HuffPo article on manure : CAFOs are only part of the problem with Sludge. From Environment  & Sickening Practices there is a site by a retired Ohio farmer The Watchers )

Related articles by Zemanta

• Accepting various truths (timesunion.com)
• Climategate Emails, Snow Give Global-Warming Skeptics Ammo - Are They Right? (usnews.com)
• Judge: Lejeune improperly banned anti-Islam decals (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Terror and Sacrificing Privacy for National Security (usnews.com)
• Navy agrees to fund toxic water study at NC base (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• David Kirby: Is Manure a Hazardous Substance? Blanche Lincoln Says "No" (huffingtonpost.com)
• AECOM awarded NAVFAC contract worth up to US$30 million (eon.businesswire.com)
• Pain all too familiar in mining community (cnn.com)
• US military deaths in Afghan region at 954 (seattletimes.nwsource.com)